MORE PUBLISHED WORK
Other Writing
My initial exposure to Juanita Sheridan was harrowing: I’d just sent my publisher my first Hawaiʻi murder mystery when a friend asked, “Have you read the Hawaiʻi mysteries of Juanita Sheridan?” Unsettled, I scrambled to find Sheridan’s books – all out of print, so it wasn’t easy. When they finally arrived, I opened The Kahuna Killer at random and found to my consternation that Sheridan had ended a chapter this way: “Pilikia. That word means trouble.” I’d ended a chapter of my book nearly identically: “Pilikia. Trouble.”
On August 1, I had the honor of being the keynote speaker at a Washington, D.C. gala celebrating the 50th Anniversary (delayed two years by COVID) of enactment of the National Health Service Corps (NHSC), a program under which 20,000 health professionals of all types are currently providing medical and dental care to needy people in underserved rural and urban communities. NHCS alumni number 66,000 and the patients the NHSC has served now number in the many millions. The gala was put on by the Association of Clinicians for the Underserved, a surprisingly vast and laudable organization with which the NHSC is thoroughly intertwined.
A friend once spent years researching the intertwined lives of Chief Joseph and his relentless pursuer, US Army General O.O. Howard, only to learn when he presented his book proposal that someone else was about to publish a nearly identical book. I feared landing in a similar position when, having just sent my publisher my manuscript of a murder mystery, Bones of Hilo, set in Hawaiʻi, I heard from my friend James Fallows that he had galley proofs of anothersuch book. “And it’s very good!” Jim added.
Jim then tried to reassure me. “This one’s set during World War Two,” he said, “and its pub date isn’t until October 2021.” He knew my book was set in 2002, with a pub date in June 2021. Still, I was worried.
A great challenge of Hawaiian detective fiction is to depict Hawai`i authentically. It takes more than ukuleles and flower leis to accomplish this. James Fallows once observed in the Atlantic that through mysteries and thrillers imbued with authenticity we can learn about exotic and distant locales, or distant times. The Soho Crime series, featuring the world’s most remote places, testifies to the first proposition, and (say) Alan Furst epitomizes the second, transporting us to chilly garrets the Gestapo may burst into at any moment. But without such authenticity, even best-selling murder mysteries become what Graham Greene called mere “entertainments.”
Several strands of personal history inspired Bones of Hilo. A Seattleite seeking winter sunshine, I began visiting the Big Island of Hawaiʻi with my wife and young family forty years ago. I fell wildly in love with it, particularly South Kohala, and also became fascinated by the Big Island’s colorful history, which I began to study. To me, Oʻahu, Maui, and Kauʻai couldn’t compare with the home island of King Kamehameha the Great, for beauty or for history.
This paper is one in a series of case studies examining the role of demonstration projects in the commercialization of new clean energy technologies.
Years ago, I stumbled onto the disturbing possibility that the Navy had dumped spent nuclear material in the ocean off the coast of Washington and Oregon. Over the past five decades, the story has played out in fascinating ways for me, however well-known the truth may be to the Navy, Members of Congress, and — as I relate here — unexpected others.
CCS, especially with geological sequestration, is increasingly recognized as a climate mitigation necessity, in addition to all other forms of CO2 emissions reductions. This article reviews the mixed success of Federal government efforts to launch large scale CCS projects in 2003-2016.
The Pacific Northwest is known for its innovative solutions. Whether the challenge is integration with the natural world, the relationship of science and policy, learning to use what we know, or simply enjoying a balanced and fulfilling life, these writers, leaders in their respective disciplines, provide the background necessary to understand the issues and move forward. This lasting collection from the magazine is an invaluable resource for students, educators, and practitioners working in various fields as well as decision makers in government, business, and other sectors looking for real-world answers to ongoing conflicts.
Collectively, the writers in this volume apply their expertise and talent to provide an intelligent and informed context through which to see public issues and make sense of the changes that continue to shape the region and our world.
As America’s leading expert on the Presidency and an adviser to presidents from Harry S Truman to Bill Clinton, Richard E. Neustadt was “the most penetrating analyst of power since Machiavelli,” as Guardian of the Presidency makes clear. In this inspirational book, Neustadt’s former colleagues and students celebrate the rich and diverse contributions he made to political and academic life in the United States and beyond. JFK confidant Ted Sorensen, the late historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Harrison Wellford, formerly of the Office of Management and Budget, and Matthew Dickinson focus on his role as a White House adviser. Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter highlights Neustadt’s ability to interpret the Presidency for the outside world. Fellow scholars Ernest May, Charles O. Jones, Harvey Fineberg, and Graham Allison analyze his legacy as an educator and founding director of Harvard’s Institute of Politics. Anthony King (Britain at the Polls) and Eric Redman (The Dance of Legislation) discuss his work in the United Kingdom and Brazil.
