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 261-280 of 413 items.
Living Off the Pacific Ocean Floor
Stories of a Commercial Fisherman
Oregon State University Press
In this authentic account of a seafaring life, Captain George Moskovita offers a highly personal and often humorous look at the career of a commercial fisherman. With an introduction and textual notes by Carmel Finley, an historian of science, and Mary Hunsicker, an aquatic and fisheries scientist, this book will be invaluable to fishery students and professionals interested in the biology, ecology, and history of oceans and commercial fishing. It will also have broad appeal to readers of Oregon history and maritime adventure, and anyone else who has ever stood at the western edge of the continent and wondered what life was like at sea.
Outsiders in a Promised Land
Religious Activists in Pacific Northwest History
By Dale Soden
Oregon State University Press
Outsiders in a Promised Land explores the role that religious activists have played in shaping the culture of the Pacific Northwest, particularly in Washington and Oregon, from the middle of the 19th century onward. The first book of its kind, it is destined to be an essential reference for scholars, activists, and religious leaders of all faiths.
The Color of Night
Race, Railroaders, and Murder in the Wartime West
By Max Geier
Oregon State University Press
The Color of Night will appeal to “true crime” aficionados, and to anyone interested in the history of race and labor relations, working conditions, community priorities, and attitudes toward the death penalty in the first half of the 20th century.
Wild in the Willamette
Exploring the Mid-Valley's Parks, Trails, and Natural Areas
Edited by Lorraine Anderson and Abby Phillips Metzger
Oregon State University Press
Located between the population centers of Portland and Eugene, Oregon’s Willamette Valley boasts rich opportunities for outdoor recreation that are too often overlooked. Wild in the Willamette is a guidebook to the natural treasures of the mid-Willamette Valley, extending far beyond the familiar I-5 corridor. Sprinkled with natural history sidebars and infused with essays by notable local authors, it aims to connect residents and visitors with the best hiking, biking, and paddling opportunities the mid-Valley offers.
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.
Ethnobotany of the Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians
By Patricia Whereat-Phillips; Foreword by Nancy J. Turner
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.
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.
Boundary Layer
Exploring the Genius Between Worlds
By Kem Luther
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.
Ricky's Atlas
Mapping a Land on Fire
By Judith L. Li and M. L. Herring
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.
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.
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.
Rivers of Oregon
By Tim Palmer
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.
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
Published in Cooperation with the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Science Without Frontiers
Cosmopolitanism and National Interests in the World of Learning, 1870–1940
By Robert Fox
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.
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