Iowa Books

These recipes create the best meals you will ever eat. Canter has found the best recipes from the Heartland. Where else but Iowa do you find meals that people remember the way easterners remember a great novel? These recipes taste like a bear hug feels or a meaningful conversation lingers--warm and memorably delicious. Don't let the reasonable price of fool you. At ten times the price this book is a bargain.

License to Cook Iowa Style, in the popular recipe-card file size Stocking Stuffer format, is chock-full of the best recipes and notes about the best of Iowa in the heart of the Midwest. The navy blue and white cover features the Iowa Sesquicentennial.

In tribute to the development and progress of 150 years, hardy, delicious recipes reflect natural products of the state as well as the diversity of its ethnic population and community lifestyles. Typical recipes from areas with notable concentrations of specific ethnic groups include: an Amish-Mennonite Tapioca Pudding, Czech Kolaches, a Danish Kringle, Norwegian Rye Bread, Dutch Currant Bread, and others.

Band night, church social, or just backyard ice cream recipes preserve a culture that still prevails in many Iowa communities. There are prize recipes for preserving the bounty of the backyard garden, including: pickles, chutneys, and jams and jellies. And with an air of "State Fair," recipes for meats and poultry abound, along with the breads, pies, cakes, and cookies.

"Seeing Iowa" lists many of the well-known, and not-so-well-known, places of interest to travel and see. Line drawings illustrating some of these attractions are found throughout the book, which presents a nostalgic flavor of the past along with the vitality of the present - for example, there is a section of recipes with the ease of preparation and serving tailored to suit the "Tailgator."

Excellent for personal collections and as a memento of Iowa.

This is a beautifully written, poignant story that takes us into the heart of a grieving family after the unexpected and sudden death of the mother. The prose is crystalline and strong; the grief tender and real as slowly, small transformations of healing begin to occur.
A great story for adults as well.

THE LINDEN TREE is just about a perfect example of the gentle, thoughtful, nostalgic story of an old-fashioned family; it is set in the 1940s on an Iowa farm, told from the viewpoint of the ten-year-old youngest sister. At the story's outset, the children's mother has died suddenly, of meningitis. She has been buried under a linden tree on a hill on the family farm. The tree and its setting provide a reference point for the family's loving memories of her and their good-hearted efforts to find some happiness in the shadow of their loss.

The sadness of losing a wie and mother is a constant in the story, but the movement of the narrative is toward healing and incorporating the feelings of love and loss into a wholesome appreciation of the present--of the family's blessings, as they put it.

Apart from the account of the mother's death, there are no moments of high drama or sensational plot-twists in THE LINDEN TREE. Rather the story moves patiently and steadily along, telling of Aunt Katherine's joining the family, the arrival and departure of a charming transient hired man, the family's managing to have a merry Christmas in a sad time, their going to a church social, the county fair, the birth of a calf, doing the chores, canning the garden produce, and other homely, realistic details of life on the farm.

It is an ideal book for young readers interested in the way real people live and have lived, and who take satisfaction in imagining a way of life both similar to their own and subtly different in its tenor. THE LINDEN TREE is a sane, well-crafted novel.

...it was, for me, like a book of travelers' tales, about a land I myself am about to enter. Instead of dry academic posturing, "Love In A Global Village" led me on a dozen journeys taken, before me, by people with whom I could relate. I had actually met one of them, I found, a woman in Evanston, Shirlee Taraki, who married a man from Kabul and moved to Afghanistan. I knew something of her story, but I found out a lot more by reading Jessie Grearson and Lauren Smith's book. I'd recommend this to anyone who wants to know about the day-to-day adventures and difficulties in an intercultural relatrionship.

Jessie Grearson and Lauren Smith have written a fine companion to their earlier book SWAYING, which was a compendium of writings by people in international, interracial, and intercultural marriages. This time, in LOVE IN A GLOBAL VILLAGE, Smith and Grearson are the authors, telling the stories of fifteen intermarried couples they have interviewed. Cynics (such as the anonymous author of an unfortunate review in Publisher's Weekly) may wish to see conflict, dysfunction, anger, poverty, and misery in intercultural families. To suggest, as that review does, that such negativities are the usual lot of intermarriages is a racist mistake. Grearson and Smith eschew such unthinking racism. Instead, they show us families as they are. The families they interviewed sometimes suffered the effects of racism and poverty. But the message here is ultimately one of confidence and hope. That is because these families basically work. As one who has interviewed thousands of intermarried couples and their children (author of Mixed Blood: Intermarriage and Ethnic Identity in 20th-Century America), I found Grearson and Smith's account rang true. The book is also beautifully produced by the University of Iowa Press. I recommend it heartily.

This book is a translation of a book by Nicholas Gonner, editor and publisher of the Luxemburger Gazette (a newspaper published in Dubuque, Iowa, from before 1872 till 1917) is an essential resource for anyone interested in Luxemburgers in the USA. Not only is there a translation of his book, but there is a lot of other data for a person seeking more information in regard to Luxemburg's presence in the USA. For instance, on page 157 there is a neat picture of Holy Trinity Church and cemetery in Luxemburg, Iowa, as it appeared in 1972 and on page 160 there is a 1910 picture of the main street in Remsen, Iowa. There is an excellent index. The book is a treasure!

