A solid history of the formative years of the land of Microsoft and Boeing. (2 maps)
A lively, readable history of the exploration and settlement of the Pacific Northwest.
It’s hard to imagine a more timely tale for American readers than a history of the peopling by European-Americans of the increasingly vital states at the end of the old Oregon Trail. Walker, an experienced writer of Old West history (Bear Flag Rising, 1999, etc.), is just the one to tell it. Not that this is up-to-date Western history: Walker makes no use of the recent works that have revolutionized our understanding of both the real and mythic American West. There are few women here (although Narcissa Whitman plays her worthy part); native tribes are factors in, but not agents of, historical change; neither irony nor hardship are front and center. Nevertheless, this is the best kind of conventional history-telling, in the tradition of the great 19th-century historian Francis Parkman. Walker relates the adventures of men—sailors, explorers, trailblazers, missionaries, settlers—with verve and energy. In addition to the normal cast of western characters—John Jacob Astor, Marcus Whitman, and John C. Frémont—he gives lesser known, often colorful, figures (like Robert Stuart, George Simpson, and Hall J. Kelley) their due. And, working backward—a distinctive approach—from West to East and concentrating as much on these people’s destination as on their journey there, he looks upon them as would the Indians along the trail who watched these strange people go by and wondered where they were headed and why. While what drew people to their destination differed from person to person, by the 1840s (when the Oregon Territory fell permanently to the US) all were part of a great adventure that mixed ambition, hope, war, and diplomacy.
A solid history of the formative years of the land of Microsoft and Boeing. (2 maps)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-312-86933-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2000
In another of this year's lunar memorial volumes, Lovell, commander of Apollo 13, vividly recalls that nearly disastrous moon mission in superb, measured, dramatic prose. It was to have been NASA's third lunar landing. But on April 13, 1970, almost 56 hours and 200,000 miles away from Earth, an explosion aboard the spacecraft left astronauts Lovell, Fred Haise, and John Swigert with almost no power and less than two hours' worth of oxygen. If something wasn't done, the three men would soon suffocate and the crippled craft would continue in an ``absurd, egg-shaped orbit...for millennia.'' While the world watched and waited, inescapable comparisons were drawn with the January 1967 tragedy in which Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee, and Ed White were killed in an explosion during a dress rehearsal for the first manned Apollo mission. The authors (Kluger is a contributing editor of Discover) provide a gripping version of that event and an excellent history of the whole Apollo program. Lovell had been on Apollo 8, the first manned ``trans-lunar journey,'' and his description of his initial glimpse of the moon as the spacecraft began orbit is extraordinary. But sightseeing was far from his mind when Apollo 13 went haywire. The scientists at Mission Control, those ``responsible for keeping the mechanical organism alive in a place that it really had no business being,'' put the spacecraft through a series of maneuvers that they could only hope would return the astronauts safely. Lovell and his men, meanwhile, abandoned ship, climbing into the tiny but intact lunar excursion module (LEM), where they stayed until just prior to splashdown. They then returned to the command module, jettisoned the LEM, and landed in the Pacific, shaken and ill from their ordeal. Even the hard science comes clear here. Lovell and Kluger recapture—and rekindle—our sense of awe and wonder at manned space flight. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 20, 1994
ISBN: 0-395-67029-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
An itinerant campus speaker reports back from interviews at more than 100 schools, arguing that students are not ``simply greedy or indifferent,'' as popular images suggest. Loeb (Nuclear Culture, 1982, etc.) covers a lot of ground, mixing report and essay. He begins by analyzing campus apathy: He meets apolitical students who prize individualism, call activists self-serving, fear downward mobility, lack historical perspective on the 1960s, and think their classroom life disengaged from reality. Loeb, a longtime activist himself, doesn't damn them but suggests that our larger culture encourages political complacency. He goes on, however, to explore activism, focusing on situations, not individuals. Some examples: ``Greeks for Peace'' at the University of Michigan, divestment efforts at Columbia, a tuition protest at the City University of New York. All of these efforts were launched by students inspired by a variety of stimuli: family, teachers, campus comrades, or a reaction to ``America's increasingly visible crises.'' Loeb concludes that this is a generation with a ``contingent'' future, in which small but growing numbers are trying to work for a better society. His own observations are generally astute, recognizing that today's black campus separatism has its historical precedent in the 1960s, criticizing PC-baiters but also acknowledging that identity politics privileges race and sex over class. However, he covers his ambitious topic broadly rather than deeply, failing to elucidate campus tensions over race and sex or to say much about curriculum reform—though he does observe trenchantly that the political activists he met were largely untouched by much-derided theories like deconstructionism and postmodernism. Better on big pictures than case studies, but a worthy response to Illiberal Education and other portrayals of campus life today. (First serial to Vogue, New Age, Sierra, Mother Jones; author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 17, 1994
ISBN: 0-8135-2144-0
Page Count: 510
Publisher: Rutgers Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