HUMANS CONTRIBUTE TO GLOBAL WARMING—scientifically, that’s settled. But we rarely ask, by what means? We assume we know: Burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas produces carbon dioxide (CO2), a “greenhouse gas” that traps heat in Earth’s atmosphere. But that widely accepted hypothesis turns out to be seriously incomplete. So our CO2-focused climate policy and the layers of laws built on it—from European rules implementing the Kyoto Protocol to the United States regulations charging fees to new power plants for their CO2 emissions—are incomplete as well. That huge problem is partly driven by something tiny: the ultra-fine particles we know as soot.
The Dance of Legislation has long been considered a classic description of the legislative process. In it, Eric Redman draws on his two years as a member of Senator Warren Magnuson’s staff to trace the drafting and passing of a piece of legislation ― S.4106, the National Health Service Bill ― with all the maneuvers, plots, counterplots, frustrations, triumphs, and sheer work and dedication involved. He provides a vivid picture of the bureaucratic infighting, political prerogatives, and Congressional courtesies necessary to make something happen on Capitol Hill. In a Postscript to the 2000 edition, Redman reflects on how that process has, and has not, changed in the thirty years since the book was first published.
Mr. Redman maintains that ALCOA was a straightforward statutory construction case in which the meaning of the relevant provisions of the Northwest Power Act was clear. He asserts that ALCOA simply affirmed congressional intent.
There are several reasons why the Bonneville Power Administration uses combination service rather than firm power service to meet the DSI top quartile demand: (1) if properly designed, combination service can provide adequate power quality for this portion of the DSI demand; (2) environmental impacts and costs to non-DSI consumers would be greater if firm resources, planned and installed for other loads, were increased by the amount of the DSI top quartile; and (3) although combination service imposes costs on the DSIs in the form of periodic interruptions, it saves money for all BPA customers by permitting BPA to take advantage of certain physical features of the Columbia River power system that would otherwise impede rather than facilitate efficiency. These policy reasons are simple; the operational details of combination service are not. Because combination service is complex it is poorly understood, the cost savings it provides the Northwest are in danger of being lost.
Rolling Stone Magazine (Issue no. 182 / March 13, 1975) “Did Nixon Legally Win the 1968 Election”
In 1972, John Marttila, a Boston-based professional campaign consultant, was asked to manage Delaware Democrat Joe Biden’s race for a U.S. Senate seat. Biden’s campaign was floundering and low on funds. This case recounts the strategies and tactics Marttila used in his first campaign — Father Robert Drinan’s successful 1970 bid for a seat in the U.S. House from Massachusetts. It then provides basic information on Delaware’s demographics and voting history, and on Biden’s opponent in the senatorial race. Students are asked to develop solutions to the problems posed by the Biden campaign, keeping in mind the differences and similarities between that and the Drinan race. The sequel details Marttila’s tactics in guiding Biden to victory.
When The New Yorker featured two long and frightening articles on supertankers by Noel Mostert last May, they had a stunning impact. But excellent as they were, Mostert’s articles only hinted at the eloquence and power of his finished book, “Supership.” With their indictment of tanker safety standards and their warning of the ecological dangers the huge ships pose, the articles interweave the best traditions of Ralph Nader and Rachel Carson. But the book takes this basic exposé and turns it into real literature, a story of ships, sailors and the sea narrated with an unself‐conscious skill that Conrad or Melville might have envied.
Guns kill 20,000 Americans each year. But consider the bright side. That’s less than one death per year for every 10,000 guns in private ownership—a small price to pay for such an important privilege. Moreover, as Robert Sherrill says in “The Saturday Night Special,” we should be candid with ourselves: Gun victims are rarely middle‐class folks; they are the “refuse” (he puts it bluntly) of our “trashy” society, mostly criminals or people who “wouldn’t have come to much” anyway. Highway accidents, by contrast, cause three times as many fatalities, and wayward automobiles—unlike bullets — are wickedly egalitarian. May we not, all things considered, “fairly ask ourselves if the typical victim of cannot be spared?”
IN THE OLD DAYS, of course, we had to ride the train from Boston to Seattle–four days and three nights, coast to coast. In fairness to the Great Northern and Northern Pacific, one has to admit a limited nostalgia when looking back. The railroads could each you many things–you gained a sense of “the vastness of America,” to which, your parents insisted, your richer classmates aboard those jets remained forever oblivious.
About ME
Eric (Ric) Redman is a Seattle-based writer, lawyer, and climate activist. He is a former contributing editor of Rolling Stone and has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, and many other publications. He also wrote the non-fiction bestseller The Dance of Legislation.
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International Thriller Writers finalist Eric Redman is back in this thrilling second installment of his Hawaiian murder mystery series, perfect for fans of Anne Hillerman. When bodies start piling up and the list of suspects grows long, Detective Kawika Wong must dig into his own past to solve a Big Island murder..