An architect argues to stay the wrecking ball and reuse older buildings, a historian recalls Martin Luther King Jr.’s timeless economic message, a master storyteller brings a new set of tales, an engineer conjures a children’s book with a robot’s-eye view of the deep ocean …

But hark! — yet more. Personal essays on nature spanning a biologist’s career, a best-selling author’s take on America’s unprecedented president, and a thoughtful book about books themselves, their past and their unwritten future. Plus jazz and classical recordings from faculty in the UW School of Music.

As the year comes to a close and festivities abound, some ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý faculty creations can make great gifts for the thinking Dawg on your giving list. Here’s a quick look at some gift-worthy books and music created by UW talents in the last year or so.

Michael Honey, “To the Promised Land: Martin Luther King and the Fight for Economic Justice.”

Fifty years have passed since King’s 1968 assassination. In a new book, Honey, a UW Tacoma historian, notes that economic justice and labor rights were always part of King’s progressive message. “He said in Memphis, ‘It’s a crime in a rich nation for people to receive starvation wages,’” Honey says. “That remains a basic issue right now across the country, where it seems like the economy is doing really well but there are millions of people in poverty.” Published by .

Dana Manalang, “.”

After years working on a cabled observatory that monitors the Pacific Northwest seafloor and water above, Manalang, an engineer with the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory, decided to share the wonder of the deep sea with younger audiences. The result is this new children’s book published by Virginia-based , which combines images of the deep ocean captured during UW School of Oceanography research cruises with rhyming couplets and a cartoon robot illustrated by UW designer .

Charles Johnson, “.”

A prolific author and UW professor emeritus of English, Johnson spins a dozen yarns in this new story collection, from realism to light science fiction and beyond, laced gently with humor and philosophy. Calling him a “modern master,” Kirkus Reviews said his stories “can be as morally instructive as fables, as fancifully ingenious as Twilight Zone scripts, and as elegantly inscrutable as Zen riddles.” Asked how he knows when a story is done, Johnson said: “When I can’t add another line (or word) to it without disturbing the delicate balance of music and meaning, sound and sense that comes from relentless revisions.” Published by

Kathryn Rogers Merlino, “Building Reuse: Sustainability, Preservation, and the Value of Design”

Tearing down buildings and discarding the energy and materials embodied in them is contrary to the values of sustainability, writes Merlino, an associate professor of architecture in the UW College of Built Environments. We avidly recycle and compost, but have no cultural ethic about reusing our largest manufactured goods — our buildings. “We quickly demolish buildings in the name of new, ‘green’ structures, rather than looking for the possibilities of how we can work with what exists,” Merlino says. To me there is an inherent conflict in there, and I think we can do better.” Published by .

David Shields, “No One Hates Trump More Than Trump: An Intervention.”

In his latest release, Shields, a UW professor of English and New York Times best-selling author, deconstructs the mind of the current president of the United States. The book, is “at once a psychological investigation of Trump, a philosophical meditation on the relationship between language and power,” publisher’s notes say, “and above all a dagger into the rhetoric of American political discourse — a dissection of the politesse that gave rise to and sustains Trump.” He calls it “a manual for beating bullies.” Published by .

Kenneth Pyle: “”

After the United States ended World War II by dropping atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it then conducted “the most intrusive international reconstruction of another nation in modern history,” writes Pyle, a UW professor emeritus of international studies. Only now, amid geopolitical changes of the 21st century, is Japan pulling free from American dominance and constraints placed on it after the war. The book, distilling a lifetime of research, examines how Japan, with its conservative heritage, responded to the imposition of a new liberal order and tracks the now-changing relationship between the two nations. Published by .

Amaranth Borsuk, “ ”

Borsuk, a UW Bothell assistant professor as well as a poet and book artist, explores the book, its past and possible futures in this compact volume. “Rather than bemoaning the death of books or creating a dichotomy between print and digital media,” she writes, “this guide points to continuities, positioning the book as a changing technology and highlighting the way artists in the 20th and 21st centuries have pushed us to rethink and redefine the term.” Published by

Jim Kenagy, “”

Kenagy, a professor emeritus of biology, presents a collection of 13 nature essays set in time across his life, from freshman field trips through his  dissertation and career at a major university. “These stories are not the scientific reports of a research professor, nor are they an attempt at popular science,” state publisher’s notes. “These are personal essays that spring forth from observation and discovery of what nature has to show anyone who is willing to pay attention.” Published by .

Pimone Triplett, “”

In her new book of poems, Triplett, a UW associate professor of English and creative writing, says she explores “the thinning lines between responsibility and complicity, the tangled ‘supply chain’ that unnervingly connects the domestic to the political, personal memory to social practice, and our age-old familial discords to our new place in the anthropocentric world. Published by .

