Pacific Northwest Books

Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California

Frances Dinkelspiel

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Isaias Hellman, a Jewish immigrant, arrived in California in 1859 with very little money in his pocket and his brother Herman by his side. By the time he died, he had effectively transformed Los Angeles into the modern metropolis we see today. In Frances Dinkelspiel's groundbreaking history, the early days of California are seen through the life of a man who started out as a simple store owner only to become California's premier money-man of the late 19th and early 20th century. Growing up as a young immigrant, Hellman quickly learned the use to which "capital" could be put, founding LA's Farmers and Merchants Bank, that city's first successful bank, and transforming Wells Fargo into one of the West's biggest financial institutions. He invested money with Henry Huntington to build trolley lines, lent Edward Doheney the funds that led him to discover California's huge oil reserves, and assisted Harrison Gary Otis in acquiring full ownership of the Los Angeles Times. Hellman led the building of Los Angeles' first synagogue, the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, helped start the University of Southern California and served as Regent of the University of California. His influence, however, was not limited to Los Angeles. He controlled the California wine industry for almost twenty years and, after San Francisco's devastating 1906 earthquake and fire, calmed the financial markets there in order to help that great city rise from the ashes. With all of these accomplishments, Isaias Hellman almost single-handedly brought California into modernity. Ripe with great historical events that filled the early days of California such as the Gold Rush and the San Francisco earthquake, Towers of Gold brings to life the transformation of California from a frontier society whose economy was driven by the barter of hides and exchange of gold dust into a vibrant state with the strongest economy in the nation.

San Francisco Then & Now (Then & Now)

Bill Yenne

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Welcome to America's Most Conservative City! 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 11 people found this review helpful.

I'm not using "conservative" in the current political sense, obviously. Everybody knows that John McCain has less than a snowball's chance in Gomorrah of winning in SF. I using the term conservative in its root meaning, something like "saving what was valued in the past." Preservation and conservation have the same Latin root. San Francisco has conserved more of its past than any western American city, and I could make a case, I think, for its preservation of more old-fashioned city life even than Boston or Savannah.

Except for the tiny downtown financial district, San Francisco "looks" old. The vast majority of houses, churches, and schools were built in late Victorian styles and have been lovingly restored in the same styles. Even the relatively "new" streets of the Sunset are old-fashioned now, predominantly in modest Art Deco style of the 30s and 40s. And it should be no surprise that ATT baseball park is a booking success, since it's strikingly old-style brick in construction, with a street car stop at the front gate.

San Francisco is a bastion of old-fashioned independent mom 'n pop businesses. There are thriving corner groceries and open-air once-a-week markets: independent restaurants ranging from very cheap to ultra expensive, but hardly any chain restaurants in the neighborhoods. The big chain grocery stores like Albertson's struggle to stay open in competition with locally owned stores like Andronico's, which has six stores around the whole Bay Area. There are more independent fitness centers and gyms in the neighborhoods; 24-hour fat farms are not the norm in SF. There are no malls that would be recognizable to most Americans in downtown or neighborhood San Francisco. The only malls - and very small they are by US norms - are on the suburban fringes.

Even Boston is cut up by freeways today, though the traffic is no better managed than when I lived there in the early '60s. Seattle is sliced in half by its ineeffective central freeway. San Francisco is the place that blocked freeway construction in the late '60s. Several freeways have been demolished in SF in the last ten years! Streets in SF are narrow and parking is tough, but a measure to build more parking lots was recently defeated at the polls, and any attempt to chop wider streets through SF would meet with armed resistance.

Baseball is the number one sport in SF. The fans of the football team pour in from the 'burbs to the hideous modernistic but crumbling stadium just at the edge of the city. The basketball team plays in Oakland. Any town where baseball rules has got to be considered conservative!

People in SF are conservative dressers, especially by California standards. I know women who live in LA, who carry clothes they consider drab to SF when they visit, so that they will not stick out like the inflamed rear view of a peacock's tail. One never sees "his and hers" outfits on the streets, especially not pastels. Men wear less bling per capita in SF than in Omaha. A neck chain and an open shirt would get you sneered out of polite society in SF.

Sweet old-fashioned window boxes are everywhere in SF. Street tree plantings are lovingly maintained. Open space is all-important to San Franciscans, and it's by stubborn resistance to development than SF has preserved more open space (finangling the take-over of decommissioned army, coast guard, and navy bases) than any comparably populated region of the USA. Nature is inherently conservative.

The half-mile strip of upper Haight Street, which gets the attention of the "screaming heads" on TV and radio, is not populated by San Franciscans. It's the runaway and stumble-away refuge of the discontented - the "poor abused confused missused" - of all the dysfunctional "conservative" families and communities from Modesto to Miami. They come to SF to enjoy the true conservative values of privacy, tolerance, and neighborhood friendliness.

