This book was originally published prior to 1923, and represents a reproduction of an important historical work, maintaining the same format as the original work. While some publishers have opted to apply OCR (optical character recognition) technology to the process, we believe this leads to sub-optimal results (frequent typographical errors, strange characters and confusing formatting) and does not adequately preserve the historical character of the original artifact. We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as blurred or missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work or the scanning process itself. Despite these occasional imperfections, we have brought it back into print as part of our ongoing global book preservation commitment, providing customers with access to the best possible historical reprints. We appreciate your understanding of these occasional imperfections, and sincerely hope you enjoy seeing the book in a format as close as possible to that intended by the original publisher.
I've lived in the state of Washington for about 10 years now, and this is the first actual history of the state that I read. I picked up a hardcover version of this book at a booksale because I liked the way the cover looked and because it was cheap. When I got it home and looked more closely at it, I discovered it was published in 1941. So there was less history in it than there is in most similar books published today.
Reading a children's history book that was published 70 years ago is a fascinating experience. The text itself felt different - they don't write history books like this any more. Little attention was paid to black and Asian peoples in the state. The Native peoples were the focus of early chapters, but after Washington achieves statehood, they don't really show up again. Today's historians give much more "page-time" to minorities, so it was interesting to me to notice this. The amount of time devoted to facts and figures - i.e., how much timber was cut in 1910 vs 1930 - was much larger than it would likely be in a contemporary history. In fact, the large number of words devoted to the industrial, agricultural and overall economic output of the state was a little mind-numbing after awhile.
On the whole, however, I am glad that I read the book. I'll keep my eyes open for another, more recent, history of Washington state to supplement my newfound understanding.