books.google.com - Twenty-first century Seattle is one of the most influential urban centers on the planet — after all, it's the city that gave the world Starbucks, Microsoft, Nirvana, and Amazon.com! Ever since it was first settled in 1851, Seattle has been a mover and a shaker in the Pacific Northwest. Discover the...http://books.google.com/books/about/Seattle_Then_and_Now.html?id=oRmLRAAACAAJ&utm_source=gb-gplus-shareSeattle Then and Now
Twenty-first century Seattle is one of the most influential urban centers on the planet — after all, it's the city that gave the world Starbucks, Microsoft, Nirvana, and Amazon.com! Ever since it was first settled in 1851, Seattle has been a mover and a shaker in the Pacific Northwest. Discover the “Emerald City” — from its pioneer days to its high-tech present — in the second edition of Seattle Then and Now. Nearly burned to the ground in 1889, Seattle was revived by the Great Northern Railroad and Klondike Gold Rush. Photos of the waterfront and skyline from 1886 show Budlong's Boathouse and the Frye Opera House before the fire; today, sleek office buildings, including the Bank of America Tower, dominate that same vista. The futuristic Space Needle is still Seattle's most recognizable symbol. Take a fascinating look at this towering 605-foot structure during construction in 1962, and see how modern it still looks.
Seattle -- as it was and as it is now. I grew up in southern California and, as a young boy, visited Seattle when an uncle and his family were living there. It was around 1962 or 1963, not long after the Space Needle was built for the World's Fair. I remember thinking of Seattle as a quiet, pleasant, luxuriantly green place. Then, in 2008, my wife and I spent two weeks in Seattle. It had erupted into a metropolis. It was surprising in its size and scope. And it was exhausting to walk. A far cry from the small place I'd visited as a boy. This is precisely the change that Benjamin Lukoff has captured -- a change in history. Seattle went from a small town with lots of aeronautical engineers to a boom town with some of the world's biggest names calling it home. Lukoff has captured the changes by showing us what it was like "then," and what it's like now, in photos and story. My wife and I were hoping for something like this to commemorate our visit to this great and significant modern city. There couldn't be anything more perfect than this. Lukoff's text has also provided one of the best short histories of Seattle we've seen: how it didn't even start as a city until 1851; how Seattle got it's name from chief Si'ahl who apparently met Captain George Vancouver and his crew, the first Europeans to explore the inland waters. This is a fun look at multiple aspects of the city, documenting its growth and change with wonderful photographs of its manifold past and present. A great reminder of Seattle -- as it was and as it is now.
Seattle native Benjamin D. Lukoff’s interest in local history was kindled at the age of six, when his father bought him pioneer granddaughter Sophie Frye Bass’s Pig-Tail Days in Old Seattle at the gift shop of the Museum of History and Industry. He studied English, Russian, and linguistics at the University of Washington, and earned his master’s in English linguistics from University College London in 2001. After serving for a number of years as music editor at Amazon.com, he became a freelance writer and editor. In addition to his own history blog, his writing has appeared in the Pacific Northwest online newspaper Crosscut.com.
