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Connecting curious minds with uncommon, undeniably Northwest reads

True crime tale tells bizarre story of flamboyant false prophet

Psychiana leader Frank Robisnon on stage speaking before a large audience

Shortly after the 1929 stock market crash, a flamboyant false prophet and mass-marketing genius decided to reinvent himself. Utilizing $2,500 from investors, he printed 1,000 sets of Psychiana lessons (the first and only religion with a money-back guarantee), 10,000 sales letters, and placed a $400 ad in Psychology Magazine. Soon rural Moscow, Idaho, became home to one of the era’s most successful New Thought religions. Award-winning author Brandon R. Schrand’s newest book, published by Washington State University Press and titled, Psychiana Man: A Mail-Order Prophet, His Followers, and the Power of Belief in Hard Times, tells the story of Frank Bruce Robinson, his correspondence gospel promising health, wealth, and happiness to anyone who believed in the “God Power,” and his unwavering followers—from a desperate dust bowl farmer to a former heavyweight boxing champion. Despite their faith, he was not who he claimed to be. Officials investigated Robinson for mail fraud and immigration violations, eventually indicting him for falsifying information on his U.S. passport application. As Latah County’s largest private employer, his small-town trial packed the courtroom and made national headlines.

Schrand first learned about Robinson and Psychiana entirely by chance from a brief entry in a local history book. “The story was so bizarre and baffling that it seemed like bad fiction. But it wasn’t. It was all too real. The more I looked into it, the more fascinated I became,” he explains. To tell the story, Schrand drew from Robinson’s prolific writing, the Psychiana papers housed at the University of Idaho, Latah County Historical Society materials, and other primary sources. Surprisingly, in combing the archives—including more than a thousand pages of letters from and to Robinson’s students—he found no instances of anyone requesting a refund, and almost no negative feedback. Indeed, when Postal Inspector Stephen Howard Morse dispatched a form letter to Psychiana students asking for negative experiences, he received only praise and stalwart defenses of the religion and its leader.

Brandon R. Schrand is the author of The Enders Hotel: A Memoir, a 2008 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers summer selection, and Works Cited: An Alphabetical Odyssey of Mayhem and Misbehavior. His nonfiction has appeared in Sports Illustrated, Utne Reader, The Georgia Review, North American Review, and numerous other publications. A winner of the Pushcart Prize, he has also been a resident at Yaddo. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing, Nonfiction, from the University of Idaho, and an MS in American Studies from Utah State University.

Psychiana Man is paperback, 6″ x 9″, 414 pages, and lists for $24.95. It is available through bookstores nationwide, direct from WSU Press at 800-354-7360, or online at wsupress.wsu.edu. A nonprofit academic publisher associated with Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, WSU Press concentrates on telling unique, focused stories of the Northwest.

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First-hand accounts highlight value of University of Idaho’s Upward Bound Program

Teaching Native Pride cover

Based on interviews with students and staff, Teaching Native Pride: Upward Bound and the Legacy of Isabel Bond by Tony Tekaroniake Evans, offers first-hand accounts by Native people and highlights how one person can make a difference. In it, Native and non-Native voices tell the story of the federally sponsored Upward Bound program at the University of Idaho, intertwining personal anecdotes and memories with accounts of the program’s inception and goals, as well as regional Native American history and Isabel Bond’s Idaho family history. Dedicated to helping low-income and at-risk students attend college, its unique curriculum celebrated that heritage, helping Native students break cycles of poverty, isolation, and disenfranchisement, and non-Indians gain a new respect for Idaho’s first peoples.

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Thank you!

We thank you all for your support during this challenging year, and wish you wonderful holidays! We’ll be in the office through Wednesday this week, and then the university will be closed until Monday, January 4, 2021. We hope you can find extra time to read and enjoy being with friends and family!

Our 29th Annual Holiday Book Fair is going virtual!

Sign that reads WSU PRESS HOLIDAY BOOK FAIR

DATES

Now extended through December 13! Sale prices will be valid for phone and online orders throughout Holiday Book Fair timeline, December 1 – 13, 2020, but you can start your browsing now!

COUPON CODE

Use coupon code HBF2020 at checkout to receive 30% off on all titles in your order!

SALE DETAILS

The fair highlights books published throughout the year. With every $45 purchase (pre-tax), choose one free book from our FREE book selection. Simply fill out the form, or wait for us to send you an email.

If you’re nearby, you can save on shipping. Stop at the Cooper Publications Building on the Pullman campus to pick up your order between 9AM and 4PM on Thursday, December 10th, Monday, December 14th, Thursday, and December 17th, or request a convenient time. Just choose Pullman pickup when you check out, and indicate in the notes the day and time you expect to arrive.

As usual, shipping is free on orders above $50.

NEW TITLES

The fair features new titles on a variety of subjects—a natural and environmental history of Mount Rainier, how Ezra Meeker saved the Oregon Trail, how explorers and fur traders influenced Lewis and Clark, legacies the Manhattan Project left behind, Idaho’s World War II Japanese incarceration, the marketing behind early 19oos West Coast fairs, and Butch T. Cougar’s superhero ways.

EBOOKS

Also new this year is a selection of Ebooks, 30% off and available for download!

Founded in 1928 and revitalized in the 1980s, WSU Press concentrates on telling unique, focused stories about the Northwest. For information about the book fair, contact WSU Press at 509-335-7880.

To Honor Our Heroes

photo of Doc Wright sitting at a desk n his office, circa 1906

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.

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WSU Press is Open and Accepting Orders

Front door of WSU's Cooper Publicatons Building

Thank 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!

Seattle and a Past Pandemic

Uniformed policemen wearing gauze face masks stand in lines on a Seattle street.

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.

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An Unexpected Connection to World War II Japanese Incarceration

photo of envelope with censorship tape and hree page letter handwritten in Japanese

One 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.

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Surrounded by books, yet we still want more

Stack of old books including Scarlet Petticoat by Nard Jones, Island in the Sound by Hazel Heckman, Mister B. by Irving Petite, The Light on the Island by Helene Glidden, and Northwest Gateway buy Archie Binns

It 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.

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Sound Transit’s Survival Story

An oerhead view inside a Sound Transit station with people waiting to board the train

Residents 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.

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