Cattle: An Informal Social History

By Laurie Winn Carlson (’04 Ph.D. History)

From the publisher: The centuries-old relationship of cows to human beings is a fascinating and complex story. It includes extremes of worship and exploitation, and in between some of the most remarkable contributions of animals to civilization. In Cattle, Laurie Winn Carlson takes an historical view of these noble and gentle beasts. In sharply drawn episodes, she shows how cattle have been a vital resource but long ignored and often neglected.

The Cayton Legacy: An
African American Family

By Richard S. Hobbs ’69, ’71
Washington State University Press, Pullman, 2002

The Cayton Legacy tells of the evolution of a remarkable African American family in Seattle and Chicago. From the Civil War to the present, generations of the Horace and Susie Cayton family helped illuminate the black and white experience in the United States and the troubled course of race relations.

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Company Towns of the Pacific Northwest

By Linda Carlson ’73

Carlson provides much insight into the rewards and trials of life in the small, isolated communities of a bygone Northwest. She paints a detailed picture of company town life in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, augmenting her narrative with a generous selection of photographs.

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Domesticating the West: The Re-creation of the Nineteenth-Century American Middle Class

By Brenda K. Jackson

In 1881 Thomas and Elizabeth Tannatt said a final goodbye to Massachusetts and the eastern seaboard and set out in search not of land but of opportunities for social and political advancement. Facing severe limitations to their goals in the depressed and disheveled post-war East, the Tannatts went west to Walla Walla, Washington Territory, to pursue their dreams of influence and status.

Domesticating the West examines the motivations of late-nineteenth-century middle-class migrants who moved west to build communities and establish themselves as leaders. The West offered new opportunities for solidly middle-class eastern families who endured hardship, uncertainty, and displacement during the Civil War, and who struggled to carve out meaningful social space in the war’s aftermath. Brenda K. Jackson places the Tannatts at the center of this movement and demonstrates how gender, class, and place affected the new migrants’ abilities to integrate into their new communities. She also shows how easterners redefined themselves as leaders of a new, moral western environment through volunteerism and political participation. While many studies of western expansion focus exclusively on the earliest pioneers, Jackson adroitly shows how later arrivals shaped the social, economic, and cultural growth of the nation.

Dynamics of Change: A History
of the Washington State Library

By Maryan E. Reynolds with Joel Davis
Washington State University Press, Pullman, 2001

The Dynamics of Change is an original and valuable history of the Washington State Library from its territorial beginnings in 1853 to the late 1990s. Reynolds provides a personal account of the library’s expansion since the 1940s, when she joined the staff. She chronicles the development of this important state public service and describes how the library facilitated the effective operation of state government. She recounts the efforts to develop a public library statewide that also serves people outside the mainstream.

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The Great Columbia Plain: A Historical Geography, 1805-1910

By D.W. Meinig

A classic first published in 1968 and re-released in 1995.

Harvest Wobblies: The Industrial Workers of the World and Agricultural Laborers in the American West, 1905-1930

By Greg Hall ’94, ’99

Examines the role of migratory farm workers in the newly industrializing agriculture of the early 20th century and explains the social and cultural history of their efforts to organize into an industrial union. The book describes, among other places in the West, agricultural labor on the Palouse.

Hawai’i’s Russian Adventure: A New Look at Old History

By Peter R. Mills ’87

In an original look at a significant chapter in the history of Hawaii, Mills explores the history of Fort Elisabeth on Kaua’i. His work overturns many popular myths and perceptions about the fort and about European and Hawaiian interaction in the first half of the 19th century, while delving into some of the central issues in historical anthropology, colonialism, and the development of global networks.

Idaho’s Bunker Hill: The Rise and Fall of a Great Mining Company, 1885-1981

By Katherine G. Aiken (’80 Ph.D. Hist.)

