Oregon State University Press

For fifty years, Oregon State University Press has been publishing exceptional books about the Pacific Northwest—its people and landscapes, its flora and fauna, its history and cultural heritage. The Press has played a vital role in the region’s literary life, providing readers with a better understanding of what it means to be an Oregonian. Today, Oregon State University Press publishes distinguished books in several academic areas from environmental history and natural resource management to indigenous studies.

Showing 101-150 of 414 items.

Wild Migrations

Atlas of Wyoming's Ungulates

Oregon State University Press

The migrations of Wyoming’s hooved mammals—mule deer, pronghorn, elk, and moose—between their seasonal ranges are some of the longest and most noteworthy migrations on the North American continent. Wild Migrations presents the previously untold story of these migrations, combining wildlife science and cartography. Facing pages cover more than 50 migration topics, ranging from ecology to conservation and management, enriched by visually stunning graphics and maps, and an introductory essay by Emilene Ostlind.
 

  • Copyright year: 2018
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Grit and Ink

An Oregon Family’s Adventures in Newspapering, 1908–2018

Oregon State University Press

Beneath the 24/7 national news cycle and argument over “fake news,” there is a layer of journalism that communities absolutely depend upon. Grit and Ink offers a rare look inside the financial struggles and family dynamic that has kept a Pacific Northwest publishing group alive for more than a century. The newspapers of the Aldrich-Forrester-Bedford-Brown family depict the histories of towns like Pendleton, Astoria, John Day, Enterprise, and Long Beach, Washington. Written by noted historian William Willingham, Grit and Ink describes threats presented by the Ku Klux Klan, the Great Astoria Fire of 1923, the Great Depression, the Aryan Nation, the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation, the Digital Revolution, and more.

  • Copyright year: 2018
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Ellie's Strand

Exploring the Edge of the Pacific

By M. L. Herring; From an idea by Judith L. Li
Oregon State University Press
  • Copyright year: 2018
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A Deadly Wind

The 1962 Columbus Day Storm

Oregon State University Press

A Deadly Wind is a deeply researched historical account of the most powerful non-tropical windstorm to ever strike the West Coast: The Columbus Day Storm of October 12, 1962, which plowed a path of destruction from the Bay Area to British Columbia. Veteran journalist John Dodge tell stories of tragedy and heroism, loss and resilience, while drawing connections to climate science and more contemporary calamities, such as Superstorm Sandy.
 

  • Copyright year: 2018
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Sagebrush Collaboration

How Harney County Defeated the Takeover of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge

Oregon State University Press

Sagebrush Collaboration examines the militia occupation of Harney County, Oregon, and the takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 2016. The book concludes that the militants failed in their objectives in large part because Harney County’s citizens invested decades in building the capacity to collaboratively solve the very problems the militia claimed justified an anti-federal government revolution.
 

  • Copyright year: 2018
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Son of Amity

Oregon State University Press
  • Copyright year: 2018
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Beyond the Rebel Girl

Women and the Industrial Workers of the World in the Pacific Northwest, 1905-1924

Oregon State University Press

Beyond the Rebel Girl is a study of the women associated with the Industrial Workers of the World in the states of Oregon and Washington, from the time of the union’s founding in 1905 until 1924. Many women were drawn to the IWW for its radical vision and inclusionary policies. The union offered women an avenue for activism that did not focus primarily on the fight for suffrage. While female Wobblies were in favor of suffrage, they believed that organization in the workplace was the only way to true emancipation.

  • Copyright year: 2018
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Words Marked by a Place

Local Histories in Central Oregon

Oregon State University Press

Words Marked by a Place is a book of interconnected essays engaging from different angles the history and lore of Central Oregon, and reflecting on and exemplifying the theory and practice of local history.

  • Copyright year: 2018
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Beginner's Luck

Dispatches from the Klamath Mountains

Oregon State University Press

A clueless big-city guy, dropped out from newspaper work, ends up at a new hippie commune in the mountains in the late 1960s, but his luck holds. As he falls in love with the place, he moves into the local community, where people have a checkered opinion of hippies, but it’s the kind of place where people help each other out, even if they don’t always agree.
 

  • Copyright year: 2018
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The Troubled Life of Peter Burnett

Oregon Pioneer and First Governor of California

Oregon State University Press

Peter Burnett, Oregon pioneer and governor of California, had one of the most impressive resumes of any early leaders in the American West, yet failed at most of his pursuits.  A former slaveholder, he could never seem to get beyond his single-minded goal of banning blacks and other minorities from the West.
 

