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The impetus for Larry Lipin’s most recent book, Eleanor Baldwin and the Woman’s Point of View, came while researching his previous book. Like an earworm that couldn’t be shaken, Larry kept coming back to Eleanor Baldwin’s story as a radical female journalist from Portland, Oregon. His book takes a nuanced and complicated look at Baldwin’s compelling, and at times seemingly paradoxical, intellectual journey in the previously forgotten account of Portland’s Progressive Era. Below, Larry gives us a glimpse into the contradictions within Baldwin’s character that made her so worth writing about.

Last week’s events in Charlottesville serve as a chilling reminder of why it is essential for us to tell, and keep telling, the story of slavery in America. Oregon entered the union in 1859, just before the Civil War, under a cloud of deliberate racial exclusion that casts its shadow to the present day. These books from OSU Press confront, each in its own way, the legacy of slavery in Oregon.

Breaking Chains: Slavery on Trial in Oregon by R. Gregory Nokes

What does it mean to conduct research while still being respectful to the population being studied? For Renee Pualani Louis, this was a question she faced when studying Hawai‘i cartography for her new book, Kanaka Hawai‘i Cartography: Hula, Navigation, and Oratory. Louis had signed up for classes at Aunty Margaret Machado’s Hawaiian Massage Academy, where she met Aunty Moana Kahele. She had entered the classes purely with the intent of learning lomilomi, Hawai‘i massage, but also had an interest in the place names and stories of the area surrounding them. In this excerpt from Kanaka Hawai‘i Cartography, Louis illuminates the research process she used with Aunty Moana and the relationship they built from their time together.

Henry Zenk, co-translator with Jedd Schrock of My Life, by Louis Kenoyer: Reminiscences of a Grand Ronde Reservation Childhood, is here to explain the complicated and painstaking process he and Jedd Schrock undertook when translating the reminiscences left by Louis Kenoyer. Kenoyer was the last known speaker of Tualatin Northern Kalapuya, the language in which he dictated his memoir, describing life and recounting his childhood o n the Grand Ronde Reservation in Oregon in the late 19^th Century. Zenk and Schrock were confronted with what many may have found to be an overwhelming obstacle: the linguists whose manuscripts they worked from left them with an incompletely translated text, but did not provide them with a usable description of the language’s grammar. The illustrations below sample the record left by the three linguists whose manuscripts Zenk and Schrock worked from: first, a typescript-page with interlinear and free translations; next, a field-notebook page with field translation; and finally, a field-notebook page minus translation.

New Strategies for Wicked Problems explores the various wicked problems-- problems that may be impossible or difficult to solve-- that impact our world today. Many of these issues are in need of democratic, creative, and effective solutions. Edward P. Weber, Denise Lach, and Brent S. Steel, professors here at Oregon State University, sought out the essays of other scholars in science, politics, and policy to address the challenges at hand. As a result, New Strategies for Wicked Problemsgives a wide variety of alternative solutions to many major contemporary issues. Today readers will get an inside look at one of the Pacific Northwest's bigger issues: the decline in salmon runs and the secondary issues that arise from addressing such a significant problem.

Barbara Mahoney, author of The Salem Clique: Oregon's Founding Brothers, joins us today with an introduction to her book and an excerpt taken from Chapter One, "Bring all your guns to bear and reach Oregon."

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Politics in the Oregon Territory was dominated by a group of young men known to their contemporaries and to historians as the Salem Clique. Members organized the territory's Democratic party. They served in legislative, executive and judicial offices. They were the major impetus for Oregon's pursuit to statehood, key members of its constitutional convention, and a powerful influence in keeping Oregon in the Union when the Civil War broke out. Their story is also the story of the newspapers of the era, in particular the Salem Oregon Statesman and the Portland Oregonian. The absence of a detailed study of the Clique and [my] interest in Oregon's history led [me] to research and write The Salem Clique: Oregon's Founding Brothers.

Michael Helquist, author of Marie Equi: Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions, is joining us today in celebration of Pride Month. His biography of this little-known woman received the 2016 American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book Award. Marie Equi was one of the first women physicians in the West. She received a medal from the US Army for her help to San Francisco earthquake victims in 1906. Throughout her career, she leveraged her professional status to fight for women's suffrage, workers' rights, fair pay, and reproductive rights. She was eventually imprisoned in San Quentin for her protest of World War I.

On June 4, Kirk Johnson wrote a piece in the New York Times spotlightling Oregon's racialist recent past in the wake of the fatal stabbing May 26 of two men on a Portland Max train. The victims of that attack were stabbed when they defended two teenage girls, one black and one muslim, from hate speech. R. Gregory Nokes, author of Breaking Chains: Slavery on Trial in Oregon, offers a bit of historical context in today's blog post.

Brian DoyleNovember 6, 1956 - May 27, 2017It is with tremendous sadness that we say goodbye to Brian Doyle, who died on Saturday, May 27, of a malignant brain tumor at age 60. OSU Press was privileged to publish four of Brian's books, each remarkable in its own right, but surely none more memorable than his debut novel, Mink River (2010). In prose and in person, Brian Doyle was unfailingly compassionate, generous, and kind. He was a tireless champion of the Press and a treasured friend to the Oregon literary community. We mourn the books he would have written had he lived longer, and we deeply mourn the man who brought so much light and joy to our work.