Blog

As Pride Month comes to a close, author Michael Helquist reports on some hometown pride that was a long time coming.

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In his new book, Words Marked by Place: Local Histories in Central Oregon, Jarold Ramsey interrogates what “local history” is and how it is related to mainstream academic history. Through both theory and example, he presents a chronological collection of key episodes as well as the colorful but little-known events in central Oregon history, from nineteenth-century exploration to the railroading and homesteading era to the era of community-building and development that followed. Ramsey briefly discusses his philosophy of looking at history through a “zoom lens” below.

As a young man during the era of unprecedented social and political upheaval that was America in the late 1960s, Malcolm Terence, author of Beginner’s Luck: Dispatches from the Klamath Mountains, desired a more active role in the world than his job at the Los Angeles Times was providing him. He left his journalism job in search of activism and adventure that culminated in his living at Black Bear Ranch, a commune in a remote corner of the Klamath Mountains. His memoir, Beginner’s Luck, chronicles his life as a journalist, hippie, communard, timber worker, and environmentalist. Below, Terence shares how his search for activism and adventure began.

In her first full-length work of fiction titled All Coyote’s Children, Bette Lynch Husted explores some of the questions that have plagued her all her life about living in America and the implications of being an American non-Native inhabiting this land. Through lyrical prose, Husted crafts a story that considers the complex life of a white family living on a ranch surrounded by the Umatilla Indian Reservation. She weaves an unforgettable tale of cultures and families caught in the inescapable web of who they are and what they have inherited. Today, Husted shares how she has grappled with these issues through writing and considers some of the events and environments that resulted in this remarkable novel.

When R. Gregory Nokes began his research for The Troubled Life of Peter Burnett: Oregon Pioneer and First Governor of California - the first book-length biography of Peter Hardeman Burnett - he hoped to provide insight into the oftentimes illogical behavior of this influential, though not well remembered, historical figure. Peter Burnett’s resume is quite impressive: he helped organize the first wagon train to the Oregon Country, served on Oregon’s first elected government, was Oregon’s first supreme court judge, opened a wagon road from Oregon to California, helped develop the city of Sacramento, and was elected the first U.S. governor of California. But, with the exception of the wagon road to California, he did not excel in any of these roles. In order to provide Burnett’s perspective on his decision-making and failures, Nokes embarked on a lengthy journey to locate Burnett's personal correspondence. He describes this journey below.

New author Mehana Blaich Vaughan explores resilience, community, stewardship, responsibility, and sense of home in her book, Kaiāulu: Gathering Tides. Just as Kauaʻi’s unique and colorful rivers and streams flow into the stunning Pacific Ocean, Vaughan’s interviews with more than sixty Hawaiian elders, leaders, and fishermen and women gather together with clear and vibrant prose. Vaughan's book is a deeply personal tribute to a community based not on ownership, but reciprocity, responsibility, and caring for the places that shape and sustain us. Below she shares an example of the resilience of this community – Kaiāulu – in the face of natural disaster.

Science and narrative, research and anecdote, objectivity and passion, all brilliantly coalesce in Eric Wagner’s new book Penguins in the Desert. Wagner depicts some of the most pressing environmental and biological questions facing us today through the lens of the largest penguin colony in the world outside of Antarctica. His accessible and charismatic prose takes readers into the desert of Punta Tombo alongside renowned scientist Dee Boersma to study penguins and chronicle scientists in the field. Below he provides candid insight into the process of drafting a book as captivating as the penguins he studies.

As many people on the West Coast celebrate the de facto marijuana holiday, 420, today, the OSU Press celebrates the six-month release of Nick Johnson’s Grass Roots: A History of Cannabis in the American West. In its storied history as a countercultural icon, weed has traditionally been associated with a hippie lifestyle, and more recently with the hipster movement; so it might come as a surprise that the current growth and cultivation of the cannabis plant is incredibly damaging to the environment. In Grass Roots, Johnson’s intoxicating prose takes readers on a trip through the history of cannabis, outlining the environmental degradation that came about thanks to federal marijuana prohibition and highlighting the current efforts to make the marijuana industry more sustainable. To ignite your appetites, below is an excerpt from the book’s introduction, “Grass is Not Greener.”

In Dionisia Morales’s debut essay collection, Homing Instincts, she contemplates the particularly relevant, and hard to define, meaning of home. As issues of migration and social integration play out on national and international scales, Morales provides a personal lens through which readers can appreciate that at one time or another we have all been in the process of arriving. In today’s blog post, Morales offers a brief excerpt from her opening essay, “The Newcomers,” and articulates some of the questions and ideas that were the catalyst for Homing Instincts.