  • Copyright year: 2018
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All Coyote's Children

Oregon State University Press

Annie and her son Riley are devastated by the loss of Riley’s father Jack, who has disappeared into an Eastern Oregon wilderness. Together with their Native and non-Native neighbors on the Umatilla Indian Reservation, they uncover the stories that help them solve the mystery of Jack’s disappearance as they become part of this community.
 

  • Copyright year: 2018
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Kaiaulu

Gathering Tides

Oregon State University Press

This book shares stories of Hawaiian fishing families on the rural north east shore of island of Kauaʻi, a place many visit but few really see, inviting readers to think about how we all can be connected to and by place, along with the responsibilities this connection carries.  This book offers teachings for living in conscious relationships with the natural world, without letting our desire for connection devour the places we love and the communities who are their keepers.
 

  • Copyright year: 2018
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Penguins in the Desert

Oregon State University Press

Every year, hundreds of thousands of Magellanic penguins gather to breed at Punta Tombo, Argentina, along a windswept edge of the Patagonian desert, and for more than three decades, biologist Dee Boersma has joined them. Penguins in the Desert follows both the penguins and Boersma through a season of their remarkable lives. 

  • Copyright year: 2018
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Homing Instincts

Oregon State University Press

Homing Instincts is a collection of personal essays that explores the ways we define “home” at different stages of our lives. Based on pivotal moments in the author’s life in New York City and Oregon, Homing Instincts bridges the gap between where we are and the stories we tell ourselves about where we think we belong.

  • Copyright year: 2018
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Speaking for the River

Confronting Pollution on the Willamette, 1920s-1970s

Oregon State University Press

Speaking for the River is the first book-length study of Willamette River clean-up efforts from the 1920s through the 1970s. These efforts centered on a struggle between abatement advocates and the two primary polluters in the watershed, the City of Portland and the pulp and paper industry.

  • Copyright year: 2018
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Undercurrents

From Oceanographer to University President

Oregon State University Press

Undercurrents recounts the life and career of John Byrne, who started his career as a geologist for an oil company and ended his career as president of a land-grant university.  Byrne reveals the lessons he learned in the oil industry and in government as the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and how he used those lessons in leading Oregon State University as its president.

  • Copyright year: 2018
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A Primer for Computational Biology

Oregon State University Press

A Primer for Computational Biology aims to provide life scientists and students the skills necessary for research in a data-rich world. The text covers accessing and using remote servers via the command-line, writing programs and pipelines for data analysis, and provides useful vocabulary for interdisciplinary work.

  • Copyright year: 2017
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The Alternate Route

Oregon State University Press
  • Copyright year: 2017
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Native Space

Geographic Strategies to Unsettle Settler Colonialism

Oregon State University Press
  • Copyright year: 2017
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The People's School

A History of Oregon State University

Oregon State University Press
  • Copyright year: 2017
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Legible Sovereignties

Rhetoric, Representations, and Native American Museums

Oregon State University Press
  • Copyright year: 2017
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Grass Roots

A History of Cannabis in the American West

Oregon State University Press
  • Copyright year: 2017
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Eleanor Baldwin and the Woman's Point of View

New Thought Radicalism in Portland’s Progressive Era

Oregon State University Press
  • Copyright year: 2017
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Dangerous Subjects

James D. Saules and the Rise of Black Exclusion in Oregon

Oregon State University Press
  • Copyright year: 2017
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Legends of the Northern Paiute

as told by Wilson Wewa

By Wilson Wewa; Edited by James A. Gardner; Compiled by James A. Gardner; Introduction by James A. Gardner
Oregon State University Press
  • Copyright year: 2017
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Wild and Scenic Rivers

An American Legacy

Oregon State University Press
  • Copyright year: 2017
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The Salem Clique

Oregon's Founding Brothers

Oregon State University Press
  • Copyright year: 2017
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New Strategies for Wicked Problems

Science and Solutions in the 21st Century

Oregon State University Press
  • Copyright year: 2017
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My Life, by Louis Kenoyer

Reminiscences of a Grand Ronde Reservation Childhood

By Louis Kenoyer; Introduction by Henry Zenk; Translated by Jedd Schrock and Henry Zenk
Oregon State University Press
  • Copyright year: 2017
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The Only Woman in the Room

The Norma Paulus Story

Oregon State University Press
  • Copyright year: 2017
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The Long Shadows

A Global Environmental History of the Second World War

Oregon State University Press
  • Copyright year: 2017
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Kanaka Hawai'i Cartography

Hula, Navigation, and Oratory

Oregon State University Press
  • Copyright year: 2017
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Accidental Gravity

Residents, Travelers, and the Landscape of Memory

Oregon State University Press

Accidental Gravity moves from upstate New York to the contemporary western U.S., from urban and suburban places to wild lands. The essays are informative, but the focus is personal. Quetchenbach writes about urban and suburban places as well as wild lands. In the first section of the book, he focuses on suburban neighborhoods, "the places where tensions between human and animal nature, and between differing concepts of the natural world, come to the fore."  In the second section, he juxtaposes these humanized places with Yellowstone National Park, in the context of climate change and other contemporary pressures.
 

