Skid Road: An Informal Portrait of Seattle

Murray, Morgan

University of Washington Press

Informal and picturesque, Skid Road is the story of Seattle during its first hundred years, seen through the lives of the vigorous personalities of its settlers and early citizens. This handsomely illustrated revised edition brings Seattle's history up-to-date and provides a vivid portrayal of its past: pioneering, Indian warfare, lumber, railroads, the great fire of 1889, the Alaska gold rush, the amusement business, newspapers, the general strike of 1919, and the tumultuous politics of city and state that have made history in the Northwest.
"No one who has ever writte Pacific Northwest history can match Murray Morgan's craftmanship, the signal virtues of which are pace, precision, humor, and a keen eye for the characterizing detail." -Norman Clark, Pacific Northwest Quarterly
"Mr. Morgan's book is the sort of corrective history that all communities should welcome." -Stewart Holbrook, New York Herald Tribune

History

Americas

Confederate Raider in the North Pacific: The Saga of the C.S.S. Shenandoah, 1864-65

One man's gold rush: A Klondike album

Biographies & Memoirs

Douglas & McIntyre,Canada

Review\n“Dirty Birds: one of the funniest things I’ve read since I took home my grade 4 report card.” -- D.R. The Book Guy ― Ltd. Radio\n"If you ever feel you’re in the mood for something completely absurd, out of this world (but in it), something that will make you laugh, wonder what the heck is going on, and reflect on the author’s wild imagination, Dirty Birds is your book." -- Naomi ― Consumed by Ink\n“Canadians rejoice! Our Vonnegut has finally arrived! Morgan Murray’s debut is a great, brawling, sprawling, muscular glory of a story. Funny, dark, and wholly original.” -- Will Ferguson, winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize\n"One of the most fun and dynamic aspects of the book is Morgan’s facility with different dialogues. These include, but are not limited to, the matrix of the prairie junior hockey structure, the non-stop conversation of a Newfoundland taxi driver, academic papers, police files, and, most prominently, Milton’s poetry. These are often decoded and/or annotated in footnotes, a comedic amplification that’s an effective and refreshing device in this fiction. There’s work and care in the writing; the experiences, however foolish, feel earned. At the same time it’s kinetic: the words, like birds, take flight." -- Joan Sullivan ― The Telegram\n"This book would make a great Canadian film starring Michael Cera. Refreshingly backlit with the nostalgia of Obama era planet Earth, riffing on a myriad of contemporary themes including intergenerational tensions and anxieties, global economic frailty and the pursuit of young desire, Dirty Birds is the perfect misfit read for your next layaway, or when you’re down to your last shot of whisky. It provides days’ worth of warm, weird feelings." -- Nathaniel G. Moore ― Atlantic Books Today\n"Morgan Murray’s Dirty Birds is the delightful, literary, hoser middle ground between A Series Of Unfortunate Events and Jackass. The story of Milton Ontario’s poetic aspirations spans over 500 nonsensical pages and, even though you won’t understand a word Noddy or Georgette or Jerry or Gerry is saying, I promise you won’t be bored... this is an impressive debut novel that knows when to joke and when to deliver some actually poetic inner monologue. I can’t wait to see what Murray comes up with next." ― Haley Reads Books\n“Dirty Birds is absurd and tender, familiar and bizarre, and completely unforgettable.” -- Jean Graham ― The Northeast Avalon Times\n"Satirical, clever... unrestrained and funny, Dirty Birds, is a great read." -- Atlantic Book Reviews\n“A vast, fantastic and original book, not to mention utterly hilarious. The kind of book you'll devour and then wish you hadn’t read it so quickly, but happily, you can start it all over again! Definitely one of my top ten books of 2020.\nI loved this: “‪Make the world bigger by your being in it. ... the way you pour yourself out into the world to quench another’s thirst, the way you exist and the way you persist.” Words to live by.” ― The Minerva Reader\n“Dirty Birds is an absurd novel about absurd subcultures of artists, grad students, and adultescents that author Morgan Murray explores with both laugh-out-loud lunacy and scathing insight.” -- Ian Rogers ― Shrapnel Magazine\n“Dirty Birds is a whip-smart, structurally coherent romp that dresses its satire in the weeds of comic mayhem." -- Richard Cumyn ― The Fiddlehead\n"The narrative voice in Dirty Birds reminds me a bit of the dry comic you find reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, only this unfortunate protagonist, named Milton Ontario, (not to be confused with Milton, Ontario) journeys from Bellybutton, Saskatchewan to live in a dirty closet he found on Craigslist - dans le metropolis of Montreal... All so he can be a poet like his hero, Leonard Cohen. Morgan Murray fills his pages with dialogue spoken in hilarious Canadian vernacular, something that so rarely meets the page in popular fiction, interspersed with his own black and white illustrations, and the most epic footnotes

Dirty Birds

Literature & Fiction

Humor & Satire

Breakwater Books

Over Washington (Wings over America series)

Distributed in the United States by Pacific Pipeline

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Books by Murray, Morgan