front cover of All the Leavings
All the Leavings
Laurie Easter
Oregon State University Press, 2021
In All the Leavings, Laurie Easter deftly navigates both the rugged terrain of the human heart and life on the edge of wilderness. Her contemplative, often experimental essays explore love and risk: giving birth in a rustic cabin; the destructive power of wildfires; losing friends to cancer, AIDS, suicide, and meth; encounters with birds and mountain lions; and the unthinkable potential loss of a child to illness. Drawing from a reverence for the natural world—perilous yet rich with beauty—that is deeply rooted in a wild Oregon, All the Leavings examines what it means to love, lose, and find strength in facing adversity.
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front cover of Learning to Like Muktuk
Learning to Like Muktuk
An Unlikely Explorer in Territorial Alaska
Penelope S. Easton
Oregon State University Press, 2014

front cover of Collared
Collared
Politics and Personalities in Oregon's Wolf Country
Aimee Lyn Eaton
Oregon State University Press, 2013
“Just as the humans involved in the wolf debate deserve to be seen as individuals, not stereotypes, so do the wolves. They are not the boogeyman, or storybook monsters aiming to prey upon the young and old. They aren’t cuddly pets or religious icons. They are Canis lupus. Wolves.” —from the Introduction

Teeming with the tension and passion that accompany one of North America’s most controversial apex predators, Collared tracks the events that unfolded when wolves from the reintroduced population of the northern Rocky Mountains dispersed west across state lines into Oregon.

In a forthright and personal style, Aimee Lyn Eaton takes readers from meeting rooms in the state capitol to ranching communities in the rural northeast corner of the state. Using on-the-ground inquiry, field interviews, and in-depth research, she shares the story of how wolves returned to Oregon and the repercussions of their presence in the state.

Collared: Politics and Personalities in Oregon’s Wolf Country
introduces readers to the biologists, ranchers, conservationists, state employees, and lawyers on the front lines, encouraging a deeper, multifaceted understanding of the controversial and storied presence of wolves in Oregon.
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Embracing a Western Identity
Jewish Oregonians, 1849-1950
Ellen Eisenberg
Oregon State University Press, 2015
Not all of Oregon’s pioneers were Christian farmers or bachelor prospectors. Indeed, many of the first brick buildings on Oregon’s newly platted Main Streets were built by Jewish merchants whose services were essential to town founding and growth.

In Embracing a Western Identity, Ellen Eisenberg places Jewish history in the larger context of western narratives, challenging the traditional view that the “authentic” North American Jewish experience stems from New York. The westward paths of Jewish Oregonians and their experiences of place shaped the communities, institutions, and identities they created, distinguishing them from other American Jewish communities. Eisenberg traces the Oregon Jewish experience from its pioneer beginnings in the mid-nineteenth century to the highly concentrated Portland communities of the mid-twentieth century.

Drawing on extensive archival resources at the Oregon Jewish Museum, this historical commentary explores patterns of migration and settlement, the place of Jews in the state’s ethnic landscape, their engagement in politics, the development of institutions, and their relationship to Zionism. Departing from familiar treatments of the Jewish experience, Embracing a Western Identity provides a critical look at the impact of place and opportunity upon the identities of migrants both as Oregonians and as American Jews. Readers and scholars interested in western history—religious, ethnic, expansionist, and otherwise—will enjoy Eisenberg’s accessible writing style and rich photograph collection.
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front cover of The Jewish Oregon Story, 1950-2010
The Jewish Oregon Story, 1950-2010
Ellen Eisenberg
Oregon State University Press, 2016
The Jewish Oregon Story traces the history of diverse Jewish Oregonians and their communities during a period of dramatic change. Drawing on archival sources, including a collection of over five hundred oral histories, the book explores how Jewish Oregonians both contributed to and were shaped by the “Oregon Story,” a political shift that fueled Oregon’s—and particularly Portland’s—emerging reputation for progressivism and sustainability.

Six chapters examine a community grappling with, and increasingly embracing, change—from the dramatic national shifts in women’s roles and inter-group relations to local issues such as the razing of the historic South Portland Jewish neighborhood. An original community musical, Whatever Happened to Old South Portland?, frames the creation of a new Portland Jewish identity, emerging out of the ashes of South Portland and tapping ethnic expression as an antidote to suburbanization and assimilation. A peek behind the scenes exposes the crucial role of women’s voluntarism and traces the impact of women entering the workforce and winning acceptance as equals in organizational and ritual life.

Chapters on involvement in liberal politics and advocacy for Israel explore communal engagement that reflected national trends, but, beginning in the 1980s, were increasingly shaped by emerging local progressivism. A final chapter charts recent shifts in Oregon Jewish geography, demographics, and organizational life, exploring the rebirth of smaller communities and the embrace of post-denominational Jewry, spirituality, and an ethos of environmentalism and inclusion.

The Jewish Oregon Story will be of great interest to the Jewish community in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest and will appeal broadly to all readers of American, Western, and Oregon history, particularly those interested in questions of ethnicity and identity.

Published in Cooperation with the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education
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front cover of The Last Layer of the Ocean
The Last Layer of the Ocean
Kayaking through Love and Loss on Alaska's Wild Coast
Mary Emerick
Oregon State University Press, 2021
There are five layers of the ocean, though most of us will only ever see one. The deepest layer is the midnight zone, where the only light comes from bioluminescence, created by animals who live there. In order to see, these creatures must create their own light. They move like solitary suns, encased in their own bubbles of freezing water. This is the most remote, unexplored zone on the planet. Though hostile to humans, it’s a source of rapt fascination for Mary Emerick, who would go there in a heartbeat if she could.

The year Emerick turned 38, the suicide of a stranger compelled her to uproot her life and strike out for Alaska, taking a chance on love and home. She learned how to travel in a small yellow kayak along the rugged coast, contending with gales, high seas, and bears. She pondered the different meanings of home from the perspectives of people who were born along Alaska’s coast, the first peoples who had been there for generations, newcomers who chose this place for themselves, and the many who would eventually, inevitably leave. When she married a man from another island, convinced that love would stick, she soon learned that marriage is just as difficult to navigate as the ocean.

Divided into sections detailing the main kayaking strokes, with each stroke serving as metaphor for the lives we all pass through and the tools needed to stay afloat, this eloquent memoir speaks to the human need for connection—connection to place and to our fellow travelers casting their bubbles of light in the depths.
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front cover of Lincoln and Oregon Country Politics in the Civil War Era
Lincoln and Oregon Country Politics in the Civil War Era
Richard W. Etulain
Oregon State University Press, 2013
“Once again, historian Richard Etulain has provided a scholarly, lively, and definitive look at Lincoln and the Pacific Northwest. Lincoln himself thought the ‘Far Corner’ of Oregon simply too far to become his own home, but his close ties to many friends who did migrate there remained important in both elections and war. Etulain re-creates the pioneer spirit and political fractiousness of Oregon with a keen eye for both the sweep of history and the small anecdotes that make the best history books irresistible.”
—Harold Holzer, Chairman, Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation

This cross-continental history demonstrates Abraham Lincoln’s strong connections with the Oregon Country on various political issues—Indian relations, military policies, civil and legal rights, and North-South ideological conflicts—before and during the Civil War years. Richard Etulain refutes the argument that Pacific Northwest residents were mere “spectators of disunion,” revealing instead that men and women of the Oregon Country were personally and emotionally involved in the controversial ideas and events that inflamed the United States during the fractious era. Etulain’s well-researched and clearly told story demonstrates how links between Washington, D.C., and the Oregon Country helped shape both Lincoln’s policies and Oregon politics.


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