  • Copyright year: 2017
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On the Ragged Edge of Medicine

Doctoring Among the Dispossessed

Oregon State University Press
  • Copyright year: 2017
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Science Without Frontiers

Cosmopolitanism and National Interests in the World of Learning, 1870–1940

Oregon State University Press

In his long and distinguished academic career, historian Robert Fox has specialized in the modern history of physical science, particularly in France, from 1700 onward. In Science Without Frontiers, he explores the discipline of science as a model for global society, offering a new way to think about science and culture and its relationship to politics amid the crises of the twentieth century.
 

  • Copyright year: 2016
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Leaded

The Poisoning of Idaho's Silver Valley

Oregon State University Press

Leaded: The Poisoning of Idaho’s Silver Valley examines the origin, evolution, and causes of harmful environmental and human health effects caused by mining operations in Idaho’s Coeur d'Alene Mining District, the “Silver Valley,” from 1885-1981. It is a deeply researched account of one of the greatest environmental disasters in western American history. It belongs on the bookshelf of every student of environmental history, western U.S. history, mining history, environmental ethics, and environmental law.
 

  • Copyright year: 2016
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Keeping Oregon Green

Livability, Stewardship, and the Challenges of Growth, 1960–1980

Oregon State University Press

Keeping Oregon Green is a new history of the signature accomplishments of Oregon’s environmental era: the revitalization of the polluted Willamette River, the Beach Bill that preserved public access to the entire coastline, the Bottle Bill that set the national standard for reducing roadside litter, and the nation’s first comprehensive land use zoning law. Drawing on extensive archival research, source materials ranging from poetry to congressional hearings, and firmly rooted in the cultural, economic, and political history of the Pacific Northwest, Keeping Oregon Green argues that the state’s environmental legacy is not just the product of visionary leadership, but rather a complex confluence of events, trends, and personalities that could only have happened when and where it did.

  • Copyright year: 2016
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Hiking from Portland to the Coast

An Interpretive Guide to 30 Trails

Oregon State University Press

A guidebook for hikers, bikers, and equestrians, Hiking from Portland to the Coast explores the many trails and logging roads that crisscross the northern portion of Oregon’s Coast Range. Designed to showcase convenient “looped” routes, it also describes complete throughways connecting Portland to the coastal communities of Seaside and Tillamook. Each of the 30 trails described includes a backstory to help users appreciate the history and significance of the places through which they are traveling.

  • Copyright year: 2016
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Through a Green Lens

Fifty Years of Writing for Nature

Oregon State University Press

Robert Michael Pyle is the author of twenty books and hundreds of essays, stories, papers, and poems, but it is the occasional prose--the deeply personal essays that explored and indulged his immediate fascinations--that make up this selection of never-before-collected testimonies. Beginning with a 1965 cri de coeur written on mountain motel stationery, Through a Green Lens  ranges across broad territory of topic, vehicle, geography, populace, and politics, concluding with powerful forewords for two 2015 books. Pyle's half-century long view, acute and uncommonly attuned to the physical world, gives readers a remarkable window on the natural setting of our life and times.

  • Copyright year: 2016
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A Guide to Freshwater Fishes of Oregon

Oregon State University Press

This guide facilitates the identification of Oregon freshwater fishes with annotated keys and detailed color photographs and illustrations. It will be useful to professional biologists, sportsmen and anglers, and anyone curious about the freshwater fishes of Oregon.

  • Copyright year: 2016
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Where the Wind Dreams of Staying

Searching for Purpose and Place in the West

Oregon State University Press

Where the Wind Dreams of Staying is a personal memoir told through interwoven essays. Dieterle details his experiences in southeastern Washington, Utah, Nevada, Iowa, California, and Airzona. His restless search for purpose, identity, and place moves through cycles of success and failure, love and loss. He captures the emotional storms of a boy, and then a man, on a restless search for meaning in a place, or for a place with meaning.

  • Copyright year: 2016
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The Jewish Oregon Story, 1950-2010

Oregon State University Press

The Jewish Oregon Story traces the history of diverse Jewish Oregonians and their communities during a period of dramatic change. Drawing on archival sources, including a collection of over five hundred oral histories, the book explores how Jewish Oregonians both contributed to and were shaped by the “Oregon Story,” a political shift that fueled Oregon’s—and particularly Portland’s—emerging reputation for progressivism and sustainability.

