This is the best book of Chihuly works that I have seen. (I will assume some familiarity with the work of Dale Chihuly). Not only are the photos taken of my favourite Chihuly glassworks (the baskets), but the photos themselves are incredible. The photographer responsible for this book is incredible. The photos give a real impression of what it is like to see Chihuly glass live (and for anyone who hasn't, it is truly stunning to see). The baskets seem to be flexible in these photos, and not frozen, lifeless glass.

The book includes a section of photos of actual baskets that inspired Chihuly. Although this section was less exciting for me, my fiancée found this part educational, it gave her an idea of what the artist had in mind when creating the glassworks. While the book is a bit expensive, when you see the size of these incredible photos, you will think it is worth it. My only complaint is that there could have been a few more photos.

I originally came accross the hardbound version of this book at the Tacoma Public Library Northwest Room while doing research for a book I am writing on the old Cascade Paper Company.

Mr Morgan did a great job on this book. It is very well researched and contains a great deal of detail not only on the St Paul and Tacoma Lumber company, but on the lives and personalities of the men who started and ran the company.

The chapters follow a natural flow of history and are emensely enhanced with lots of old photographs of the company and the Tacoma area.

Whether you are doing research on Tacoma, the lumber industry or you just like reading about history, this is a northwest classic. I intend to order my own copy and will probably read it several times.

Great job, Mr. Morgan!

It's unlikely this book will be of much interest to anyone not living in the Tacoma area. Just the same, it is a colorful portrait of the city that used to be, the dreamers and scheamers who came so close to creating the west coast's hub city from scratch. The story of Tacoma's rapid rise to prominence, and its equally swift and steady decline is not only facinating, it delivers a valuable lesson on what still happens today when civic cheerleaders go blind with optimism.

This book is a must-read if you want to amuse and/or bore your fellow Tacomans with antecdotes on street names, unusual buildings, et cetera. Perfect fodder for Tacoma's burgeoning barstool-pundit culture.

What I do not like about the book is that it focusses a little too much on the political history of the town rather than on the people who made up the population. A little time was spent on the initial Chinese American population, but more time could have been spent on those and other immigrant cultures that have historically made up the city.

Even so, it's still worth the effort. It is a fun read, and, though dated, it still kept me laughing unexpectedly over and over again.

I just loved this book. It was required to read for a History class. I couldn't put the book down. I read it in a weekend. I learned so much about Seattle, and the wild characters that help to create and establish Seattle. I never knew such people help to built Seattle.

Now I know The history behind the street names in seattle, and more about the history in Seattle that I would have never had know.

I'd love to read more books that this authors has written.

This is the consensus choice among local historians and writers for the best history of Seattle's founding, and it deserves to be. Morgan's portraits of pioneers like Doc Maynard and Arthur Denny are exhilirating and informative, and the book reads like a collection of excellent short stories rather than a dry recollection. If you are familiar with Seattle, this will change the way you look at Pioneer Square and the waterfront, but a knowledge of the city is not necessary to enjoy these stories of a city's establishment and maturation.

After many years of wanting to go there, I recently "discovered" the Olympic Peninsula while on a get-away vacation. I also heard about this book and after reading it, I have to give it a qualified thumbs up. Reading this book would have been somewhat bewildering and a little tedious before I traveled to the Olympic Peninsula. Having made the trip before reading the book gave me a basis upon which to appreciate the writing. There are some very interesting and even disturbing stories in here, from the fantastic to the bizarre and the terrible. For anyone interested in a behind the scenes look at one of the most fascinating and beautiful places in America, this book is a must-have. The writing is generally excellent and very readable and the organization is sound and chronologically logical. There are some poignant descriptions of life in earlier times and a rousing look at turn of the century logging practices. On the down side, the discourse on modern resource extraction activities is a bit long-winded and the book concludes with a rather disjointed short chapter which I am still trying to place in the larger context. Overall, a good read and of definite local interest.

The primary accomplishment of this book is its 500+ page discussion of the Washington Cascades without mention of The Mountaineers club! The first 140 pages deal with indians, immigrant trails and the Hudson's Bay Company. Nothing new here, a lot of references to Winthrop's Canoe and Saddle and a discription of Ross' trip over Cascade Pass. The next seventy pages are about the first boundry survey fron 1857 - 1862. This is the guts of the book and it is really good - vintage Beckey. It's researched from original sources and well footnoted. The next sixty or seventy pages are basically about the railroads. These stories have been told before in more detai but the recounting is interesting with an attention to the geography that is usually overlooked. (Yakima Pass?) The third part of the book is a superficial presentation of mining in the Northwest, early mountaineering on the volcanoes and the beginnings of the forest service. None of these are done particularly well and none of them have enough detail to complement the first part of the book. This section does have a thirty page section on the USGS topographers and the second boundry survey in 1901 - 1908. It was during this era that many of the first ascents in the cascades were done but the discussion is brief and clearly omits the majority of what Beckey wrote about these efforts in the CAG series. Overall I have to say that I was disappointed. I understand that the Oregon Historical Society lacked the funds to publish and held it up for a long time but I started hearing about this book in the early '90s and saw a mock-up of it's cover at their booth at bookfest in about 1995. I got very excited reading the first part of the book but ended up feeling like Fred got tired about halfway through, or that he lost interest and just glossed over everything after the boundry survey. Read Woodhouse about mining. Read Molenar and Haines or Rusk on mountaineering. Read Beckey's own Challenge of the North Cascades and the introductions and footnotes in the Cascade Alpine Guide series. Read Bates Three Fingers to get a flavor of the early forest service era - and there are probably better sources for people interested in that topic (Even Beckey's CAG intros and notes have more information that this book does.) Read Tabor & Crowder Routes and Rocks about the geology. Read Roe and Praether about the railroads (again, also covered in CAG). Read Miles Kolma Kulshan about Mt. Baker. Finally, read Carlos Schwantes. His railroad discussion and his regional history are a lot better than Beckey's. But read Beckey about the boundry survey. There's nothing else like it.