Multiple authors, “”

This reference book was first published in 1973 and became an instant classic for its innovative style and comprehensive illustrations. Now, botanists at the UW Burke Museum of Natural History & Culture have created this updated second edition, which includes the reclassification or renaming of about 40 percent of the taxa covered by the first edition. Published by .

And to accompany your reading, here are some recent recordings from faculty in the UW School of Music:

Cuong Vu 4-Tet, “”

The latest CD by Vu, trumpeter and UW Jazz Studies professor and chair — created with his “4-tet” — is landing on critics’ best-of lists for 2018. Guitarist Bill Frisell, drummer Ted Poor, bassist Luke Bergman and Vu all contribute new music on this follow-up to the group’s 2017 album. A London Jazz News critic called the results “uniformly excellent.” Released by RareNoise Records.

Craig Sheppard, “” and “”

Sheppard, UW professor of music, released two CDs this year, documenting live performances at Meany Hall. For one, he presents the revised score of Bach’s master work, left incomplete upon the composer’s death. The other is a deluxe collection of Brahms’s four sets of lyrical piano miniatures,
Opus 116 through 119. Released by Romeo Records.

Michael Partington, “”

An artist in residence at the UW School of Music, Partington returns to the 19^th century repertoire that formed the basis of his early musical development in this collection, performed on a mid-1800s French Romantic guitar. Released by Rosewood Guitar.

A new published May 30 in the describes a newly discovered third species of flying squirrel in North America — now known as , or Glaucomys oregonensis. It inhabits the Pacific Coast region of North America, from southern British Columbia to the mountains of southern California. Until now, these coastal populations were simply thought to be the already-known northern flying squirrel.

“For 200 years we thought we had only had one species of flying squirrel in the Northwest — until we looked at the nuclear genome, in addition to mitochondrial DNA, for the first time,” said study co-author , professor emeritus of biology at the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý and curator emeritus of mammals at the .

Biologists used to classify the flying squirrels of California and the coastal Pacific Northwest as northern flying squirrels. It wasn’t until lead author , associate professor of biology at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and formerly a postdoctoral researcher at UW and the Burke Museum, looked closely at the genetics of flying squirrel specimens from the Burke’s collections that it became apparent that they may be a different species. Flying squirrels collected since the early 1900s in the Pacific Coast region often looked smaller and darker than their counterparts from east of the Cascades.

Ultimately, it was DNA testing that revealed a third species unique to the Pacific Northwest.

The results of the DNA analyses were striking: they indicated that no gene flow was occurring between the Pacific Coastal form and the widespread, inland, continental form of the northern flying squirrel, even when two occurred together.

Because the new study shows that Humboldt’s and northern flying squirrels both occur together at the same places within some parts of Western Washington and southern British Columbia, it is possible that future studies might reveal hybridization between these two species, even though this study did not find the two species interbreeding in the areas the research team examined.

Kenagy, Arbogast and other researchers spent years studying small mammals in the Northwest and how they distributed themselves in the western and eastern mountain ranges, as recently as the period following the last Ice Age.  In some cases, the eastern and western mammals evolved into different species over the past million years or so.

“It was a surprising discovery,” said Kenagy. “We were interested in the genetic structure of small mammals throughout the Pacific Northwest, and the fact that in other cases we were aware that two different species had evolved in Eastern and Western Washington.”

The new genetic study clearly demonstrates that Pacific Coast populations of flying squirrels from southern British Columbia, southward through western Washington and Oregon, and in California, now include members of the newly named species, Humboldt’s flying squirrel.

The Humboldt’s flying squirrel is known as a “cryptic” species — a species that was previously thought to be another, known species because the two look similar.

This new discovery of the Humboldt’s flying squirrel is the 45th known species of flying squirrel in the world. What are now three species of flying squirrels in North and Central America are all small, nocturnally-active, gliding squirrels that live in woodland habitats. These creatures don’t actually fly like bats or birds. Instead, they glide from tree to tree by extending furred membranes of skin that stretch from the wrist of the forearm to the ankle on the hind leg. Their feather-like tail provides extra lift and also aids in steering. The gliding ability of flying squirrels is remarkable; they are capable of gliding for up to 100 meters and can make sharp, midair turns by using their tail as a rudder and moving their limbs to manipulate the shape and tautness of their gliding membranes.

The squirrel specimens in the Burke Museum’s collections — and other natural history museums around the world — are standing by for future researchers to learn more about these remarkable “new” creatures.

Co-authors are Katelyn Schumacher with the University of North Carolina Wilmington, Nicholas Kerhoulas with the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the University of Alaska Museum, Allison Bidlack with the University of Alaska Southeast and Joseph Cook with the University of New Mexico. The research was funded by the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý.

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For more information, contact Godinez at 206-616-7538 or burkepr@uw.edu.

Original Burke Museum release .