Published in Cooperation with the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education

  • Copyright year: 2016
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Rivers of Oregon

Oregon State University Press


Rivers of Oregon captures the beauty and the intrinsic qualities of the state’s irresistible riverscapes like no other book has done. From the underwater view and from the refuge of riparian forests, from the seat of a canoe or raft and from distant mountain summits, readers will gain new perspectives on the extraordinary features that provide us with water, with life, and with scenes whose loss would leave us deeply impoverished.

  • Copyright year: 2016
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A Naturalist's Guide to the Hidden World of Pacific Northwest Dunes

Oregon State University Press

The Pacific dunes provide a unique habitat for plants, animals, and insects, and anyone who walks along the coast will want to have this illustrated reference handy. While written for the educated public, comprehensive data for biologists studying dune ecology are also included. This guide to exploring the dunes is detailed enough to be used by biologists and ecologists, accessible enough to serve as a field guide to hikers and outdoor enthusiasts. A Naturalist’s Guide to the Pacific Dunes belongs on every beach house bookshelf from California to Canada.

  • Copyright year: 2016
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A Week in Yellowstone's Thorofare

A Journey Through the Remotest Place

Oregon State University Press

The remotest place in the country, outside of Alaska, is a region in Yellowstone National Park ironically named the Thorofare, for its historic role as a route traversed by fur trappers. A Week in Yellowstone’s Thorofare is a history and celebration of this wild place, set within a week-long expedition that the author took with three friends in 2014.

  • Copyright year: 2016
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Ricky's Atlas

Mapping a Land on Fire

Oregon State University Press

On a visit to his uncle’s ranch in eastern Oregon, Ricky Zamora brings his curiosity and love of map-making to the arid landscapes east of the Cascades Mountains.  He arrives during a wild thunderstorm, and watches his family and their neighbors scramble to deal with a wildfire that grew from a spark of lightning. Joined by his friend Ellie, he sees how plants, animals, and people adjust to life with wildfires.  Designed for upper elementary kids, this sequel to the bestselling Ellie’s Log is based on actual historical, physical and ecological data about the region.

  • Copyright year: 2016
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Boundary Layer

Exploring the Genius Between Worlds

Oregon State University Press

In atmospheric science, a boundary layer is where the ground comes into contact with the air. In the Pacific Northwest, this boundary layer teems with lichens, mosses, ferns, fungi, and diminutive plants. It’s a universe in miniature, an unexplored territory that author Kem Luther calls the stegnon, the terrestrial equivalent of oceanic plankton. In Boundary Layer, Luther takes a voyage of discovery through the stegnon, exploring the life forms that thrive there and introducing readers to the scientists who study them.

  • Copyright year: 2016
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Holy Moli

Albatross and Other Ancestors

Oregon State University Press

Albatross live long. They spend the majority of their years airborne, gliding across vast oceans. In nesting season, they rack up inconceivable mileage to feed their chicks waiting on the islands of the Hawaiian archipelago. When Hob Osterlund happened upon a few courting albatross in Kauai, in 1979, she embarked on a personal journey that introduced her to the Hawaiian concept of ?aumakua— spiritual ancestors who occupy the physical forms of animals. This is the story of how the albatross – or Moli - guided Hob on her journey, back to the origin of a bargain she struck as a child.

  • Copyright year: 2016
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Ethnobotany of the Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians

Oregon State University Press

Very little has been published until now on the ethnobotany of western Oregon indigenous peoples.  Ethnobotany of the Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians documents the use of plants by these closely-related coastal tribes, covering a geographical area that extends roughly from Cape Perpetua on the central coast, south to the Coquille River, and from the Coast Range west to the Pacific shore, with a focus on native plants and their traditional uses.

  • Copyright year: 2016
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Reporting the Oregon Story

How Activists and Visionaries Transformed a State

Oregon State University Press

Oregon entered a new era in 1964 with the election of Tom McCall as Secretary of State and Bob Straub as State Treasurer.  Their political rivalry formed the backdrop for two of Oregon’s most transformative decades, as they successively fought for, lost, and won the governorship. Veteran Oregon journalist Floyd McKay had a front-row seat. As a political reporter for The Oregon Statesman in Salem, and then as news analyst for KGW-TV in Portland, McKay was known for asking tough questions and pulling no punches. His reporting and commentaries ranged from analysis of the “Tom and Bob” rivalry, to the Vietnam War’s impact on Senators Wayne Morse and Mark Hatfield and the emergence of a new generation of Portland activists in the 1970s. Covering the period from 1964 to 1986, McKay remembers the action, the players and the consequences, in this compelling and personal account.

  • Copyright year: 2016
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