Iowa Books

This book's wonderful clear, color photos make this book an excellent guide for beginners or casual wildflower observers.

"Sylvan T. Runkel, best known as "Sy," is widely respected for his special ability to communicate with young people as well as adults in a warm and sensitive manner.
He has helped plan conservation education programs, develop outdoor classrooms, and lay out nature trails...."

"Alvin F. (Al) Bull, at the time of his sudden and unexpected death in 1982, was vice-president of Farm Progress Companies and editorial director for Indiana Prairie Farmer, Prairie Farmer, Wallaces Farmer, and Wisconsin Agriculturist...."

"This book was designed to HELP THE CASUAL OBSERVER BECOME BETTER ACQUAINTED with the more interesting wildflowers of the state's woodlands....."
[from the book]

Baskets are more than a hobby to Joanna E. Schanz; they're a way of life. The Iowa native apprenticed with one of the last old-time basketmakers. Her baskets have garnered her a regional and a growing national reputation.

Joanna divides her time between basketry and running several family-owned businesses (including furniture and refinishing shops) with her husband Norman. The traditional willow basketry of the Amana Colonies, where Joanna and her family make their home, is the biggest inspiration behind Joanna's work, but she also experiments with new materials and methods of basketmaking. Lecturing and demonstrating basketry techniques at conventions and art fairs are among Joanna's many craft activities.

Her book covers the history of basketmaking in the Amana Colonies with examples shown of the historic baskets. There are about two dozen historic photographs showing baskets in use in the daily lives of the Amana people before the Great Change in 1932. There are no pre-1900 photographs showing the Amana people, let alone their basketry. The elders of the religious community did not at that time approve of photography or the decorative arts.

The Amana people did not consider baskets an art form or collectible, but rather a strictly utilitarian necessity. The photographs in this book from the 1900-32 era show that baskets were used extensively as an aid to gardening, field planting, and harvesting, as well as for picnics.

Basketmakers of today in the Amana Colonies-Joanna, Laura Kleinmeyer and Kathy Kellenberger-are featured with their willow baskets. Illustrated directions show exactly how to make six baskets. They are the round laundry basket, small oval Easter basket, oval community kitchen basket, strawberry picker, apple-picker and the Amana Colony willow basket.

A unique feature of the round basket historically created in the Colonies is the round removable base that can be replaced when worn-a solution of the thrifty German pioneers who came to the Amanas in the1850s seeking religious freedom.

The newly revised and substantially updated seventh edition of Wilson's Practical Meat Inspection by W. G. Wilson is a documented and in-depth descriptive survey of animal processing and the associated dangers of infected and diseased meats. Expertly and methodically guiding readers through comprehensive study of the intricacies of processing meat products, Wilson's Practical Meat Inspection provides an analysis of diseases, disorders, infections, viruses, and other issues damaging or endangering particular meats, while providing readers with a practical and well established reference to meat safety related legislation. As a textbook study of animal produce and the food industry, as well as its cautionary details of the meat processing industry in an age of BSE, foot-and-mouth disease, and other potential meat-related health hazards, Wilson's Practical Meat Inspection is confidently recommended reading for food safety activists, government policy makers, meat quality control inspectors, meat processors, food scientists, and the non-specialist general reader seeking a sound, well written introduction to meat processing, meat inspection, meat safety related issues.

Samuel Byers was born in 1838 and served in an Iowa regiment during the Civil War. He saw very heavy fighting and served 16 months in a Confederate prison from which he is lucky to have survived. It took him 2 years to recover his health afterwards. While a prisoner he wrote the Civil War poem, "Sherman's March to the Sea", which was very popular in the North and sold over a million copies. Mr. Byers was an enthusiastic supporter of the North and has written extensively on the subject including the book, "Iowa in Wartime".

"With Fire and Sword" is his personal first hand account of the war and his time in a Confederate prison. It speaks of hardship, life & death, valor, patriotism, horror, and the emotions of living in the most bitter and divisive time in American history. Byers is at his best when describing scenes that he saw with his own eyes. This book is a full and wide ranging memoir, rich in details of camp, battlefield, and prison, with the added bonus of Byers's close hand observations of General Sherman during the Carolina campaign. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in this period of our nation's history.

