WSU Press Fall 2020 Catalog
WSU Press
Our newest catalog will be in the mail soon! You can download the PDF here, or check out our New Releases page to see our forthcoming titles.
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Our newest catalog will be in the mail soon! You can download the PDF here, or check out our New Releases page to see our forthcoming titles.
To honor our health care professionals and other essential frontline workers during this trying time, we are posting a chapter from Rugged Mercy, about a western frontier doctor who exemplified rugged courage and devoted compassion, and who—like our modern heroes—risked his own life on multiple occasions. We hope you enjoy reading.
The photo above, taken in the early 1900s, shows Dr. Wright in his office.
MoreThank you for your business. We deeply appreciate our customers! First and foremost, we hope you are all staying well during these difficult circumstances. Our warehouse is right across the hall from our offices, so although our front office is closed and we have mostly transitioned to working remotely, we are still processing and shipping orders twice a week as we normally do.
We also appreciate your support of the local independent bookstores who are so important to our success. If your store doesn’t have an online option, you can check out bookshop.org, a new online bookstore with a mission to financially support independent bookstores and give back to the book community. Affiliate bookstores earn 25% direct commission for any sales they generate on the site. For non-affiliate bookstore sales, 10% goes to an overall earnings pool that is evenly divided and distributed to stores every six months.
Thanks again and keep on reading!
Maybe we are a morose bunch, but current events aroused our curiosity about a past pandemic that visited Seattle in 1918. For those of you with similar tendencies, here is Chapter 16 from our 2003 book, Eccentric Seattle, by J. Kingston Pierce. We hope you all stay safe and healthy!
Above: Seattle policemen in December 1918, wearing masks made by the Red Cross.
MoreOne of the most exciting aspects of publishing history books is discovering unexpected connections. Not long ago, we had one right in our office. Our staff members were assigning covers and discussing our new season’s titles when one of our designers offered a surprising revelation. Our list included a book about the Minidoka War Relocation Center called, An Eye for Injustice. Some time ago, members of his family had purchased a lot from a Spokane estate sale, and inside one box he came across a set of old letters that detailed facets of a poignant story—one very similar to experiences the book portrayed.
MoreIt is likely no surprise that we have piles and shelves of WSU Press books all over our offices. So why this stack of clearly older titles we didn’t publish?
It all started with a manuscript submission from Wenatchee Valley College English professor Peter Donahue, just published as Salmon Eaters to Sagebrushers: Washington’s Lost Literary Legacy. A hybrid of literary criticism, history, and biography, the volume examines Washington State novels, memoirs, and poetry from the late 1800s to the mid-1960s, pairing reappraisals of more than forty works with short excerpts and author profiles.
MoreResidents of Seattle and Central Puget Sound are familiar with Sound Transit as the agency behind their multi-billion dollar light rail train network. Without commuter trains, the growing region of more than three million would suffocate under congestion. Yet in its beginning phase, the public transportation organization confronted one controversy after another and teetered on the verge of collapse. Back on Track: Sound Transit’s Fight to Save Light Rail, recently published by Washington State University (WSU) Press, is an inside look at those early days and how WSU graduate and new CEO Joni Earl, despite having no transit experience, pulled them from the brink of closure.
MoreWashington State University (WSU) Press has named Linda Bathgate as editor-in-chief starting September 3, 2019. Replacing Robert A. Clark, who retired in January, 2019, Bathgate comes to WSU Press after working for the University Press of Florida (UPF) in Gainesville, Florida, where she was Deputy Director and Editor-in-Chief. She has extensive editorial experience, including book and journal acquisitions, development, writing, technical editing, and project coordination. At UPF, she acquired and developed trade and academic resources, including scholarly monographs in space history, gardening, and natural history. She also managed an acquisitions team with annual revenues of over $2 million and facilitated the expansion of their journals program from two to ten. Prior to her time at UPF, she served on the editorial staff at several publishing companies, including Routledge/Taylor & Francis, LLC, and John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Bathgate holds an MS in Publishing from New York’s Pace University, where she was also an Adjunct Professor, and a BA in Literature from the University of California at San Diego. WSU Press Director Edward Sala is pleased with the search results. “Linda’s outstanding accomplishments and experience in growing scholarly and trade publishing programs will be a tremendous asset to WSU Press as we continue to build on our established list of award-winning books and journals,” he said. A nonprofit academic publisher associated with Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, WSU Press concentrates on telling unique, focused stories of the Northwest.
Some families are full of storytellers, and Robert Wright was fortunate to grow up in such a clan. As a young boy, he eagerly absorbed his physician grandfather’s thrilling tales about medical practice on the frontier West—of performing operations by lantern light and braving avalanches while traveling to remote patients by dogsled. He asked question after question about sights, sounds, smells, emotions, and thoughts. Yet as he grew older, Wright became aware of an unspoken past. There were certain topics they never discussed. Who was the girl in the photograph on the dresser? Why hadn’t he ever met his spirited Aunt Jean, a lively part of so many of his grandfather’s anecdotes?
MoreOn the Northwest Coast in antiquity, people made an estimated 85 percent of objects entirely from wood and other plant materials that normally do not survive the ravages of time. Fortunately, wetlands, silt-laden rivers, high groundwater levels, and abundant rainfall have provided ideal conditions for long-term preservation of waterlogged wood. Although few intentionally search for wet sites, every Northwest Coast archaeologist may encounter waterlogged cultural remains on beaches and eroding riverbanks, at the bottom of an excavation trench, or even inland, away from the coast. Those who investigate such places can uncover artifacts, structures, and environmental remains that are missing from the usual reconstructions of past lifeways.
MoreA thoughtful reader recently alerted WSU Press to missing pages in her copy of Sagebrush Homesteads. We narrowed the cause to a scanning failure that created a deficient printing file. Unfortunately, although older copies are intact, this means that all the copies from our most recent print run—about 500—have the issue. Please accept our deepest apologies for the error.
If you have purchased a flawed copy, please contact us for a free replacement. We will provide a new print copy, and/or a complete PDF. For your convenience, the six missing pages are available to read and view below, and as a free download (select the missing pages option under FORMAT) on the Sagebrush Homesteads product page.
MoreIn the past, many historians chose to ignore the historical significance of indigenous wives during the birth of Bellingham Bay communities, typically mentioning only the first white women. Yet these mid-1800s alliances played a crucial role, with the women serving as cultural interpreters and mediators, aiding settlement, and reducing regional conflict between native peoples and newcomers. The newest book from Washington State University Press, Candace Wellman’s Interwoven Lives: Indigenous Mothers of Salish Coast Communities, depicts the lives of four of these intermarried Native women.
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