Every geographically-unique region should be so lucky as to have a writer like Murray Morgan to capture it forever in prose. The Last Wilderness is so evocative, hilarious, informative and I can't imagine it ever losing its place as the definitive introduction to the Olympic Peninsula. Researched with obvious care and undoubtedly benefits from conversations with old sourdoughs and lifers of all stripes from a place that he clearly loved. There are stories of the first peoples here and some forays into the natural wonders of this jungle of giant firs and cedars, glacier-clad mountains towering straight up from the sea, and rivers teeming with salmon, but this is first and foremost an account of the loggers and prospectors, the confidence men and utopian cultists, the wobblies and conservationists and all the other colorful characters that have peopled this wildest corner of the continental U.S. This is one of the books I've gotten at Port Book and News in Port Angeles to help acquaint myself with the Olympic Peninsula and I read through it a second time to whet my appetite for the place before moving here. I loved its first sentence so much, I suggested to to Madison Books for the "First Lines that Last" feature in their newsletter last year.