Naturalist and Seattle native David Williams offers his original perspectives on the wonder and resilience of nature in and around the Northwest's greatest population center. Illustrated by hand-drawn maps, Williams's writings are interesting, intelligent, and challenging at a personal level. He approaches the notion that his beloved city, as hip and urbane as it is, remains a wild place on the Northwest landscape-in the quarried rock of the historical buildings, in the branches of a pocket-sized city park, in the twists and turns of a stream that has been abused by polluters, hedged in by...

Why does a city surrounded by water need another waterway? Find out what drove Seattle's civic leaders to pursue the dream of a Lake Washington Ship Canal for more than sixty years and what role it has played in the region's development over the past century. Historians Jennifer Ott and David B. Williams, author of Too High and Too Steep: Reshaping Seattle's Topography, explore how industry, transportation, and the very character of the city and surrounding region developed in response to the economic and environmental changes brought by Seattle's canal and locks.?