The Story of Eugene

by Lucia W. Moore, Nina W. McCornack, Gladys W. McCready

Book by Moore, Lucia W., McCornack, Nina W., McCready, Gladys W.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

277 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1995

Reviews

[Rock · Rating 2 out of 5]

A society pages history that doesn't manage to be organized enough to give a really clear picture of how things happened and who did them, it leaves the reader with some charming images but not much sense of how Eugene's history is different or even similar to that of a thousand other American towns founded by real estate speculators and built by merchants. The exception is the section on the University of Oregon, which is ordered chronologically and has a good balance between descriptions of campus life and the events that shaped the institution. The light-hearted tone of the book is fortunate as the frequent descriptions of lovely houses and buildings "still standing" in 1948 when the book was written but now gone will sadden those of us who like our history to be present in our environments as well as written on pages.

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolute delight to read and also very descriptively written. I’ve lived in Eugene for a long time, and in this book I encountered many names I’ve heard of, but I never had a face to!

[Kyle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reads as though it was written by a committee, then increasingly hastily edited. The early chapters are fairly cohesive, but by the end inconsistent pronoun usage fought with paragraphs of meaningless names. The real useful part of this book came in the last few pages, when there were quick paragraphs that gave short biographies on all the people our streets are named for.

2 Stars for most the book. 5 stars for the biographies. 4 stars for the section on the University, which gave a pretty detailed look on the early, bipolar attitude the state took toward higher education.