From the publisher: “For nearly a century, the Bunker Hill Company was one of the premier mining and smelting corporations in the United States. Located in Kellogg, Idaho, . . . Bunker Hill played a key role in the nation’s industrial development. But at the same time it was the catalyst for unprecedented labor strife and environmental desecration. And today it is one of the EPA’s largest Superfund sites. In this history, Katherine G. Aiken traces Bunker Hill’s evolution from the discovery of the mine in 1885 to the company’s closure in 1981.”

“Throughout the company's long history, Bunker Hill management was relentless in its pursuit of profit. This aggressive capitalism led to rapid expansion, technological innovation, and secure wages for employees. But success came at a price. Each time managers sought production increases, workers became restless and dissatisfied. The resulting labor-management conflicts were nothing short of legendary.”

Following closure of Bunker Hill, the company records were placed in the University of Idaho Library Special Collections. Rarely has such a complete corporate record been available for research. Taking full advantage of this resource, Aiken offers an in-depth profile that illustrates major trends in American corporate culture.

In Search of Light: The Broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow, 1938-1961

By Edward Bliss, Jr.

From the publisher: Edward R. Murrow was America's greatest broadcaster. In Search of Light is both Murrow's permanent testament and a vivid public diary of a tumultuous era. It includes his reports from the rooftops of wartime London, an American troopship in the Atlantic, a bomb run to Berlin, the gates of Buchenwald, the wedding of Queen Elizabeth, the Korean War, the civil rights revolution, the launches of the first rocket probes; his portraits of the great (Churchill, Eisenhower, Stevenson) and the lesser-known but equally heroic; his famous See It Now telecast that helped bring about McCarthy's downfall. These graceful, witty, and courageous broadcasts have set the standard for every journalist in the past half-century.

Irrigated Eden: The Making of an Agricultural Landscape in the American West

By Mark Fiege ’85
University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1999.

This gem of a book is actually about the gem state: Idaho—specifically, the Snake River Plain of southern Idaho, where farmers, engineers, lawyers, bankers, and politicians have carved an agricultural landscape out of the parched and dusty sagebrush desert. With deft prose and engaging anecdotes author Mark Fiege systematically traces the 100-year history of the creation and maintenance of the irrigation infrastructure that made farming possible in the Snake River plain.

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Lewis & Clark Lexicon of Discovery

By Alan H. Hartley

Alan H. Hartley hopes to help modern readers better understand the language of two centuries ago. The result of five years of research on the history, people, and physical world of the expedition, Lewis and Clark Lexicon of Discovery features over 1,100 entries and more than 2,000 illustrative quotations, as well as considerable background material on the English (and other languages) of the expedition. With a special emphasis on pronunciation, the volume will be exceptionally valuable to historical re-enactors.

Lewis and Clark Trail Maps: A Cartographic Reconstruction, Vol. 1

By Martin Plamondon II

By using measurements and notes in William Clark’s journals, Plamondon has created maps depicting the Corps’ route on the Missouri River from Illinois to North Dakota. The maps compare the modern beds of streams to their courses at the time of exploration. Of further interest are excerpts from the expedition diaries and an insightful essay on frontier surveying.

Lewis and Clark Trail Maps: A Cartographic Reconstruction, Vol. 2

By Martin Plamondon II

Beginning a short distance above Fort Mandan, 180 maps depict the explorers’ route in 1805–6 on the Missouri River in North Dakota and Montana, over the continental divide to Idaho, and on westward-flowing waters to the Snake-Columbia confluence in central Washington. As in Volume I, the maps contrast modern riverbeds to their courses at the time of exploration.

Lewis and Clark Trail Maps: A Cartographic Reconstruction, Vol. 3

By Martin Plamondon II

Presenting key geographic and historic features, and comparing modern beds of streams to their courses at the time of the exploration, the final volume of the series continues the cartographic reconstruction of the explorers' trek as they set out from the Snake-Columbia junction, October 18, 1805, on the final leg of their journey to the sea. It concludes when the Corps of Discovery, long given up for dead by most Americans, paddled up to the St. Louis waterfront on September 23, 1806, to a rousing reception by the local population.

