Customers say
Customers find this book highly acclaimed and exceptionally engaging, with wonderful writing that makes nonfiction colorful. Moreover, the book chronicles various aspects of the Northwest’s history, and one customer notes how it combines Pacific Northwest geography and history in one volume. Additionally, they appreciate its environmental focus, with one review mentioning how it provides a new perspective on our fragile ecosystem. However, the heartbreaking story aspect receives mixed reactions from customers.
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A quick rundown of this product’s key features:
Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author Timothy Egan masterfully weaves together history, anthropology, and politics in this captivating exploration of the Pacific Northwest.
“A celebration of natural bounty, a warning that too much has been lost…Egan is a worthy spokesman for his homeland, a fluent and crafty writer.” —Los Angeles Times
Journey through lush landscapes and vibrant cultures, from breathtaking salmon fisheries to towering redwood forests. Egan’s vivid storytelling and keen observations uncover fascinating stories of the region’s inhabitants, past and present.
This immersive narrative celebrates the beauty and diversity of the Pacific Northwest while examining the impact of natural forces and human resilience. The Good Rain offers readers a rich, multifaceted portrait of this unique corner of America.
Our Top Reviews
Reviewer: mmtaco
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Required Reading for All Washingtonians
Review: Every citizen of The Great Northwest should read this exceptionally engaging book…. Timothy Egan has crafted a masterful historical narrative.
Reviewer: JuLee Rudolf
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Environmentally friendly essays about the wildlife, water, land and people of the Pacific Northwest
Review: This collection of essays by Seattle native and New York Times journalist Timothy Egan is stuffed to the gills with facts about the wildlife, water and land in and around the Pacific Northwest. Each chapter begins with a map of the area under consideration, categorized by region and topic, including: a reclusive mountaineer’s conquests in the Cascade Range, local volcanos, the wild waters around “We Ain’t Quaint” Astoria, the history of Seattle, apple harvesting in the Yakima Valley, the Native American Puyallups, and logging in the Siskiyous of southwestern Oregon. Although with a preachy style that would make Rachel Carlson proud, Egan is a fantastic storyteller with the ability to meld anecdotes, facts and opinion in such a way that every chapter is absolutely engaging. The Good Rain contains an abundance of information about all things environmental, and is at least as useful and relevant today as it was in 1990 when it was first published. Of his three works of nonfiction, (the others being Breaking Blue, and the National Book Award winning Lasso the Wind), this is the best.
Reviewer: Kurt
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Egan
Review: This was my 3rd Egan book. Like his style. I live in PNW and have been to some of the places described, and now want to see the places I have not yet.
Reviewer: EarthAdvocate
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Superbly written and researched, a must-read for anyone in WA state
Review: Timothy Egan is a Seattle-area native who has also written about the PNW for the NY Times and highly acclaimed books, such as The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America and The Worst Hard Time (latter about life in the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression). He has won numerous top awards for his talent as a writer.But this is one that anyone who lives west of the Cascades in Washington truly must read. It is a history of the area but also of the people, the land, the culture and the heart of it all. This could be dry stuff, but he’s a terrific storyteller, and his observations are insightful, incisive, interesting, and amusing. I cannot praise it highly enough.It was published in 1990, and I with he’d write another of the time since, but I doubt he will.The narrator of the audiobook version (not Egan) does a great job, too, so listen or read.
Reviewer: Michael J Helquist
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A Downpour of Insights and Appreciation of the Pacific Northwest
Review: No writer knows the Pacific Northwest outdoors and its interplay with history like writer and New York Times columnists Timothy Egan. His accounts of the environment and especially the weather of the region are based on countless forays into the woods, along the rivers, and on the mountains with occasional stops in the cities. The Good Rain is one of Egan’s early volumes, written 25 years ago. Today the regional environment is more appreciated and protected even as it is more stressed and threatened. In this time of climate warming – currently with a severe drought in the Pacific Northwest – an appreciation of rain is even more pronounced and more prevalent.The subtitle here is “Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest,” and it is apt. Egan presents much of the region’s history as it pertains to the outdoors, and he expertly describes Native Americans’ relation to their surroundings and the disruptive, damaging projects of the European and American settlers. Egan gives special notice to the region’s rivers. But there’s no stern harangue about plundering of outdoor treasures. His account of restoring the Willamette River in Oregon reveals the light touch his writing takes. He tells the impact of Oregon’s governor Tom McCall in the late 1960s who was determined to clean up the river. “Under McCall, a zealot with a droll sense of humor and an unshakable sense of destiny, the Willamette was treated like the main artery of the Pope.” And McCall was successful with a vastly cleaner river in the 1970s. Yet the grand Columbia River takes most of Egan’s interest, and everyone in the region should read his tales across time about it.Michael Helquist, MARIE EQUI: Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions
Reviewer: Paul P. Mannino
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: The Good Rain
Review: The Good Rain is an in-depth appreciation of the Northwest taken from a gifted writer who has thoroughly researched what we have lost in this extraordinary environment. There were times in reading this that I felt like I couldn’t take any more of the sadness I felt for what has been lost due to short sightedness and greed. I would encourage you to persevere and benefit from the personal commitment the author has made to understanding what has gone before us in the false hope of short term gains over the natural bounty lost.
Reviewer: Matthew Macagno
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Great book. Must read for PWN locals
Review: Well written book, definitely a must read for anyone interested in the PNW
Reviewer: Cynthia Kasin
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Good information, well written
Review: Good information, well written. It’s just a downer to read. The author finds bad things in the past as well as the present in every part of the world he describes, and offers no hope that things will ever get better. It was hard to make myself finish it.
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