Athletic heroes grace the pages of the new book from Jeff Welsch and George P. Edmonston Jr., “Tales from Oregon State Sports” (Sports Publishing L.L.C., 200 pages, hard cover, $19.95).

Sports fans will like the detail developed in the tales about greats of the past – the Pendleton boy, Lew Beck, for example. Beck proved himself one of the great basketball players of the day – an Olympian and an All-American.

There’s much more – read about the “first lady of basketball,” Helen Gill. Thrill to the exploits of Dee Andros – a combat Marine before he became a coach. Attend the great race between Steve Prefontain and Hailu Ebba on May 6, 1972, at Hayward Field.

Learn how Terry Baker won the Heisman Trophy.

Climb Everest with Willie Unsoeld.

Did you know that Knute Rockne was a part-time coach in Corvallis?

The authors uncover the birth of football and basketball at Corvallis. They have filled this book with the kind of detail sports fans love, and that even those who don’t care all that much about sports will find interesting.

Relics’ tales

Finding the bones of a mammoth in Eastern Washington, Lewis & dark’s encounters with the giant California condor, the life cycle of the salamander, these and more create the focus of naturalist Jack Nisbet’s new book, “Visible Bones” (Sasquatch Books, 256 pages, hard cover, $$23.95).

He subtitled the book “Journeys Across Time in Columbia River Country.”

“I am trying to call attention to the ways that the past informs the present, and how human and natural history are interwoven,” Nisbet said in an interview with Auntie’s Books of Spokane.

“I’ve always had a habit of bringing little mementos of a walk back to the house, like feathers, rocks, bones, leaves, and fossils – call them relics of the landscape.”

That habit and his insatiable curiosity brought us this unusual book.

Nisbet resides in Spokane. He’s made the Northwest his home for 15 years so he’s beginning to know the country. He has supported himself and his family as a writer, carpenter, stone mason, biological field assistant and teacher.

Memories

The adventure of a lifetime lured young James W. McAlister to the remote Wallowa Valley in 1872. He tells his story in “Into the Valley” (Bear Creek Press, 28 pages, soft cover, $5.95), a book in which editor Mark Highberger constructs a first-person narrative from long- ago newspaper accounts.

This little book is part of a trilogy of homesteader’s memoirs published by Bear Creek.

Fascinating stories. Everyone in the Wallowa country will want a copy – so will anyone who’s ever spent any time in that wonderful haven.