Lisa Lenzo deserved the awards for this book, the Iowa Short Fiction Award and the John Simmons Short Fiction Award. Her stories have been described as "achingly lyrical, but never sentimental, street-smart without being callous.." and I would agree with that. Ann Beattie also says it better than me, "...we are offered more of a landscape than a map, yet its interlocking pieces gradually form a whole that seems greater than the sum of its parts. In some way, it would seem we've all walked there." I think there's a good chance that she will become a best-seller in the future. Reading this wonderful, engaging book would be getting in on the ground floor.

For all those who love Iowa, the landscape and the barns of Iowa!

This comprehensive book documents the picturesque barns of an Iowa that will never exist again as today's farmers choose metal buildings to replace the grand barns of the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

More than 160 barns, located in virtually every county of Iowa, are shown in this interesting collection of black-and-white photographs with text by Lowell Soike, a historian with the State Historical Society of Iowa. Penfield Press of Iowa City is the publisher of the second edition of this work,

The photographs date back to 1983 when the book was first published. Many people have used this book as a guide to finding the round barns of Iowa. While many of the barns are still standing, others have disappeared. Most round barns are not in use today.

One chapter shows the moving of the Tonsfeldt barn from the edge of Le Mars to the Plymouth County Fairgrounds in Le Mars, where it stands today. Tonsfeldt built the barn in 1919 to show purebred livestock and to feature Ito's Perfection, his prize Hereford bull.

Ideal for home and a wonderful gift!

Wolf That I Am is both a lyrical account of a white mans struggle to understand American Indian culture and an intense personal journey of self-discovery and wisdom. The book recounts Fred McTaggart's experiences among the Fox tribe--Sac and Fox as they are commonly known--of Iowa in his attempt to collect and record folklore for his dissertation.

During this process, McTaggart slowly comes to the realization that Indian communities, due to a long history of all manner of abuse, are not always eager to become the object of academic study, regardless of the "good" intentions involved. Wolf That I Am should be standard reading for anyone planning research in American Indian communities or interested in American Indian studies in general.

Indeed, this book should be required reading for all Americans, many of whom continue to hold to fanciful idealizations, which not only dehumanize and demean the very people they purport to describe, but reinforces the Noble/Savage binary that has defined the relationship between Euro-Americans and Indians, which makes a free exchange of ideas all but impossible. As McTaggart shows, it is only through getting to know people of different cultures in an intimate and involved way that we can ever hope to truly understand and appreciate the great value of human cultural diversity. However, he could not achieve this subjectivity until he opened himself to the realities of American Indian life that is only attainable through a great deal of determination and care, which also allowed him to see the subtle prejudices with which he, and most Americans are raised.

While the path to understanding is often a difficult one, McTaggart demonstrates that such a holistic consciousness, free of heirarcical divisions and value judgement can be achieved if only we are willing to reassess our own beliefs. For as long one promotes in the self a willingness to open one's mind and heart to the sacred ways of others--in a way that grants their beliefs the respect and dignity that we would require for our own--the way to knowledge and wisdom will remain open to us.

In a second printing,in 2000, this book originally published in 1981 continues to give a look at some of the roles women traditionally filled in the decades after World War II. The photographer points out "In the years these images were taken very few middle-class women worked outside of their homes. The roles then assigned to women separated us from business, from politics and from each other."

Weston Naef, then assistant curator of phototraph at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, selected two of these images, Nan Wood Graham, Model for American Gothic, 1975, and Junior League Christmas Party, 1962 for the museum's photography collection.

Many of the images have gentle satire such as the Coe College Faculty Wives Club with a painting of a semi-nude by Kunyioshi and disapproving members.

The photographer says, "during the years I took these photographs, I did not realize how they documented the limited roles of women. I wanted to explore their lives to see why my own life seemed so alienated and different from theirs in so many instances. With the birth of the women's movement in the 1960s, these photographs ultimately had all kinds of meanings from the era.

The photographs have been exhibited at the New York City Camera Club and in many galleries.

I bought this guide at the Living History Farms gift shop in Des Moines and was pleasantly surprised to learn it was published in my hometown. This is a portable, durable, beautifully illustrated guide to identifying some of the most common woodland plants of the Midwest. My family has taken this guide along on outings, and we have found it a very helpful way to connect with our natural surroundings. My pre-teen daughter especially has enjoyed closely examining the plants we encounter to see if they match up with the examples in the guide. This guide is probably most useful in the spring, when most woodland plants are in bloom. Also recommend *Prairie in Your Pocket* by the same illustrator.