A "must have" for all descendants of immigrants from Luxembourg to the USA. Nicholas Gonner (1835-1892) became the publisher of the 'Luxemburger Gazette' in 1872. He published 'Die Luxemburger in der Neuen Welt' in German, in 1889 in Dubuque, Iowa. In 1987 the book has been re-published in Luxembourg, translated into English as 'Luxembourgers in the New World', with numerous new chapters added. The editors Jean Ensch, Jean-Claude Muller and Robert E. Owen have compiled a second volume. The second volume contains all the known names of emigrants from Luxembourg and all Luxembourg towns that have appeared in the 'Luxemburger Gazette' between 1871 and 1918. The listing includes the date and page number of the publication in which a given name appeared. For instance, the name: Reuland, Jacob appeared in the following issues: March 22, 1887, page 5, April 25, 1893, page 5, February 25, 1908, page 5, May 25, 1909, page 5, July 20, 1909, page 5.

This collection of short stories is great reading! The vivid imagery inspire the reader to read on and on until the entire book has been devoured! The stories about families and dysfunction are incredible and heartwrenching at times. I recomend this book for anyone who likes to be led on a journey into the unknown and end up in a place you knew all along.

I bought this book because I was in a local bookstore, and I happened upon a reading-in progress. It was Lex Williford reading from "Macauley's Thumb". It sounded so interesting-I bought the book, and I was not dissapointed. The characters are everyday people with everyday problems, though a little eccentric. I have reread the book at least three times since purchasing it, and I see somthing new in the stories with each read. I hope that Mr. Williford has more stories up his sleeve.

I read this book and absolutely loved it. It is a great story for anyone who feels left out or "In the middle". I first read it in junior high and it gave me a character to identify with and a story to enjoy as well. I read it again and again.

Maudie in the Middle is a book about a girl who is in the middle of seven children. She felt that being in the middle she got the worst of everything, because she had to go do chores instead of staying home to play with the youngest children, and she was to young to go do exciting things with her three oldest siblings. Maudie dreamed of being Aunt Sylvie's godchild so that she would get special atention from someone. Maudie thought that if she was good enugh her wish would come true. But it was to hard not to get in to trouble on the farm that she lived in the early 1900's.

Wilkinson's book was beyound astounding, it was magnificent! The book went beyond normal standards and it reached a higher level of apexes. This book should not only be read in every classroom throughout the U.S., but it should be momrized, analyzed, and loved, because it is truly worth all of that. Wilkinson truly knows how to write and for that, everyone should at least read a chapter.

This is a neat book, telling of the author's life on and off an Iowa farm from his birth on Sept 22, 1892, till he finished college in 1917. I was surprised how I was moved by it, tho he is a generation before me. Some of the farming practices he describes (such as threshing from stacks) I only heard about, but others were not too different from when I was a boy in a different part of Iowa. Any one who grew up on a farm or has rural roots will be affected by this book, maybe not as powerfully as was I but it is a very pleasant book to read. The author's few poems (which were published in papers at times) are in the book, and they while not great poetry have a charm which surprises. This volume is a worthy component of Iowa State University Press' Iowa Heritage Collection.

I was skeptical when I read the title. "Retirement" sounds attractive but more like a porch swing than a poem. Relax. Well, there's a lot more to think about it, like these lines from the one by Kelly Cherry: "those who thought they could do better / than the old man / and were surprised / when they returned from far off / to discover that their hearts had burned down / and they had to rebuild." Take Me With You When You Go

75 Poems on Retirement is an anthology of poems by a diversity of male and female writers, all ranging in age from their fifties to their eighties. Some are retired; some are contemplating retirement; all offer their unique, sometimes disconcerting, sometimes witty, sometimes thoughtful insights into this turning point of one's life. Most of the poems are free-verse and brief in length, though all have the resonating power of reflection borne from personal experience. "Open House": I work as hard as I can / to have nothing to do. // Birds climb their rich ladder / of choruses. // They have tasted the top of the tree, / but they are not staying. // The whole sky says, / Your move.

I was delighted to see that this wonderful novel was being reissued in paperback. Snap it up now, before the vagueries of market forces get their way with this work, a rare touching piece of literary fiction! Plot, characterization and setting all tell perfectly the story of a girl coming of age, but above all, the writing is what makes me come back to this work again and again. A real command for portraying the complex magic realism of everyday life make this head shoulders one of the top published works in America in this year, or any.

Simply put, you won't find better writing. On the surface a coming-of-age novel, young Anna's story touches on just about everything that matters: love, sex, betrayal, loyalty, truth. This is a book that you can read again and again. It's something of a well-kept secret, but we should share the wealth: Read this book and then tell every book lover you know.

History plus wonderful photographs. Mary Kay Shanley is not only a published author but an excellent teacher (Iowa Writers Festival). If you are interested in learning about memoir, I highly recommend her.

This book absolutely overflows with memories for anyone who has grown up attending the Iowa State Fair. The pictures that date back from the very first fair to the most recent years show just how the Iowa State Fair has become a pasttime for so many families and groups of people. It's a very heartwarming book for an Iowan to have in their home. Growing up, the Iowa State Fair was my family vacation destination each year, and continues to be. The pictures in the book and stories enrich my many memories and also have enlightened me of the history of the Iowa State Fair as it has grown over the years and turned into an absolute two-week hysteria for all visitors. This book is just wonderful.