Brazier on Speaking for the River

The Pacific Northwest Quarterly recently published a book review [1] from Hayley Brazier. As I wrote about in response to my first book review, I welcome this feedback but am also nervous, every time!

Brazier writes that whereas the book’s “detailed regional focus will be of interest to readers associated with Portland and the Pacific Northwest,” it “will also attract a broader field of historians researching urban development, pollution, and sanitation.” This is heartening, because I really endeavored to create a work that was very much grounded in a specific place, and time, and group of people, but that had broader regional, national, and even international resonance.

Brazier then commends my “use of geographic information system (GIS) technology to develop effective maps, revealing the author’s skills in both traditional archival research and the digital humanities.” I definitely appreciate this feedback. I went through many iterations of the map that appeared on p. 67, in particular, in which I georeferenced September 1934 water quality data on a map of Portland Harbor from the 1930s (which I digitized), to help illustrate how degraded water quality was. From my research through 2016, this was the first time I’d seen anything like this kind of data-driven cartographic representation in a work of environmental history. I hope to have the opportunity to do more of this in the future!

There are two critiques Brazier raises that I’d like to address.