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.
How the Doggerel went Digital
To me, interactivity with a book used to mean turning the pages. In a digital book it's that and more.
Insta Unfiltered, a Tech Tale
The book is especially strong on the personalities and motivation of the founders such as Kevin Systrom, an aesthete and lover of fine bourbon, and tech whiz Mike Krieger, who launched the photo sharing app in 2010.
America – the Past is never really Past
"What was is never over. There have been moments in our history, brief ones, where the meaning of the Civil War has seem settled. ...
Novelist Jess Walter Sets a Story in Early Spokane, Beset With Radicals
Labor is a theme, but Spokane doesn’t really have a labor force—just rootless workers who can’t drive a fair deal. Then the Wobblies come to town.
Former Mayor Norm Rice’s new Book: Bringing People Together to do What
The focus of the book is the 1989 race for mayor, which Rice won handily. The city sent a mixed message, narrowly approving the anti-busing initiative, while electing the first black mayor in a city with only 10 percent black population.
Good Counsel for Hard Times
You may think yourself rightminded when it comes to clumsy thought and slipshod reasoning, but reading him is to discover what’s slipshod and clumsy in your own thought. You don’t just learn about how “the enemy” thinks and acts, you discover how your own compromises and oversimplifications help him get away with it.
A Dog’s Take on The Lewis & Clark and on that Black Dog Depression
The book is narrated by Meriwether Lewis’ dog, Seaman, a Newfoundland. As such it is a great introduction to this important chapter in American history. And there really was a “Seaman.”
Review: ‘Caste’ Explores the Underlying Structure of Racism
The author quotes race historian George M. Fredrickson: “American laws were the main foreign precedents” for Germany becoming a “full-fledged racist regime.” What laws? U.S. miscegenation laws, also known as Blood Laws, that defined who could and could not marry.
Which Trump Books Should you Read?
It's been my lot to end up reading a number of the more prominent books about the Trump era, so I can give some advice. "Rage" (backed by 17 tape recordings of interviews with Trump) is the number-one enduring read.
