On a Tour with a Cartooning Librarian
Equipped with her trusty pencil (maybe a pen now) she irreverently cartoons everything she spots during her strolls across the city: from vintage fire hydrants (would you believe we have 18,000?) to company logos stamped on the bricks that paved Seattle streets.
How a Dogged Miami Reporter Bagged Her Big Story on Jeffrey Epstein
Without Julie Brown's reporting and without her painstaking reexamination of justice gone astray, Jeffrey Epstein might still be flying high, consorting with the elite, and abusing young women.
The Case Against the Climate Change Consensus
In addition to providing a detailed critique of the climate science “consensus,” the book offers a fascinating and detailed technical explanation of how climate science actually works -- its limits, possibilities, and what this science really tells us about the future of our planet.
Beneath the Surface: New Book Explores the Hidden World of Puget Sound
"The most important animals in Puget Sound, as in the oceans at large, are neither the most obvious nor the most beloved."
The Efficiency Trap
Rendering yourself more efficient — either by implementing various productivity techniques or by driving yourself harder — won’t generally result in the feeling of having ‘enough time,’ because all else being equal, the demands will increase to offset the benefits.
Beyond Comfort: The Impacts of Air Conditioning
"When AC became available, it was concentrated in large commercial spaces where you had to spend money to stay cool. Consequently, movie theaters or shopping malls received air conditioning, while there were far fewer public spaces providing shelter from the heat. Libraries are the major exception to this."
Three Books: The Final Days of Trump
Michael Wolff: “The nature of the Trump chaos is that, beyond its immediate desires and pronouncements, there was no ability – or structure, or chain of command, or procedures or expertise, or actual person to call – to make anything happen.”
Two Thrillers About Reinventing Yourself
Both Jessie Walters’ Citizen Vince and Carolyn Kepnes’ You Love Me are categorized as thrillers, but although crimes are committed and blood is spilled, neither one really is.
Four Americas: George Packer Breaks it Down
Where does Packer see this all heading? He doesn’t see a hot civil war or secession, but quite possibly an on-going “cold” civil war. He thinks that if we are to make progress on our big challenges, patriotism cannot be neglected.
Me and the News: Chris Matthews’ Loud Proud Memoir
Matthews has written quality books, notably the perceptive "Kennedy & Nixon: The Rivalry that Shaped Postwar America." In this case, however, the author has come too close to the sun – himself. ”My Country” is laden with high press socializing with himself as central figure.
Post Alley Excerpt: Seattle Author Eric Redman’s New Mystery “Bones of Hilo”
Kawika Wong, the young Hawaiian detective who is the focus of Eric Redman’s newly published mystery “Bones of Hilo,” encounters players whose strange or extreme behavior at once creates suspicion and distractions.
Amy Klobuchar: Why we need new Anti-Monopoly Laws (and to enforce them)
She describes how she happened to write the book, beginning with a phone call that arrived shortly after she was sworn in as a new U.S. senator in 2008. A pharmacist at Children's Hospital in Minneapolis called asking for help: the price of a life-saving drug used to treat premature babies had suddenly increased astronomically in price.
Eric Redman’s New Mystery Explores Fault-Lines of Hawaiian Identity
“Bones of Hilo” brings out the personal and group conflicts arising between the preservation of Hawaiian culture and the overwhelming forces of development and tourism.
Elizabeth Warren’s New Book: Her Persistent Assault on Corruption
Warren's core insight: Big money has corrupted the republic. In her words: “This corruption has delivered untold profits to a handful of billionaires and corporations – and it may cost us our future . . . Corruption stands in the way of every single policy that would help us build a more just America. Corruption is a cancer that is eating away at our democracy.”
Facing the Mountain: Excerpt from the New Dan Brown Book
The man’s eyes had filled with tears. Dahlquist fell silent. Apparently, this was the first time he fully realized the magnitude of the price the Nisei had paid to rescue the Texans.
