Reading Portland is a literary exploration of the city's past and present. In some eighty selections, Portland is revealed through histories, memoirs, autobiographies, short stories, novels, and news reports. This single volume gives voice to women and men; the colonizers and the colonized; white, Hispanic, African American, Asian American, and Indian storytellers; and lower, middle, and upper classes. Authors included: Carl Abbott, Kathryn Hall Bogle, Kevin Canty, Beverly Cleary, Robin Cody, Ed Edmo, Stewart Holbrook, Lawson Fusao Inada, Rudyard Kipling, Elnor Langer, Jewel Lansing, Ursula K. Le Guin, Joaquin Miller, Richard Neuberger, David Oates, Sandy Polishuk, Harvey W. Scott, Gary Snyder, Kim Stafford, Charles Erskine Scott Wood, Elizabeth Woody, and many more. John Trombold's Introduction addresses Portland's contradictory nature as a providential city on a hill; a cultivated Victorian rose garden; a centre for libertarian freedom, gambling, and prostitution; and a place for utopian aspiration. In the Preface, Peter Donahue considers the importance of region - particularly Portland's urbanity and its hybrid population - on literature.