Editorial Review:

The natives call it simply "the City." This is the story of the changing face of San Francisco, and how it has become one of the most picturesque cities in the world. Seventy modern color photographs are compared side-by-side with seventy archival photographs from the 1850s to the 1950s. While focusing on famous vistas and familiar landmarks, it also explores well-known neighborhoods. The Then and Now series includes: New York, Washington, Boston, and San Francisco.

Child of Steens Mountain

Eileen O'Keefe McVicker

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Editorial Review:

For Eileen O’Keeffe McVicker, born in 1927 to an Irish immigrant sheep rancher and a school teacher, growing up on a homestead in the West made for “a hard, happy life with layers of riches.” McVicker’s memoir of a childhood spent on the southern slope of Steens Mountain offers a real-life, personal account of eastern Oregon history.An “outdoor child” all her life, McVicker tells stories that revolve around life on the ranch—tending sheep, picking wildflowers, doing chores—and describes everyday adventures: a rabid coyote threatens the family; a wild mustang stallion tries to kill her father; a Merino buck sheep leaps through the schoolhouse window. Images of Steens country—wild sagebrush and juniper country, with rugged vistas in every direction—are woven throughout her recollections, which share the profound sense of place found in the best Western memoirs. While vividly describing ranch life, Child of Steens Mountain also explores universal issues of parenting, making a living, and growing up. The homesteading life built a child’s character and confidence, and as she reaches adulthood, McVicker, raised to be independent and responsible, ultimately defies her parents to follow her own path.McVicker’s neighbor and friend, Barbara J. Scot, edited and organized the narration while preserving the author’s distinctive voice. In an afterword, Scot reflects on McVicker’s experiences and describes the collaborative process—including a visit to the old homestead site—that led to this book. Historian Richard Etulain, whose own childhood was spent on a sheep ranch in the West, provides an overview of sheep ranching and homesteading in Steens country in his foreword.Whether intrigued by Oregon history, the high desert country, or memoirs of homesteading life, readers will be unable to resist these appealing stories of growing up amid the natural beauty of Steens country.

The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest (Vintage Departures)

Timothy Egan

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 25 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Environmentally friendly essays about the wildlife, water, land and people of the Pacific Northwest 4 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

This collection of essays by Seattle native and New York Times journalist Timothy Egan is stuffed to the gills with facts about the wildlife, water and land in and around the Pacific Northwest. Each chapter begins with a map of the area under consideration, categorized by region and topic, including: a reclusive mountaineer's conquests in the Cascade Range, local volcanos, the wild waters around "We Ain't Quaint" Astoria, the history of Seattle, apple harvesting in the Yakima Valley, the Native American Puyallups, and logging in the Siskiyous of southwestern Oregon. Although with a preachy style that would make Rachel Carlson proud, Egan is a fantastic storyteller with the ability to meld anecdotes, facts and opinion in such a way that every chapter is absolutely engaging. The Good Rain contains an abundance of information about all things environmental, and is at least as useful and relevant today as it was in 1990 when it was first published. Of his three works of nonfiction, (the others being Breaking Blue, and the National Book Award winning Lasso the Wind), this is the best.

Editorial Review:

Egan succeeds in capturing the richness and beauty of the Pacific Northwest (and it's possibly imminent destruction) with rich description, appropriately chosen and reported interviews, and visits to exactly the places I would have chosen for such a book. From manicured gardens in essentially English Vancouver, B.C., to Indian reservations in western Washington, to the proud rural communities in eastern Washington, and visits to the precipitous peaks and brooding volcanos of the Cascade Mountains, Egan captures the presences and peoples of this region more effectively than most any other book I have encountered. Highly Recommended.

Nights of Ice: True Stories of Disaster and Survival on Alaska's High Seas

Spike Walker

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Frantic and entertaining in a guilty sort of way, Nights of Ice is like Endurance on steroids. The book presents eight true stories of disaster and survival involving commercial fisherman off the coast of Alaska (said to be one of America's most dangerous occupations). Included are tales of subzero temperatures, 100 mph winds, 60-foot-high waves, boats encased in ice and capsized, men trapped underwater, and other horrors. Author Spike Walker, who interviewed many of the survivors in compiling this book, is no stranger to such tales of the high seas; he worked as a commercial fisherman off the Alaska coast and wrote about it in Working on the Edge.

