Swedish Roots, Oregon Lives: An Oral History Project by Lars Nordstrom

Abstract

Reviews  How To Read the American West: A Field Guide by William Wyckoff University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2014. 384 pages. Illustrations, photographs, maps, index. $44.95 paper. If you like to travel the American West, put this book on your holiday gift list. Montana State UniversitygeographyprofessorWilliamWyckoff offersanevenone-hundredquickintroductions to the different landscapes and humanscapes that characterize eleven contiguous Pacific and Rocky Mountain states.The author’s model,he says,is Roger Tory Peterson’s classic field guides to birds. He wants readers to be able to spot a landscape feature, know how it compares with other landscapes, and understand its history. These are spatial tropes — the recurring patterns that have structured western life over the past several generations. Each topic, from “Cacti and Joshua Trees” to “Mormon Country” to “Suburban Research Parks” gets several hundred words, anywhere from two to seven color photos (taken by the author), and sometimes a region-wide map. Each of eight sections opens with a six-page introduction highlighting what to look for in a particular category, and the whole book starts with a twenty-five page introduction to “navigating western landscapes.” The pictures are usually striking and sometimes stunning.The maps are clean, clear, and intriguing (the “atomic west” map is one of the best that I have seen). Wyckoff organizes the book like a James Michener epic. We start with “Nature’s Fundament ” (fault lines, dust storms, and the like) and end with “Playground” (from dude ranches to snowbird settlements). In between we visit “Farms and Ranches,”“Landscapes of Extraction,” “Places of Special Cultural Identity ,” “Connections,” “Landscapes of Federal Largesse,” and “Cities and Suburbs.” There is a lot of scholarship and observation supporting each mini essay, as evidenced by the thirteenpage bibliographic essay, with several hundred suggestions for further reading. The information spans scales, from the vast domain of sagebrush with its outposts in all eleven states to the microclimate that makes cherry orchards possible on exactly 800 acres on the eastern shore of Flathead Lake in Montana. Not surprisingly,the illustrations are drawn relatively heavily from Montana, Idaho, and Colorado, plus Arizona and southern California . I counted twenty-one Oregon photos (I may have missed one). They show Coos Bay, Newport, Klamath Falls, Eugene, Salem, Portland , the Columbia Gorge, Pendleton, Wasco County, Gilliam County, and Harney County. Oregon is a bit underrepresented (one eleventh of 416is38).Ingeneral,thebookisaboutthedry West more than the wet West — but then, the majority of the Oregon landscape is dry West. This book is fun. Its closest cousins are Grady Clay’s classic Close-Up: How To Read the American City (1973) and Dolores Hayden’s more narrowly focused Field Guide to Sprawl (2004). Some of the entries are for amusement (“Hillside Letters”) and some are completely serious, such as the homeless residents of “City Invisible” sandwiched between “Mega ConsumerLandscapes ”and“CaliforniaBungalows.” Wyckoff wears his erudition lightly, but he knows his stuff. Even the experienced western traveler will come away with new ways to look at familiar places. Carl Abbott Portland State University, Emeritus Swedish Roots, Oregon Lives: An Oral History Project by Lars Nordstrom Swedish Roots in Oregon Press, Portland, 2013. Illustrations, bibliography. 228 pages. $16.00 paper. A staggering 1.2 million people emigrated from Sweden in the years from 1854 to 1929, accord-  OHQ vol. 115, no. 3 ing to Lars Nordstrom in the introduction to his book Swedish Roots, Oregon Lives: An Oral History Project,an estimated 20 percent of that country’spopulation.Hewantedtounderstand the “push” or “pull” forces that led them to break away from their familiar world to make new lives in America and elsewhere. The best way to learn about those forces was to interview people who had undergone the experience. Twelve individuals and three couples were interviewed, and their stories are recounted in this book. They describe the difficulties they encountered and how they finally adapted or failed to adapt to their new environment. The interviews allow readers to follow along on the journey with each emigrant as he or she struggles to survive. The country they left was not the Sweden of today, with cradle-to-grave security. Nils Lindstrom, one of the twelve emigrants whose story is...