From a master of regional and natural history comes a collection of essays that reveals how the Pacific Northwest shaped the people—and how the people shaped the land
 
Drawing on a range of personal research, author Jack Nisbet engages some of the iconic images in Northwest history: from fossil riches to ice age floods; from the Willamette Meteorite to the 1872 Earthquake; from up-and-down mining cycles to steady rounds of tribal food gathering. Although the scale of time and space in some of the pieces is immense, individual characters still manage to leave their marks; even though the force of modern civilization sometimes seems overwhelming, small places and their key components somehow persevere.

These are the genesis stories of a region. In Ancient Places, Jack Nisbet uncovers touchstones across the Pacific Northwest that reveal the symbiotic relationship of people and place in this corner of the world.

These are the genesis stories of a region. In Ancient Places, Jack Nisbet uncovers touchstones across the Pacific Northwest that reveal the symbiotic relationship of people and place in this corner of the world. From rural Oregon, where a controversy brewed over the provenance and ownership of a meteor, to the great floods 15,000 years ago that shaped what is now Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, this is a compelling collection of stories about the natural and human history of our region.

I can think of no better guide to this corner of the west than the lyrical naturalist Jack Nisbet, whose latest, Ancient Places, is a fascinating read.
—Jess Walter, author of We Live in Water

Jack Nisbet peels back the landscapes of the Northwest to uncover layers of meaning in unexpected places. He encourages us to look with a new, but also eons-old, light on mountains and rivers, traditional cultures and more recent settlers.
—Peter Stark, author of Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire

Master historian Nisbet has communed with Indians, astronauts, miners, and scientists to reveal a wonderfully personal, engaging, and authoritative picture of the cultural and natural history of the Inland Northwest.
—John Marzluff, author of Welcome to Subirdia and Gifts of the Crow

In Ancient Places, author Jack Nisbet masterfully illuminates the lively chemistry that exists between people, their history, and the landscape of the Pacific Northwest.
—Marcy Houle, author of The Prairie Keepers

Through a half-dozen or more books, Jack Nisbet has shown himself to be an astute interpreter of Pacific Northwest history, an insightful naturalist and an excellent storyteller . . . [Nisbet has] a scientist’s curiosity, an artist’s eye for detail and a writer’s sense of what shapes a good story.
—The Seattle Times

Through Nisbet's eyes, there's wonder all around us . . . Aristotle nailed it: All those tiny motes do add up to something truly marvelous. 
—Inlander

Spokane-based writer Jack Nisbet is a treasure for anyone interested in the ways natural history, landscape and human cultures intersect in the Pacific Northwest.
—Cascadia Weekly

In his books about David Thompson and David Douglas, the author did extensive research into the written records left by these early settlers. In Ancient Places, Nisbet correlates modern science with the journals of early fur traders, terra-cotta brick makers, collectors, and native peoples. The reader gains knowledge of museums, plants, ants, huckleberries and lucky kicks that unravel mysteries and secrets held in the landscape.
—Mountain West News

Nisbet, a teacher, shares the rich history of the Pacific Northwest through stories on the area’s geography, topography and biology, not to mention its people and their relationship with the land. —Stanford Magazine

“Ancient Places shows Nisbet at his finest, revealing his unique abilities to see and observe, to write and articulate, and most of all to convey the essence of place.”
—Rain Taxi Reviews

"The Pacific Northwest's leading historian picks through his cabinet of literary curiosities to tell great tales about its nature and ancient peoples."
—Longitude News