Nights of Ice begins promisingly enough but unfortunately gives way to a sensationalism that cheapens the whole affair: "At that moment, Bruce Hinman's past life flashed before his very eyes. Launched instantaneously through time, he watched the events of his life play out before him...they flashed and froze there in his consciousness, in a kind of nostalgic collage of all that had once mattered in his life." As a result, there are a lot of unintentionally funny moments. Despite its problems, though, Nights of Ice is fun to read, and lovers of true-adventure stories or those interested in the dangers of the Alaskan fishing industry should enjoy it. --Andy Boynton

The Mountain Meadows Massacre

Juanita Brooks

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The slaughter revealed 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

To be honest, I was hesitant to read "Mountain Meadows Massacre" by Juanita Brooks as she was a life-long mormon and, frankly, I was skeptical that she would treat the slaughter of 120 to 150 innocent souls with anything that even remotely resembled with candor; after all, the cult has an extremely well-established history of censoring and covering up even the most benign (but certainly well deserved) criticisms of their so-called religion. I was also rather puzzled by other authors on the subject who frequently referred to Brook's book and finally decided to find out why. I certainly was not disappointed.

While Brooks' work is now dated (it was originally published in 1950) and later researchers have uncovered additional horrors regarding the brazen butchering of so many people, she actually does an outstanding job of reporting on this horrible tragedy. Considering the amount of research she did, most likely from nearly all of the documentation that was available at the time, she does an extraordinary job in piecing together the details of this infamous blight on American history. Brooks assembled a large number of resources obtained from numerous interviews, newspaper accounts written at the time, court documents, affidavits, and even Congressional records to provide a chilling account of the massacre. At first, I felt that she treated some of those responsible (especially Brigham Young) with kid gloves but as the work progressed, she eventually placed most of the blame where it belonged - I'm rather stunned (as apparently was Brooks) that she was never excommunicated by the cult. Interestingly, she goes so far as to state that she even attempted to interview, as well as tried to schedule an appointment with, David O. McKay, the cult's "president", about the massacre only to be turned away - even though she offered to stay in Salt Lake City indefinitely in order to speak with him.

Interestingly, Brooks also makes no bones about the fact that the only fanatic punished for the atrocity, John D. Lee, was clearly used as a scapegoat for the barbaric behavior of so many other members of the cult that joined him in the carnage of September 11, 1857.

Of course, not all that Brooks wrote is gold. There were times when I felt as if she tried to minimize certain things - she never fully ascribes all of the responsibility that Brigham Young deserves (although there can be no question that he was an evil participant who sacrificed his "adopted son," John D. Lee), she tries to claim that the cult members involved may have been subject to "mob psychology" or "war hysteria" who lead otherwise "ordinary" lives, and that the cult now owns that property and had previously "given their approval" to build a "monument" on the site. Disturbingly, Brooks notes that attempts to turn over even a small portion of Mountain Meadows over to the U.S. Forest service or other Federal agencies have failed. Even now, 150 years later, the cult refuses to turn over the site, refuses to put a cross on the current monument (because the cult is not Christian), and continues to deny reality by accepting responsibility for the massacre. Even Gordon B. Hinckley, their current "president" (i.e., Satan incarnate on Earth) has stated "that which we have done here [at Mountain Meadows] must never be construed as an acknowledgment on the part of the church of any complicity in the occurrences of that fateful and tragic day." Some things never change. . .

It's only too bad that Brooks never gave up her cult - how anyone could continue to support such an evil institution, especially after uncovering so much iniquity, is almost unfathomable.

Alaska's Wolf Man: The 1915-55 Wilderness Adventures of Frank Glaser

Jim Rearden

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

An Alaskan Hero 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Frank Glaser's story is a real, first hand look at Alaska in the early days. If you love Alaska and the wilderness, this is the book for you. Frank goes into the back-country and his adventures never cease as he traps, hunts, builds, explores and generally just checks things out. It amazes me that he is always so at ease, even in the most difficult of situations. He is the kind of guy you would just love to tag along with (if you could keep up with him!) His stories and accounts bring Alaska to life at a time when few tourists ventured into the back country. Jim Rearden has done a great job in compiling Frank's stories and amazing life. This book has given me a much greater appreciation of a great state...Wonderful Alaska! I doubt if anyone has ever experienced it like Frank Glaser.

If There Were 6 Stars - This Would Be It ! 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I read these type books on a regular basis & this one is head & shoulders above the rest. Captivating, interesting, & very informative. Well written & a true treasure. This should be included in the required reading for wolf relocation advocates & "Naturalists". Glasser has no axe to grind, simply tells of his adventures & experiences. I assure you, it is time & money well spent !

The Egg and I

Betty Macdonald

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 68 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Crack this "Egg"--politically correct tight-asses be damned... 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

The Egg and I is a funny, well-written, and entertaining memoir by a very intelligent, perceptive, and candid woman. "Ma and Pa Kettle" are names which still float around the pop culture ether, and this is the book that introduced them to the world...and the reason why I initially decided to read it.

