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Anne Gould Hauberg: Fired by Beauty
By Barbara Johns
This is the first book-length account of the world Anne Gould Hauberg both discovered and helped bring into being. A major figure in Seattle's cultural life, she has been an instigator of ideas for innumerable people and organizations, sometimes when no one else could see the way, and has provided critical support that helped launch many artists' careers. Author Barbara Johns brings her own intimate knowledge of Seattle's art and architectural heritage to the story of Anne's life and accomplishments. Anne Gould Hauberg is legendary for her advocacy of artists, the creative spirit, and the handmade object. Her openness to creative possibility contributed most famously to the beginnings of the Pilchuck Glass School. Hers has been a life of commitment, filled with passion for beauty and for universal access to art.
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Bunion Derby: The 1928 Footrace Across America
By Charles B. Kastner '81
From the publisher:
On March 4, 1928, 199 men lined up in Los Angeles, California, to participate in a 3,400-mile transcontinental footrace to New York City. The Bunion Derby, as the press dubbed the event, was the brainchild of sports promoter Charles C. Pyle. He promised a $25,000 grand prize and claimed the competition would immortalize U.S. Highway Route 66, a 2,400-mile road, mostly unpaved, that subjected the runners to mountains, deserts, mud, and sandstorms, from Los Angeles to Chicago.
The runners represented all walks of American life from immigrants to millionaires, with a peppering of star international athletes included by Pyle for publicity purposes. For eighty-four days, the men participated in this part footrace and part Hollywood production that incorporated a road show featuring football legend Red Grange, food concessions, vaudeville acts, sideshows, a portable radio station, and the world's largest coffeepot sponsored by Maxwell House serving ninety gallons of coffee a day.
Drawn by hopes for a better future and dreams of fame, fortune, and glory, the bunioneers embarked on an exhaustive and grueling journey that would challenge their physical and psychological endurance to the fullest while Pyle struggled to keep his cross-country road show afloat.
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During the War Women Went To Work
Produced by Karl Schmidt '81
"This is the story—largely unsung, nearly forgotten—of Washington women who set rivets, flew military aircraft, sold war bonds, survived Nazi capture, and helped liberate the living skeletons at the Buchenwald concentration camp.
"Told against a backdrop of personal scrapbook photos and wartime film footage, they recount not only the 'history book'events but the heartbeat of daily life—playing pranks, falling in love, battling loneliness, and leaving home for the first time."
—Cecilia Goodnow, Seattle Post Intelligencer
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Good Wood
By Steven R. Radosevich
Good Wood is a clear-eyed, finely hewed collection of personal essays on farming, forestry, and family in the Pacific Northwest. As a young man, Steve Radosevich learned to prune trees by watching his grandfather. Working in the apple orchards of the struggling family farm, he saw that "every cut was a decision, conscious and deliberate, about the health of the trees and their coming crops." In Good Wood, Radosevich examines the choices we make in life and how those choices affect the health of people and places.
Radosevich draws on his experiences on two farms—the "homeplace," a family farm in Washington's Yakima Valley, and Kla-kla-nee, his small vineyard in Oregon's Willamette Valley. Radosevich is also a professor of forestry, and his commitment to sustainable forestry informs his writings. His book seamlessly combines recollections of tending smudge pots on freezing spring nights east of the Cascades with discussions about the flooding of Native fishing grounds at Celilo Falls and clearcuts in the Oregon Coast Range. "All these losses," writes Radosevich, "have been decisions too, made consciously I think, but with less deliberation than the forethought of a farmer pruning his orchard."
As keeper of the old family orchard and tender of a new family farm, Radosevich reveals in these stories his deliberate choices and his hopes for the world of his children and grandchildren.
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Investment in Learning: The Individual and Social Value of American Higher Education
By Howard Bowen '29, '32
From the publisher: The value of higher education has been under attack as seldom before in American history. We are told of the overeducated American, of the case against college, and of the failure of education to contribute significantly to the reduction of inequality. In this environment, republication of an exceptionally comprehensive and judicious analysis of all that has been learned—and not learned—about the consequences of American higher education comes at a most appropriate time. Investment in Learning more fully covers the various aspects of this subject than any yet to appear. Howard Bowen is optimistic about higher education, but his viewpoint is based on profound knowledge of both the economic and social aspects of education. Unlike some economists who insist on a strict cost-benefit analysis of expenditures on higher education in relation to outcomes, Bowen argues that the non-monetary benefits are far greater, to the point that individual and social decisions should be made primarily on those broader indicators.
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Just Don't Get Sick: Access to Health Care in the Aftermath of Welfare Reform
by Karen Seccombe and Kim Hoffman
From the publisher: The ability to obtain health care is fundamental to the security, stability, and well-being of poor families. Government-sponsored programs provide temporary support, but as families leave welfare for work, they find themselves without access to coverage or care. The low-wage jobs that individuals in transition are typically able to secure provide few benefits yet often disqualify employees from receiving federal aid.
