Author/historian Nisbet to visit Moscow tonight

When I was a kid, history wasn’t so much involved with actual facts as it was in perpetuating myths. Not that myths are bad. But they’re analogous to the truth, not a substitute for it.

Which is why it’s so satisfying – for me, at least – to check out the work of historians/naturalists who delve into actual science to reveal the past. And one of those historians is Jack NIsbet, Spokane-based author of such books as “Visible Bones,” “Sources of the River” and the collection of essays “Ancient Places: People and Landscape in the Emerging Northwest.”

As reviewer Tim McNulty wrote in the Seattle Times, “Nisbet combines historic research with field work, personal interviews, and the kind of local knowledge that is gained only through decades of living in a place. He pays attention to stories told by longtime residents and tribal people, as well as geologists, paleontologists, anthropologists and university researchers.”

Nisbet will share and sign copies of “Ancient Places” at 6 p.m. tonight at Moscow’s BookPeople,  521 S. Main St. He will be joined by Dennis Baird and Diane Mallickan, co-edtors of “Encounters with the People: Written and Oral Accounts of Nez Perce Life to 1858 (Voices from Nez Perce Country).”

The event is free and open to the public.