MacDonald is a very talented writer, with an uncommon gift for description and evocation, but not a genius. The book is a bit choppy, anachronistic, and abrupt in places, and the segues between vignettes could have been handled more organically. And while she has a definite facility with words, some of her sentences are oddly and conspicuously dissonant.

Technically, however, you'll have no trouble digesting this morsel. But you MAY have some difficulty with MacDonald's strong and uncensored opinions, which she gives freely and does not shy away from.

WAIT! Doesn't the zeitgeist CHAMPION strong, articulate, self-assured female authors with their own points of view?

Evidently not, when what they say goes against the grain of modern "enlightened" values. Not when they are politically incorrect. MacDonald, for example, does not care for Indians. FOR SHAME! My God, how DARE she write that she does not like Indians! She mustn't say THAT...even if that is exactly what she thinks, and she thinks that based on the fact that she was CONSTANTLY exposed to them, and saw first-hand their habits, culture, and way of life.

I appreciate her honesty, myself. If tight-asses today have a problem with her, and will, consequently, not read her book, their loss. There's always a bagatelle by Kate Chopin (or Dave Eggers) available for those people.

I would not hesitate for a SECOND to recommend this book, and think it would be great for young girls to read, as they could perhaps identify strongly with MacDonald herself, whereas I just enjoyed the quality of the writing, the depiction of the Kettles, and the one huge laugh that occurs about midway through the book. (You'll know it when you come across it.)

Editorial Review:

When Betty MacDonald married a marine and moved to a small chicken farm on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, she was largely unprepared for the rigors of life in the wild. With no running water, no electricity, a house in need of constant repair, and days that ran from four in the morning to nine at night, the MacDonalds had barely a moment to put their feet up and relax. And then came the children. Yet through every trial and pitfall—through chaos and catastrophe—this indomitable family somehow, mercifully, never lost its sense of humor.

A beloved literary treasure for more than half a century, Betty MacDonald's The Egg and I is a heartwarming and uproarious account of adventure and survival on an American frontier.

Shadows on the Koyukuk: An Alaskan Native's Life a

Sidney Huntington

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

excellent! 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

interesting and written in readable and enjoyable language! fingers can't keep up with eyes while turning the pages...

Reality Alaska 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I am an Alaskan. I've read most things "Alaskan". This is the best!

not like his brother 1 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

It is sad that Sidney Huntingtons book had to be sooo different than his brother's. Jimmy Huntington's book was so much more down to earth.

Wow! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Mr. Huntington's book has painted a vivid portrait of life in this region of Alaska during the early 1900's. Being from the lower 48, I can only imagine the rigors their life required. I look forward to reading his brother's book.

Alaskan life story 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

An entertaining look at the life of a part Athabascan Indian trapper and woodsman, sharing the hard times and rewarding aspects of living in the remote backwoods of Alaska. An entertaining read.

Editorial Review:

In his dramatic autobiography, Alaskan elder Sidney Huntington, half-white, half-Athabascan, recounts his adventures, tragedies, and ultimate success.

G is for Golden: A California Alphabet

David Domeniconi

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Columnist David Domeniconi has researched close-to-home topics for his new book, G is for Golden: A California Alphabet. This is David's first children's book and it contains 40 pages of entertaining and educational facts about California.

David captures California on so many fronts - its natural history, social sciences, inventors, and even its forty-niners. On the T is for Television page, the reader discovers Philo Farnsworth, a 21-year-old farmer who gleaned the idea to transmit the world's first television picture by looking at the patterns in the rows he had plowed in his field. Another California first was the creation of the United Nations Charter, signed by representatives of 50 countries at the San Francisco Opera House in 1945. Readers of G is for Golden also learn about the world's largest find of Ice Age fossils at the La Brea Tar Pits, the 21 missions that line El Camino Real, Cesar Chavez's vision, and Rodia's Watts Towers.

The series employs a two-tiered approach to reach all students from Pre-K through 4th grade. A rhyme for each letter of the alphabet captures the attention of younger readers, while older students read the expository text on the same page and gain a richer understanding of the topic.

About the Author: David Domeniconi is a third generation San Franciscan. He graduated from San Francisco State College with a degree in Anthropology, and studied creative writing at San Francisco State College. His illustrated travel column, "Travelog," is a regular feature in the Santa Barbara News Press.

About the Illustrator: California native Pam Carroll was a finalist in Artist's Magazine's Still Life category for the past two years. Her distinct style of realism and appealing use of light creates an enchanting visual experience for children. G is for Golden is Pam's fourth children's book with Sleeping Bear Press.