"Ore­gon contains multitudes, for this is a state that spans a tremendous range of people, cultures, and terrains. It’s a range that this book seeks to illuminate, along with Ore­gon’s spectacularly beautiful and varied landscape." —Nicholas D. Kristof, from the foreword Oregon is a big, beautiful state filled with mountains, valleys, deserts, cities, towns, an amazing coastline, and much more. From the high desert of Central Oregon and the scenic vistas of the Columbia River Gorge to awe-inspiring Crater Lake and the forest and farms of the Willamette Valley, its natural wonders abound. In Oregon, My Oregon, the award-winning team of pho­tographers at Photo Cascadia have captured this mag­ical place in a stunning book that will be embraced by locals and visitors alike. Oregon, My Oregon includes a foreword by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and former Oregonian Nicholas Kristof, who captures the breadth and beauty of the state and this must-have book.

Winner, Distinguished Literary Achievement, Missouri Humanities Council, 2015 The story behind the writing of the best-selling Blue Highways is as fascinating as the epic trip itself. More than thirty years after his 14,000-mile, 38-state journey, William Least Heat-Moon reflects on the four years he spent capturing the lessons of the road trip on paper—the stops and starts in his composition process, the numerous drafts and painstaking revisions, the depressing string of rejections by publishers, the strains on his personal relationships, and many other aspects of the toil that went into writing his first book. Along the way, he traces the hard lessons learned and offers guidance to aspiring and experienced writers alike. Far from being a technical manual, Writing Blue Highways: The Story of How a Book Happenedis an adventure story of its own, a journey of “exploration into the myriad routes of heart and mind that led to the making of a book from the first sorry and now vanished paragraph to the last words that came not from a graphite pencil but from a letterpress in Tennessee.” Readers will not find a collection of abstract formulations and rules for writing; rather, this book gracefully incorporates examples from Heat-Moon’s own experience. As he explains, “This story might be termed an inadvertent autobiography written not by the traveler who took Ghost Dancing in 1978 over the byroads of America but by a man only listening to him. That blue-roadman hasn’t been seen in more than a third of a century, and over the last many weeks as I sketched in these pages, I’ve regretted his inevitable departure.” Filtered as the struggles of the “blue-roadman” are through the awareness of someone more than thirty years older with a half dozen subsequent books to his credit, the story of how his first book “happened” is all the more resonant for readers who may not themselves be writers but who are interested in the tricky balance of intuitive creation and self-discipline required for any artistic endeavor.

The inescapable beauty of the Columbia River Gorge is captured in its entirety by Oregon photographer, Larry Geddis. The stunning Columbia, the verdant cliffs, the myriads of sparkling waterfalls, plus all the enchanting vistas that make this National Scenic Area the magic emerald of the Northwest. To this backdrop, Oregon writer, Linda Stirling adds a delightful, entertaining and informative text. This book is a must for Gorge old-timers and new visitors alike.

A remarkable history of the two-centuries-old relationship between the United States and China, from the Revolutionary War to the present day From the clipper ships that ventured to Canton hauling cargos of American ginseng to swap Chinese tea, to the US warships facing off against China's growing navy in the South China Sea, from the Yankee missionaries who brought Christianity and education to China, to the Chinese who built the American West, the United States and China have always been dramatically intertwined. For more than two centuries, American and Chinese statesmen, merchants, missionaries, and adventurers, men and women, have profoundly influenced the fate of these nations. While we tend to think of America's ties with China as starting in 1972 with the visit of President Richard Nixon to China, the patterns—rapturous enchantment followed by angry disillusionment—were set in motion hundreds of years earlier. Drawing on personal letters, diaries, memoirs, government documents, and contemporary news reports, John Pomfret reconstructs the surprising, tragic, and marvelous ways Americans and Chinese have engaged with one another through the centuries. A fascinating and thrilling account, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom is also an indispensable book for understanding the most important—and often the most perplexing—relationship between any two countries in the world.