News Article

Author Jack Nisbet will discuss his ongoing attraction to the species and landmarks he wrote about in “Visible Bones: Journeys Across Time in the Columbia River Country,” (2003; Sasquatch Press) in a lecture at Gonzaga University at 6 p.m., Tuesday, Nov. 4 in the Cataldo Hall Globe Room.

The lecture, which is free and open to the public, is titled “Moving Water: Visible Bones Five Years Downstream,” a reference to his collection of essays about the Columbia River Basin that make up his “Visible Bones” book, and what he has learned about them since that book was published.

The lecture is part of an ongoing series of events and lectures devoted to the campus theme of water this year. Nisbet has authored several books about the natural and human history of the Pacific Northwest. He has written two books about David Thompson’s exploration of the area, “The Mapmaker’s Eye: David Thompson on the Columbia Plateau” (2005; Washington State University Press) and “Sources of the River: Tracking David Thompson across Western North America” (1994; Sasquatch Press).
Nisbet also wrote the book to be published in Fall 2009 titled, “The Collector: David Douglas and the Naming of the Northwest.”

Erik Schmidt, assistant professor of history at Gonzaga, said Nisbet’s writing integrates the human and natural history of the Pacific Northwest. Among Nisbet’s primary interests are how the landscape and natural history have influenced various events in the region’s history and how the landscape of the Northwest has changed as a result of events such as exploration and settlement.

The talk is sponsored by Gonzaga’s Thematic Programming Committee. For more information, contact Schmidt at (509) 313-5975 or via e-mail.