Iowa Books

Continued quality on Photo Archive sreies this time for Hart-Parr tractors. Hart-Parr and Oliver fans have been waiting for this one. Great pictures of all the old Hart-Parr tractors. I would recommend this book.

Mildred Norman has written a very informative and entertaining book about the mid-20th century. As baby boomer whose parents lived through this amazing period I found the book full of new insights. Norman's optimistic outlook, humbleness, and sense of humor give the book a personality not usually found in such memoirs. I highly recommend this book for those who want to get a sense of the Great Depression, WWII and the post war period. Definitely not a history oriented book -- just a great read.

Nile C. Kinnick played halfback at the University of Iowa and won the Heisman Trophy in 1939. He was also senior class president, a brilliant economics student, and later, a WWII Navy pilot. Paul Baender has compiled Kinnick's diary and selected letters in the life of this extraordinary man.

The first half of the book contains letters of Kinnick from his college days onward up through his Navy service. Baender does his best to provide explanations and historical context either before or after each letter. The book's second half contains Kinnick's diary, followed by Baender's explanations at the end. My only complaint is that Baender would have provided some sort of conclusive end to the book.

It is fascinating to read such wonderful prose from Kinnick's letters and diary. College life and the game of football has certainly changed since 1939, but Kinnick's hopes, dreams and struggles are the same as we feel today. He was not perfect, but I find it remarkable that Kinnick, a country boy from Iowa born long ago, recognized racial inequality in his domestic travels.

Nile Clark Kinnick was killed in on a flight training mission during WWII, one of thousands of U.S. casualties. The act of reading this compilation of Kinnick's writings has helped me see the personal courage, honor, and integrity with which thousands of veterans have served, and has helped illustrate the weight of the struggle in which we were engaged. If you want to read about a great man, pick up this book.

Editor Jane Cox presents 12 compelling voices from ordinary Iowa people who were just doing what was expected of them during World War II. In these stories, we read human details from people who had not spoken about their experiences for decades, and we are fortunate that those experiences are now immortalized so that in this time of the 30 second political spin, we can not forgot the real sacrifices that the everyday person was willing to make to secure the freedom of so many people unknown to them.

For anyone who may wonder what goes on in minds of `men who lead lives of quiet desperation,' author David Borofka offers insights in his award-winning, finely wrought short story collection, `The Hints of His Mortality.' Most of the stories draw the reader in by using a similar narrative device: men speaking of their lives, describing other people as if their identities are defined by their roles in men's lives--`my wife,' `Grimshaw's wife,' `Parker's sister-in-law,' `Cunningham's father,' `Scot's girlfriend,' `his first wife.' Sometimes the protagonist is introduced by his last name only: `The sun was setting when Anderson turned back toward the highway . . . '; `Years later Ferguson would remember. . . .' (James Joyce used this technique in `Eveline' in `Dubliners': `She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue.') This style sets the tone for the storytelling; it compels a reader's need to know who is this person.

Thus, who might the `His' be in `Hints of His Mortality'? While all of the stories contain clues, the answer is found, first, in prefatory lines quoted from William Wordsworth's `Ode, Intimations of Immortality from Recollection of Early Childhood'; second, it's revealed in the eponymous final story of this thematically interrelated collection: `Years later Ferguson would remember-as the disabled 727 in which he was trapped as a passenger sank into the twilight of morning clouds-how his first wife had disappeared or died (he never knew which) in the fog of the Central Valley of California'; third, it's limned in `Epilogue,' which is a final story about two brothers and a fateful encounter. Whose mortality? It's Ferguson's and Anderson's and that of the other men in these stories. As they reflect on their lives, and what they have made of them, the reader becomes a privileged party to what is going on their minds: their anxieties, their regrets, their recriminations, and their rationalizations.

Mr. Borofka is a fine writer. His writing is not always easy to read because it answers the perennial question that has been put to silent men: what are you thinking? `Life is indeed a garden of pain, that men and women are born for trouble and heartache, and that lyricism of experience is nothing but a chimera of our most fraudulent desires?'

This book is a fantastic account of the history of a great small town! Events will be forgotten if people don't start writing things down for future generations.This book outlines every detail from the beginning of Holy Cross to 1990. Donna did a great job!

An update and extension of the 1884 edition. Contains many individual family writeups plus historical sketches of townships and towns, all enriched with photographs of individuals, family groups, towns, churches and schools. Obviously cannot cover every family in Mitchell County, but does a reasonable job of covering quite a few, since it relies on personal writeups from family members and not all families may have responded to the invitation to submit a sketch. Lots of information of interest to any genealogy researcher.

There is an online version of this book available at http://genloc.com/1887/index.htm.
It includes a searchable database that is great for genealogy info.

I was very pleased with this book. The editors that added valuable information shoud be commended. Seeing a picture of my GGGrandfather in his uniform and . . . realizing that his autobiography had been used in the narrative was just amazing to me. I have read this book so many times now that it is getting a bit "used" looking. This book now tells the real story of this regiment. The additions that were added increased the value of this book. It is now a piece of my family's history!

The homeplace is a book that simply takes you into another world, a world of love for the land and love between the two main characters - Cathie, a schoolteacher, who's family owned the farm once, and Rob, the city newcomer who bought the farm. It's so easy to sympathize with Cathie's feelings about the rude city slicker who came into her life and turned them upside down with his laughing remarks about her upcoming marriage, and with his fiery kisses. On the other hand it's also easy to sympathize with Rob, who only recently got reunited with the son he hasn't seen since Tad was 1 year old, and moved into the farm in order to try and give his son a chance for a real life. The homeplace is a story based on reality. At the end of the book Dailey tells of her experience as a child living in a farm owned by her great-grandmother. She managed to put all the love she felt for the land into Cathie's words and thoughts. It is a book that's easy to love. It makes you feel for the characters, and participate in what thet're going through.