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# Seattle: A History — The Story of an American City
From the misty shores of Puget Sound to the gleaming towers of a tech-driven metropolis, Seattle has always been a city defined by reinvention. This sweeping narrative takes readers on a journey through more than a century and a half of triumph, tragedy, and transformation — beginning with the Duwamish people who stewarded this breathtaking landscape for millennia, and carrying forward through the frontier lumber camps, the ashes of the Great Fire, the fury of labor strikes, the boom of the Klondike Gold Rise, and the rise of Boeing and Microsoft. It is a story of dreamers and disruptors, of communities built and communities displaced, and of a city perpetually wrestling with its own identity.
What makes Seattle's history so compelling is not just the events themselves but the deeper currents that run through them — the tension between explosive growth and the struggle for belonging, the collision of ambition with the natural world, and the remarkable resilience that has allowed this city to rise again and again from fire, economic collapse, and social upheaval. Readers will discover how the Olmsted park system shaped the city's soul, how the 1962 World's Fair reimagined its skyline, and how the forces of gentrification and activism are writing its next chapter today.
Rich with detail and unflinching in its honesty, *Seattle: A History* is essential reading for anyone who has ever walked its rain-slicked streets and wondered how this extraordinary city came to be — and where it might be headed next.
Introduction
Chapter 1 The Duwamish and the Land Before the City
Chapter 2 The Founding Vision: Denny, Boren, and the Founding of Seattle
Chapter 3 Tents and Planks: The Frontier Town Takes Shape
Chapter 4 Fires, Rails, and Reform in the 1880s
Chapter 5 The Great Seattle Fire and the Reinvention of a Downtown
Chapter 6 Chaos and Exclusion: The Anti-Chinese Riots of 1886
Chapter 7 Labor, Lumber, and the Working City in the 1890s
Chapter 8 Gateway to Gold: Seattle and the Klondike Gold Rush
Chapter 9 Streetcars, Neighborhoods, and a Growing Urban Fabric
Chapter 10 The Olmsted Vision: Parks, Boulevards, and Civic Identity
Chapter 11 War in the Pacific: Seattle and World War I
Chapter 12 The 1919 General Strike and a City on Edge
Chapter 13 Prohibition, Corruption, and the Roaring Twenties
Chapter 14 Depression and the Making of a New Deal City
Chapter 15 Airplane Capital: Boeing and the Transformation of Industry
Chapter 16 Home Front City: Japanese Internment and World War II
Chapter 17 The Welfare State Comes to Washington: Postwar Reforms
Chapter 18 Suburban Dreams and the Rise of the Metropolis in the 1950s
Chapter 19 The 1962 World’s Fair and the Reinvention of Downtown
Chapter 20 Boeing Bust, Recession, and Urban Crisis in the 1970s
Chapter 21 Jet City Rising: Tech, Boeing Comebacks, and the 1980s
Chapter 22 From Microsoft to Amazon: The Digital Transformation
Chapter 23 Gentrification, Affordability, and the Changing Neighborhoods
Chapter 24 Diversity, Activism, and a Progressive City in the Twenty-First Century
Chapter 25 Water, Mountains, and the Next Chapter in Seattle’s History
Nonfiction
June 24, 2026
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