New Books From OSU Press This Spring

 Spring is rapidly approaching and with it come new books from OSU Press. We’re excited to share previews of the ten new books being released in the coming months, all of which are available for pre-order now!

Bonnie Henderson’s The Next Tsunami: Living on a Restless Coast shares the compelling story of how scientists came to understand the Cascadian Subduction Zone—a fault line capable of producing earthquakes even larger than the 2011 Tohoku quake in Japan—and how ordinary people living in zones vulnerable to tsunamis cope with the knowledge that when the next one strikes—this year or hundreds of years from now—it is likely to be the most devastating natural disaster in the history of the United States.

Peter Laufer’s Slow News: A Manifesto for the Critical News Consumer makes a provocative plea to news consumers: “Don’t become a news junkie,” take a step back from the frenetic barrage of instant empty-calorie news that has become integrated into our daily lives to consider news both thoughtfully and thoroughly. Laufer offers twenty-eight rules—including “Trust accuracy over time” and “Know your sources”—to guide us on the gradual quest for slower, most meaningful news.

In The Nude Beach Notebook, Barbra J. Scot explores her reluctance, and longing, to reconnect with a much-loved brother, lost to alcoholism for thirty years. Scot’s long, meditative walks on the nude beach of the idyllic Sauvie Island near Portland, Oregon, and the unique individuals she encounters on the beach, as well as stories about the native people who once lived on the river, become a lens for exploring family responsibility, faith, and the importance of place as a means for exploring and interpreting one’s own story.

Justin Wadland’s meticulously researched Trying Home: The Rise and Fall of an Anarchist Utopia on Puget Sound is the fascinating true story of the rise and fall of Home, Washington—a practical experiment in anarchism. Wadland weaves his own discovery of Home into the linked narratives that explore the iconoclastic individuals who inhabited an attempt at a utopian community in the Pacific Northwest during the early 20^th century.  

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Foster Church’s new book, Turning Down the Sound: Travel Escapes in Washington’s Small Towns, guides adventurers into the engrossing small towns of Washington. With maps, photographs, and recommendations for more than thirty-five towns in all corners of the state, Turning Down the Sound vastly expands the resources available for readers and travelers keen on encountering what Church calls American tourism’s last frontier: its small towns.

In To Win the Indian Heart: Music at Chemawa Indian School, Melissa D. Parkhurst combines histories of Chemawa alumni with archival records of campus life. The book examines the prominent forms of music making at Chemawa—school band, choirs, private lessons, pageants, dance, garage bands, and powwows. Parkhurst traces the trajectory of federal Indian policy, highlighting students’ creative responses and the ways in which music reveals the inherent contradictions in the U.S. government’s assimilation practices.

Salmon Is Everything: Community-Based Theatre in the Klamath Watershed is the script of a play developed by director Theresa May to give a voice to the central spiritual and cultural role that salmon play in tribal life. It also presents essays by artists and collaborators that illuminate the process of creating and performing theatre on Native and environmental issues.

Katrina-Ann R. Kapā‘anaokalāokeola Nākoa Oliveira’s Ancestral Places: Understanding Kanaka Geographies explores the deep connections that ancestral Kānaka (Native Hawaiians) enjoyed with their environment. Oliveira’s language moves fluidly between Hawaiian and English, terms are nimbly defined, and the work of the field is embodied: geographic layers are enacted within the text, new understandings created—not just among lexica, but amidst illustrations, charts, terms, and poetry.

 An annotated translation of the extraordinary autobiography of Dr. Moisey Wolf (1922-2007), “Therefore, Choose Life...” is an important addition to the literature of Jewish experience and deepens our understanding of the human condition in the twentieth century. Wolf ’s narrative skill and evocative personal insights, combined with Judson Rosengrant’s judicious editing, annotation, and elegant translation, provide the reader with direct access to a world that has seemingly ceased to exist, yet continues to resonate and inform our own lives in powerful ways.

Field Guide to the Sedges of the Pacific Northwest: Second Edition is an illustrated guide to all 169 species, subspecies, and varieties in the genus Carex that grow in the wild in Oregon and Washington. This updated second edition includes eight additional species documented in the region since the guide was first published, along with an improved identification key, updated nomenclature and taxonomy, revised range maps, and improved illustrations.

 For more information about these titles and more please reference our spring catalog. If you'd like a print copy of the spring catalog request one by sending us an e-mail at OSUPress@oregonstate.edu.