front cover of Race and Science
Race and Science
Scientific Challenges to Racism in Modern America
Paul Farber
Oregon State University Press, 2009

front cover of For the Love of Rivers
For the Love of Rivers
A Scientist's Journey
Kurt D. Fausch
Oregon State University Press, 2015
Rivers and streams supply our water and capture our imaginations. We seek the more pristine ones to fish or paddle, to hike along or simply sit and watch. But what is it we are seeing?  What is essential about streams and rivers for us as humans?

In For the Love of Rivers, stream ecologist Kurt Fausch draws readers across the reflective surface of streams to view and ponder what is beneath, and how they work. While celebrating their beauty and mystery, he uses his many years of experience as a field biologist to explain the underlying science connecting these aquatic ecosystems to their streamside forests and the organisms found there—including humans.

For the Love of Rivers introduces readers to the life and work of Shigeru Nakano, a pioneering river ecologist who inspired other scientists around the world with his innovative research on stream-forest connections. Fausch takes readers along as he journeys to Japan, where he awakens to an unfamiliar culture, to Nakano, and his research.

Nakano’s life was abruptly ended in a tragic field accident, and his death was deeply mourned. Fausch joins Japanese and American colleagues to continue Nakano’s research legacy, learn everything they can about the effects that humans have on rivers, fish, and their intricate links with riparian zones, and share this knowledge with others.

More than a book about stream ecology, For the Love of Rivers is a celebration of the interconnectedness of life. It is an authoritative and accessible look at the science of rivers and streams, but it also ponders the larger questions of why rivers are important to humans, why it is in our nature to want to be near them, and what we can do now to ensure the future of these essential ecosystems.
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front cover of Wild Delicate Seconds
Wild Delicate Seconds
29 Wildlife Encounters
Charles Finn
Oregon State University Press, 2012

In Wild Delicate Seconds, Charles Finn captures twenty-nine chance encounters with the everyday—and not so everyday—animals, birds, and insects of North America.

There are no maulings or fantastic escapes in Finn's narratives—only stillness and attentiveness to beauty. With profundity, humor,  and compassion, Finn pays homage to the creatures we share our  world with —from black bears to bumble bees, mountain lions to muskrats—and, in doing so, touches on what it means to be human.
 

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front cover of Facing the World
Facing the World
Defense Spending and International Trade in the Pacific Northwest Since World War II
Christopher P. Foss
Oregon State University Press, 2020
Before the Second World War, the states of Washington and Oregon were thinly populated economic backwaters of the United States. Even the major cities of Portland and Seattle were dependent on agricultural industries, especially timber, for their economic health. That all changed during World War II and the Cold War.

By the dawn of the twenty-first century, the Pacific Northwest boasted a more diversified economy. Beer, tourism, and high tech moved in alongside timber and wheat as the region’s mainstay industries. In Washington, especially, a Cold War–driven military and national security state set up shop as an economic behemoth even as debates over the costs and consequences of the new Atomic Age raged.

Facing the World highlights these changes, as well as the politicians, business leaders, and ordinary people who helped bring them about. At the center of the story, Senators Henry Jackson, Wayne Morse, Slade Gorton, and Mark Hatfield; Congressman Tom Foley; and Governor Vic Atiyeh worked diligently for a generation to transform the region from insular and backward to cosmopolitan and forward-looking. Aligning the region with national security and international trade policies, these politicians made the Pacific Northwest economy what it is today.

Through extensive research in congressional and federal archives, historian Christopher P. Foss vividly brings to life the discussions, conflicts, and controversies that shaped this political era. Though it wasn’t perfect, its fading legacy of leadership is a lesson for our own time. Facing the World will prove a valuable resource to historians, political scientists, and civic-minded residents of the Pacific Northwest.
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front cover of Science Without Frontiers
Science Without Frontiers
Cosmopolitanism and National Interests in the World of Learning, 1870–1940
Robert Fox
Oregon State University Press, 2016
In his long career, Robert Fox has specialized in the history of the physical sciences, particularly in France since 1700. In Science without Frontiers, he explores the discipline of science as a model for global society.
 
Fostered by international congresses and societies, scientific collaboration flourished across linguistic and national borders from the mid-nineteenth century up until, and even after, the First World War. Projects such as the universal language Esperanto and the Dewey decimal system relied on optimistic visions of the future and were fueled by dramatic improvements in communications and transportation. The Institut international de bibliographie, founded in Brussels in 1895, emerged as a center for this collaborative endeavor.
 
After the First World War, scientific internationalism met with new challenges as governments increasingly sought to control the uses of science and technology. Fox details the fate of cooperative scientific internationalism in Europe and the challenges posed to it by the rise of totalitarianism and the increasingly conflicting force of nationalism. He explores public expressions of scientific nationalism in museum exhibits and, most tellingly, in rival national pavilions at the Paris International Exposition of 1937.
 
World War II might have shattered internationalist ideals for good, but grounds for optimism remain in the successes of international organizations like UNESCO and in the potential of electronic media as a way to achieve a vision of universal access to knowledge. Science without Frontiers offers a new way to think about science and culture and its relationship to politics amid the crises of the twentieth century.
 
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front cover of Toward a Natural Forest
Toward a Natural Forest
The Forest Service in Transition (A Memoir)
Jim Furnish
Oregon State University Press, 2015
Jim Furnish joined the U.S. Forest Service in 1965, enthusiastic and naive, proud to be part of such a storied and accomplished agency. Nothing could have prepared him for the crisis that would soon rock the agency to its foundation, as a burgeoning environmental movement challenged the Forest Service’s legacy and legitimacy.

The Forest Service stumbled in responding to a wave of lawsuits from environmental groups in the late 20th Century—a phenomenon best symbolized by the spotted owl controversy that shut down logging on public forests in the Pacific Northwest in the 1990s. The agency was brought to its knees, pitted between a powerful timber industry that had been having its way with the national forests for decades, and organized environmentalists who believed public lands had been abused and deserved better stewardship.

Toward a Natural Forest offers an insider’s view of this tumultuous time in the history of the Forest Service, presenting twin tales of transformation, both within the agency and within the author’s evolving environmental consciousness. While stewarding our national forests with the best of intentions, had the Forest Service diminished their natural essence and ecological values? How could one man confront the crisis while remaining loyal to his employer?

In this revealing memoir, Furnish addresses the fundamental human drive to gain sustenance from and protect the Earth, believing that we need not destroy it in the process. Drawing on the author’s personal experience and his broad professional knowledge, Toward a Natural Forest illuminates the potential of the Forest Service to provide strong leadership in global conservation efforts. Those interested in our public lands—environmentalists, natural resource professionals, academics, and historians—will find Jim Furnish’s story deeply informed, thought-provoking, and ultimately inspiring.
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