Lawyer throws in his 2 cents in "Pocketful of History"

"Pocketful of History: Four Hundred Years of America

— One State Quarter at a Time"

by Jim Noles

Da Capo Press, 313 pp., $25

I got hooked on the state quarters program about four years ago. Now, every time I receive quarters in change, I immediately look to see what states are in my hand. It's a simple pleasure.

My comments range from, "Wow, a Delaware!" (personal favorite) to, "Finally, New Mexico is showing up regularly" to, "Darn, a bunch of duds."

This book is going to make my new hobby even more enjoyable.

The U.S. quarters program was launched in 1999 and will be completed this year. The quarters were issued, at the rate of five a year, in the order that states joined the union. That explains why Delaware was No. 1 in the series and Washington was No. 42 (it came out last year). No. 50 will be Hawaii. State pride, travel curiosity ("I've been there") and the collector's urge in many of us account for the popularity of the series.

The number of quarters minted depends on the need for 25-cent pieces in the economy at the time. There were 1.5 billion Virginia coins minted when it was the Old Dominion State's turn in 2000, but only 545.2 million Washington coins were produced when it was our state's turn seven years later.

The book explains what is depicted on each coin — and rarely stops there. Each state gets a separate four- to six-page chapter, which is an open invitation for the reader to skip around.

Jim Noles, an Alabama lawyer when he isn't writing books, reaches an interesting narrative fork in the road early in each chapter. He can continue writing about what is shown on the coin, or veer off and write about something in the state that intrigues him.

Often, the image on the coin is so compelling that he sticks with it. The Delaware chapter is about Caesar Rodney, the man riding a horse on what is considered one of the most attractive coins in the series. Rodney is on his way to Philadelphia to vote for American independence and break the tie in his delegation.

Noles was obligated to write about New Hampshire's "Old Man of the Mountain" rock formation because it collapsed three years after the coin featuring it was issued.

However, for Washington, he spends most of the chapter on the injustice of hanging Chief Leschi, even though the chief's image isn't on the coin. Leschi was the Native American leader at the time of hostilities in the 1850s in Western Washington. Noles backs into the Leschi story by telling how one of the chief's unlikely supporters in the "don't hang him" campaign was Army Lt. August Valentine Kautz, whose time in Washington included an unsuccessful attempt to climb Mount Rainier. (The mountain is featured on the coin along with a leaping salmon.)

Mississippi's lackluster coin with magnolias provides Noles the opportunity to describe the ordeals of a Confederate unit called the Magnolia Guards that was decimated in the Civil War.

I found an error. In the Nebraska chapter that deals with pioneer trails (three of them passed Chimney Rock, which is featured on the coin as a Nebraska landmark), he writes that the Blue Mountains guard the entrance to the Willamette Valley in Oregon. Wrong. It's the Cascades.

The book explains how a major impetus for the successful quarter program was the success of a Canadian coin series in the early 1990s that celebrated each province.

Somewhat awkwardly, the book also makes the point that the U.S. government is making money on the series. That's because quarters cost a lot less than 25 cents to make, and casual and serious collectors have paid full price for them, then taken them out of circulation. Result: profit for the government.

The 50-state series amounts to $12.50 worth of history and information, and Noles is an enthusiastic guide.

"Quarter fever" won't be stopping with the 50th state. Congress has approved a proposal to mint quarters honoring Washington, D.C.; Puerto Rico; Guam; the U.S. Virgin Islands; American Samoa; and the Northern Mariana Islands.

Craig Smith is a Seattle Times sportswriter.