Humiliation to Triumph: The Japanese-American Heroes of WWII
Having put them behind guard towers, the U.S. government asked the young Japanese-American men to volunteer and fight for the country. They debated, most enlisted, and many proved to be superlative soldiers.
Four Northwest Novelists: What They Teach Us About Life and Families
As Jess Walter re-enchants Spokane (no small feat!), Karl Marlantes enchants the woods and the lives of Finns trying to establish themselves in a new land, Southwest Washington.
John Boehner: When I was Captain of CrazyTown
Even though Boehner takes occasional swipes at the Democratic left, his book is (to his credit) more a recounting of the growing extremism of his own party. And he’s not shy about naming names. The worst, in his mind (mistakenly), isn’t Trump. It’s Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, “a miserable son of a bitch.”
Debunking the Marcus Whitman Mythology
The bogus myth was used to spur settlers to come West, to raise money for struggling Whitman College, and to prompt Justice Douglas to place a Whitman statue in the U.S. Capitol (now removed).
More than a Guide Book, A Journey through Black History and a Call to...
Can understanding the U.S. Civil Rights Trail help us make sense of the present?
Street Fighter: When Nancy Reagan ran the White House
Karen Tumulty is a Washington Post columnist and was for years a hardworking reporter on the presidential campaign trail, not one of the repetitive ones you see on Cable TV. The Triumph of Nancy Reagan is her first book. It is the best treatment of the Reagan years since Lou Cannon’s President Reagan: The role of a lifetime nearly three decades ago.
How to Hand-Publish a Book: A Women’s Writers’ Group Bonds
"Writing While Masked," is well-timed, arriving during Women's History Month. The bad news is that it may be difficult to locate a copy, even though more are being printed.
Jumping the Fence: Why I Wrote a Novel after Decades as a Nonfiction Writer
As I struggled with how to do this, I channeled another one of Ivan Doig’s golden rules. “Even when you’re writing fiction, you have to get your facts right.” If your character works for the Forest Service, you better know what the chain of command is.
Tough and Caring: New Book on “Kamala’s Way”
Politicians who make it in San Francisco, know how to win. It's no coincidence that some of the nation's toughest current and former players, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Gov. Gavin Newson, former Sen. Barbara Boxer and Kamala Harris, all have San Francisco roots.
Isabel Wilkerson: Facing up to a “Culture of Cruelty”
In response to the Black Lives Matter protest movement, American historians and philosophers have been examining the tenacious roots of endemic racism in the United States and pointing to a potential model for a long-overdue reckoning: Germany’s recognition of the crimes of the Holocaust and atonement for its victims.
New Bio: Eleanor Roosevelt, the “People’s Proxy”
Family ties initially brought Eleanor to Seattle. Anna, her only daughter, and her husband John Boettiger lived and worked here after he was appointed Seattle Post-Intelligencer publisher in the mid 1930s. Anna served as the paper's Women's Page editor.
Gift of Age: Reading With Almost Perfect Clarity
I can read almost perfectly. I can walk into Proust and be more pleased in a moment than had I won a thousand awards. I can hear a pop song, "Midnight Train to Georgia," and tell my son, it must have been wonderful to write the lyrics -- "I would rather live in his world than live without him in mine."
Unforgotten: Ron Chew’s Seattle
"Home" was Chinatown International District where his parents worked -- his father as head waiter at the Hong Kong Restaurant, his mother holding down two jobs as a seamstress.
The Whitman Tragedy: Into the Land of the Cayuse, Masters of the Columbia Plateau
The book, Unsettled Ground: The Whitman Massacre and its Shifting Legacy in the American West, sheds new light on the legend-shrouded story of Marcus and Narcissa Whitman.
“Promised Land” is Arguably the Best Presidential Memoir Ever
At times the book reads like a bromance. No surprise then when, late in his first presidential year, Valerie Jarrett pulls Obama aside to tell him of the deepening dissatisfaction among senior women in the White House. Obama responded by inviting a dozen women staffers to join him over dinner and heard their complaints.