Medieval Islamic Economic Thought: Filling the “Great Gap” in European Economics

Ed. S.M. Ghazanfar (’62, ’64, ’69)

This book presents a collection of papers on the origins of economic thought discovered in the writings of Islamic scholars who flourished some five centuries before the Latin Scholastics such as St. Thomas Aquinas. Although this period is known as the “Great Gap” in intellectual history, it was a time of intense intellectual activity in Islamic civilization, including socioeconomic thought. The book is a significant attempt to close this “great gap.”

The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest

By Alvin M. Josephy

A well-researched history of the years from the time of Lewis and Clark to the defeat of Chief Joseph in the late 1800s.

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.

Puget’s Sound: a Narrative History of Early Tacoma and the Southern Sound

By Murray Morgan

The story of Tacoma from Vancouver’s arrival in 1792 to the establishment of Fort Lewis in 1916. Filled with local characters and major events for the state.

Sacajawea’s People: The Lemhi Shoshones and the Salmon River Country

By John W.W. Mann

From the publisher: Mann offers a richly detailed look at the life of Sacajawea's people before their first contact with non-Natives and their subsequent confinement to a reservation in Idaho. He describes how for the past century the Lemhis have fought to preserve their political, economic, and cultural integrity. His compelling account should help to restore them to their rightful place in the American story.

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Seduced by the West: Jefferson's America and the Lure of the Land Beyond the Mississippi

By Laurie Winn Carlson (’04 Ph.D. History)

Seduced by the West views the Lewis and Clark expedition as just one of several schemes to seize Western lands from foreign powers and extend the new United States to the Pacific. And behind the scenes in most all of them was the Virginian who actually knew little about the West but under whose presidency the Louisiana Purchase was completed, Thomas Jefferson.

Soldiers of the Mountain: The Story of the 10th Mountain Division of World War II

By Norma Tadlock Johnson (’49 Home Ec.)

From the publisher: Stories of soldiers who trained on skis and learned to climb jagged peaks as part of their training caught the imagination of a country embroiled in World War II and ready for heroes. The 10th Mountain Division originally consisted of students, ranchers, and mountain men of all types. Each had to have three letters of recommendation in order to be accepted. Written for young people as well as general readers of all ages, Soldiers of the Mountain chronicles the events leading up to and beyond their famous night-time climb of the cliffs of Riva Ridge. There they surprised the Germans and made possible the ensuing conquest of Mt. Belvedere and the rest of Italy. Fighting continued through the Apennines and on to the Po Valley and the base of the Alps before the Germans surrendered. The inspiring, frightening and sometimes even humorous events that occurred shaped the lives of these men forever.

the War Years: A Chronicle
of Washington State in
World War II

By James R. Warren (’49 Speech/Comm.)

Washington State supplied crucial resources during WWII, including millions of tons of food and raw material, thousands of bomber planes, hundreds of ships, and the few pounds of plutonium that ended the war and ushered in the nuclear age. This chronicle of the war years details the state's wartime contributions and sacrifices with a month- by-month diary drawing on newspaper reports, military records, and other sources.

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Washington Territory

By Robert E. Ficken

An account of the 36 years Washington Territory waited for statehood and the railways to connect its east and west sides.

World War II on the Air: Edward R. Murrow and the Broadcasts That Riveted a Nation (book and CD)

Book by Mark Bernstein, Alex Lubertozzi; CD narrated by Dan Rather

From the publisher: The story of World War II was told first not by historians, but by reporters. And no one told that story with more impact than Edward R. Murrow and the remarkable band of reporters he assembled. World War II on the Air recounts the dramatic stories behind these extraordinary correspondents. And it lets you hear their actual broadcasts, culled from the archives and collected here—many for the first time—on audio CD, narrated by Dan Rather.