Drawing upon statistical data and in-depth interviews with over five hundred families in Oregon, Karen Seccombe and Kim Hoffman assess the ways in which welfare reform affects the well-being of adults and children who leave the program for work. We hear of asthmatic children whose uninsured but working mothers cannot obtain the preventive medicines to keep them well, and stories of pregnant women receiving little or no prenatal care who end up in emergency rooms with life-threatening conditions.
Representative of poor communities nationwide, the vivid stories recounted here illuminate the critical relationship between health insurance coverage and the ability to transition from welfare to work.
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Our Drink: Detoxing the Perfect Family
By Chris Volkmann '70 and Toren Volkmann
Our Drink: Detoxing the Perfect Family portrays the choking of an adolescent by binge drinking and alcohol addiction. . . . Invincible Toren had a college diploma, a competitive spot in South America with the Peace Corps, spoke three languages, and could charm his way around the world. He didn’t think that drug and alcohol information applied to him. And the family missed it. If this family is the average family, and the addicted son represents a flourishing college graduate, then there must be millions more like them….and tens of thousands more who are or will be facing alcoholism. The voice of the story switches between mother and son to provide a dynamic combination of inner monologue, narration, and alcohol information. This patchwork disarms the reader by its honesty. Our Drink offers a genuine picture of what hard drinking does to a young man, a family, a society.
Read a chapter from the book.
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Palouse Country: A Land and Its People
By Richard Scheuerman; photography by John Clement
Step into the beauty and heritage of the Palouse. Discover the oral histories of the people who populated this area. See panoramic beauty unlike anywhere else in the world. More than 50 John Clement photos will take you there. Author Dick Sheuerman tells a carefully crafted account with words that only one who loves the land can tell it. 1993 edition only.
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Peoples of Washington: Perspectives on Cultural Diversity
By Sid White and S.E. Solberg
A celebration of the cultural and ethnic diversity of Washington and an overview of the state’s many ethnic communities.
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Pictures of Girlhood: Modern Female Adolescence on Film
by Sarah Hentges '06
Although the "coming of age" story has been a popular film plot for decades, producers have only recently realized the commercial potential of targeting films to adolescent girls. Movies like Clueless, Legally Blonde and Mean Girls have been successfully marketed to teenage girls, as have several well-known independent films. Important as both cultural indicators and catalysts, these films simultaneously demonstrate pop culture's influence on girls' films, and the ability of girls' films to affect pop culture and perceptions of girlhood.
This critical survey of film and the modern girl concentrates largely on films of the last two decades, addressing key themes for girls within "coming of age" films, the changing (but not always improving) young feminine paradigm, and the ways these films can be powerful determinants of culture. The first chapter explores the ways in which girls' films construct, reinforce, challenge and dismantle mainstream conceptualizations of sexuality, race and power. The second chapter discusses mainstream limitations of "coming of age" narratives, including recycled plots and stars, treatments of parental and male authority, and adult conceptualizations of adolescence. The third chapter describes girls' experiences within these narratives through such conventions as attitude, teen fashion, music and dance, unsanctioned rites of passage, and race. The fourth chapter covers the negotiation of sex and sexuality, virginity and sexual empowerment.
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Red State, Blue State: Defending the Liberal Jesus and Blue State Morality from Red State Religion and Hypocrisy
By John Grevstad '89
From the publisher: The presidential election of 2004 demonstrated that the United States is divided in a number of ways, not only by the ever-present alienation between conservatives and liberals. Religion and politics have become intertwined and a new trend is sweeping the nation that accompanies the ever-widening rift between conservative and liberal Christians. We are a divided nation.
In Red State, Blue State, author John Grevstad challenges the ideals and morality of the conservative right. How would the traditional moral values of the Red State conservative hold up to the words and philosophy of Jesus Christ himself? Grevstad both asks and answers the question. Citing Biblical text, Grevstad alleges that Jesus was a "card-carrying liberal" whose message has been destroyed by Red State conservatives. Additionally, Grevstad uses a humorous tone and clever insights as he compares the lifestyle, values, and culture of Red States and Blue States.
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Terroir: The Role of Geology, Climate and Culture in the Making of French Wines
By James E. Wilson
Recommended by Alan Busacca, soil scientist, geologist. Great and entertaining, though dense. It introduces the concept of terroir to American wine lovers.
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The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn
by Diane Ravitch
Recommended by Eric Anctil, mass media and education specialist. “It looks at how generic our American curriculum is becoming,” says Anctil. “We’re so afraid of offending anyone, we’re taking all the good stuff out.”
