Lionel Youst

To avoid being drafted during the Korean War, a 19-year-old Oregon logger with a 9th grade education joined the Air Force. His military career would span three decades and take him to three continents at the height of U.S.-Soviet tensions. He lived in Libya, the Philippines, and Vietnam, making friends and absorbing the history and cultue of each country he went to. That is how he got his real education - by Touring the Cold War.

 

Praise for the Book

 

"The book is handsome, reads easily and clearly, and is highly informative about international events that I was aware of through the news but were not directly in any way part of my life. I am learning a lot as I read your narrative."

Stephen Dow Beckham, Pamplin Professor of History, Emeritus, Lewis and Clark College.

 

Finished your Air Force memoir this evening and would like to travel to the Bay Area for a visit this week. . . . Although I knew you were retired from the Air Force, you are not the person I thought you were (gyppo logging and all).  We would make a great dog and pony show!"

William G. Robbins, Emeritus Distinguished Professor of History, Oregon State University.

 

"A fine epologue -- both detailed and succinct! Great photograph too."   Nathan Douthit, History Professor Emeritus, Southwestern Oegon Community College.

 

"You write very well, and obviously had a more interesting life than most people. . . .  If I were less busy I'd offer to help raise your writing up a level, but to be honest its pretty damn good already."

Wyn Cooper, poet and freelance editor. (New York, New York)

 

"I sat down to take a first look and did not look up till the end of the first chapter!"

Keith Scales, actor, author, editor. (Eureka Springs, Arkansas)

 

"I just finished your latest book and both of us totally enjoyed reading it.  Hugh said he is going to read it again as there was so much in it." (Donna and Hugh Tyler,  North Bend, Oregon)

A half dozen articles about the Industrial Workers of the World. 63 pages, Coos Bay, Oregon, Golden Falls Publishing, 2012.

Columbia: The Magazine of Northwest History, Winter 2015-16. pp. 2-7.

Pacific Northwest Quarterly: A Scholarly Journal of Northwest History Published by the University of Washington Press. Spring 2015, Volume 106, Number 2. pp. 68-83.

A series of essays by Lionel Youst which originally appeared in the Advocate, a monthly journal of opinion published at Coos Bay, Oregon. Includes essays on Montaigne, Pepys, Adam Smith, Balzac, Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Emma Goldman, Jack London, Clarence Darrow, John Steinbeck, George McGovern, and Barak Obama, each of whom were important in the author's continuing education over a period of more than 70 years.

This is the first book to answer the question, "What happens when someone goes missing in the woods and there are no cable news crews there to cover it?" The search-and-rescue stories chronicled here may have escaped the national spotlight, but they reveal as much about human courage and endurance as anything you're likely to see on CNN. We are reminded that these woods do not lack for danger or mystery. Covering the years 1871 to 2000, these stories illuminate many of the historic uses of the Western forests, and the complex relationship between the region's forested and inhabited areas during a critical period of the American West. (from the back cover blurb, by Mike MacRae).

This is probably the first book to focus on the logger who was also a sawmiller, adding value to his logs by manufacturing them into lumber, in situ. It is based largely on tape recorded interviews with the author's father, George Youst, who was a small sawmill operator for practically all the years the phenomenon existed in the Douglas fir region. The book contains an original essay on the "Gyppo" sawmill, its history and significance. It follows that with a lightly edited and highly annotated oral history of George Youst's experiences as a tie-mill and "gyppo" mill operator. There are scores of photos from the author's family album, it is fully indexed with bibliography and maps.

This is the first full length biography of an American Indian linguistic or ethnologic informant from the northwestern states. She was the last person to speak the Miluk Coos language and was an important consultant to the anthropologist Melville Jacobs. Her life was long and eventful.

"It tells of someone born in Oregon before whites had settled there, yet who lived far into this century; someone versed in traditional narratives and practices, in both his first language and English, who engaged the changing world around him effectively. Encounters with a series of anthropologists hold up a mirror to them."

The story of the homesteading and logging of a remote, inaccessible valley, told through oral history interviews, family photographs, and original documents.