Stewart Holbrook - high-school dropout, logger, journalist, storyteller, and historian - was one of the best-loved figures in the Pacific Northwest during the two decades preceding his death in 1964. This anthology collects two dozen of his best pieces about his adopted home, the Pacific Northwest. Holbrook believed in "lowbrow or non-stuffed shirt history." Holbrook's lowbrow Northwest ranges from British Columbia logging camps to Oregon ranches, and is peopled with fascinating characters like Liverpool Liz of the old Portland waterfront, the over-sexed prophet Joshua II of the Church of the Brides of Christ in Corvallis, and Arthur Boose, the last Wobbly paper boy. Here are stories of forgotten scandals and crimes, forest fires, floods, and other catastrophes, stories of workers, underdogs, scoundrels, dreamers, and fanatics, stories that bring the past to life.

Holy Old Mackinaw is the rough and lusty story of the American lumberjack at work and at play, from Maine to Oregon. In these modern days timber is harvested by cigarette-smoking married men, whose children go to school in buses, but for nearly three hundred years the logger was a real pioneer who ranged through the forests of many states, steel calks in his boots and ax in his fist, a plug of chew handy, who emerged at intervals into the towns to call on soft ladies and drink hard liquor.

Throughout the development of the American West, prostitution grew and flourished within the mining camps, small towns, and cities of the nineteenth-century Pacific Northwest. Whether escaping a bad home life, lured by false advertising, or seeking to subsidize their income, thousands of women chose or were forced to enter an industry where they faced segregation and persecution, fines and jailing, and battled the hazards of disease, drug addiction, physical abuse, and pregnancy. They dreamed of escape through marriage or retirement, but more often found relief only in death. An integral part of western history, the stories of these women continue to fascinate readers and captivate the minds of historians today.

Davis Country collects the best writings of H. L. Davis, one of the Northwest's premier authors and the only Oregonian to receive the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Born in southern Oregon's Umpqua Valley in 1894, Davis grew up in Antelope and The Dalles. He began as a poet, receiving the prestigious Levinson Prize at age twenty-Five. With the encouragement of H. L. Mencken, he turned to fiction, winning the Pulitzer Prize for his 1935 novel Honey in the Horn, which Mencken called the best first novel ever published in America. Full of humor and humanity, Davis's work displays a vast knowledge of Pacific Northwest history, lore, and landscape. His instinctive feel for the Northwest-the weather, trees, plants, animals, the varieties of Oregon rain, the smell of forest winds and high-desert heat-is unmatched. This volume gathers many of Davis's finest stories, essays, poems, and letters, as well as excerpts from his most famous novels. An introduction by editors Brian Booth and Glen Love, a brief autobiography, and an afterword on Davis's final, unfinished novel provide for a better understanding of this truly original Northwest voice. Book jacket.

A fascinating survey of the entire history of tall tales, folklore, and mythology in the United States from earliest times to the present, including stories and myths from the modern era that have become an essential part of contemporary popular culture. Folklore has been a part of American culture for as long as humans have inhabited North America, and increasingly formed an intrinsic part of American culture as diverse peoples from Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania arrived. In modern times, folklore and tall tales experienced a rejuvenation with the emergence of urban legends and the growing popularity of science fiction and conspiracy theories, with mass media such as comic books, television, and films contributing to the retelling of old myths. This multi-volume encyclopedia will teach readers the central myths and legends that have formed American culture since its earliest years of settlement. Its entries provide a fascinating glimpse into the collective American imagination over the past 400 years through the stories that have shaped it. Organized alphabetically, the coverage includes Native American creation myths, "tall tales" like George Washington chopping down his father's cherry tree and the adventures of "King of the Wild Frontier" Davy Crockett, through to today's "urban myths." Each entry explains the myth or legend and its importance and provides detailed information about the people and events involved. Each entry also includes a short bibliography that will direct students or interested general readers toward other sources for further investigation. Special attention is paid to African American folklore, Asian American folklore, and the folklore of other traditions that are often overlooked or marginalized in other studies of the topic.