Minnesota Books

I wish he would update the book for the MMPI2. It is invaluable even the way it is!

Lewak's approach to client feedback is unique and powerful, destined to change the face of psychological feedback! I highly recommend it!

In this important book, Bruyneel turns the post-colonialist lens back on the US. The book does an exquisite job detailing the various contests and spheres of sovereignty at play in indigenous struggles. Bruyneel gives equal attention to settler and settled, and avoids the cheap shots of American-Indigenous politics, thinking seriously about the questions of power and legitimacy that define American-Indigenous relations. This books is highly readable, easily teachable and, most importantly, politically engaged in a way that disrespects disciplinary boundaries in American studies, American political development and political theory.

Bruyneel's work is particularly important for anyone studying American politics who imagines that post-colonial analysis is something that takes place elsewhere.

Ron Schmidt is a fascinating story teller who unfolds the history of the City of the Angels based upon the City's most infamous protagonist, the LAPD. We all know the characters: :Hollywood film studios, the Chandlers, Darryl Gates, Rodney King, Tom Bradley and even Humphrey Bogart. Not just intellectually stimulating, but captivating and astonishing. A book every Angeleno should have on the shelf. Ron Schmidt has distinguished himself as a preeminent scholar of LA history. Mike Davis - so long.

An interesting and original approach to the powers of the mass media on the citizenry of Los Angeles, specifically, from the turn of the 20th century to around 1973, with ramifications continuing on to the present day. Schmidt's thesis concludes that the powers-that-be of LalaLand have used the persuasive power of the press(specifically Harrison Grey Otis and the L.A. Times) and the entertainment industry(movies and television) to provide role models for L.A...ones which strive to inculcate the virtues of self-reliance, justice and respect for the law, albeit safely within the confines of the prevailing political power structures. At best, they would create model citizens who would imitate these qualities and thrive in a community of hard-working and productive law-abiding citizens...but without the political and progressive independence which would jeopardize the status quo. At worst, they encouraged a passive and subservient relationship to those in power.

According to Schmidt, after the riots of 1965 put paid to the loftier model described above, this strategy, further championed by L.A. police chief William H. Parker and exemplified by the 1950's incarnation of television's Dragnet, devolved into a rather cynical attempt to train Los Angelenos to respect the law and accept the fact that their city was a dystopian wasteland. They had better get used to the fact that they may be forced to cooperate with the police at any given time. In other words, keep your nose clean, don't rock the boat, and cooperate with the powers-that-be.

Schmidt makes it clear that to imitate (but not strive beyond) the populist vision of America, the individualist who by definition followed no particular drummer is an inherent paradox, and that such a strategy is doomed to failure. In his final chapter, he uses the themes of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner as an example of what such an approach might have in store for Los Angeles if taken to the nth degree. Food for thought for Los Angelinos and those interested in the plight of urban communities everywhere. I must also mention that there are photographs (many saturated with irony), and illuminating (and where Dragnet is mentioned, very funny) endnotes.

Good book for this kids. They will want you to read it again and again.

A beautiful book detailing our unique winged friends. I enjoyed learning along with my boys! The illustrations are precious with great attention to detail. I liked that they are shown in various stages of development and in their natural habitat. A must have for all nature enthusiasts~ Thanks for the journey Katrina!

Author, Alice Vollmar has live in Minnesota for the past 28 years. Who better to write a book about the area? Divided by region, this book offers information on dining, recreation, lodging, camping, and rates each using a four star system. It takes the guess work out of planning a trip to the area. A great guide for visitor and resident alike.

In addition, "101 Things To Do on the Wisconsin Great River Road", is a great gift idea.

This travel guide book is one that you'll actually keep in the front seat of the car and use. It's a nice size and contains lots of extra resource information, too.

I purchased this book not knowing anything prior about it or the author, Robert Treuer. I found the book to be thoroughly enjoyable and hard to put down. I have had it for less than a year and have already read it twice. I highly recommend the book for anyone who is a nature lover, has strong family values, or has ever dreamed of (or experienced) living in the country.

A gentle flow of beautiful words and thought, all coming together to expose his wonderful view on human and natures life. I will never look at trees, tree farms and those who create and manage them the same again. Treuer has given me new loves--life and the time we borrow our space, and nature. Treuer has surely connected with nature. I recommend it most highly.

Gamboa is, quite simply, a genius. This is not hyperbolie.

This book documents one of the greatest artistic minds in Chicano art, American art, and art in general. This work will rupture your reality. Read it.

Harry Gamboa, Jr. is the most important figure in what could loosely be termed the Chicano avant-garde art movement. His innovative work is grounded in histories of political activism, particularly the Chicano civil rights movement. This book is exciting on many levels. It showcases Gamboa's role as an interdisciplinary thinker, writer, and visual artist. A must have book!

For at least the last quarter of a century, American culture has been gripped by a tangible sense of fear and uncertainty about its inner cities.

This perception of the inner city as a dark, depressing and amoral place is not a new phenomenon; think Charles Dickens and Victorian England. More recently, there was a "liberal" period in the early 1950s; books like Michael Harrington's "The Other America" helped bring about Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs. Aside from that, the end of World War II brought about the beginning of white flight to the suburbs. The difference in income between whites and blacks grew wider and wider.

After the 1960s riots, and especially since the Reagan Administration, conservatives have gone on the offensive, painting the city as some sort of evil, horrible place full of people who don't think or act like "we" do. Welfare programs cause poverty and dependency. Inner city residents lack a sense of ethics or morality. While federal subsidies to cities were being slashed, that money was used to build more prisons. Minor crimes like vagrancy or graffiti were suddenly being treated much more seriously. Remember how "welfare queens" were supposed to be the cause of America's problems? Remember the teenage "super-predators" who were supposed to flow into the suburbs like a tidal wave, leading to a huge increase in gated communities and the purchase of home security systems?

Advertising and the movies are just as guilty of giving the perception that the inner cities should be simply walled off and forgotten. Evidently, things like the moving of jobs to the suburbs, police racism, the ending of "welfare as we know it," and the lack of mass transit to get to those suburban jobs have nothing to do with the present state of America's cities.

This book does a fine job at showing the latest attempt to find a scapegoat, to blame the poor and downtrodden, for America's problems. More importantly, this book is quite readable; the author keeps it from sounding like a dry, academic tome. It is very much worth reading.

College-level collections strong in urban studies will welcome the survey teacher Steve Macek offers up in URBAN NIGHTMARES: THE MEDIA, THE RIGHT, AND THE MORAL PANIC OVER THE CITY. Its chapters survey issues of urban blight, crime, and hopelessness, drawing links between these conditions and the media, which has validated the right-wing analysis of the urban crisis through news and TV reports. Is the media biased against cities?

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

As Katrina reminded us, America's cities are in trouble, with the poorest and nonwhite residents most at risk. How did things get this way? What good is fiction in the face of such misery and neglect? James Lee tackles these difficult questions with unusual grace, subtly exploring how writers of color gained praise in the 1980s just as the urban communities they wrote about were being eviscerated by Reagan and his policies. While this book focuses on the 1980s, it continues to reverberate today in often tragic ways, as we have not stopped dividing our failures into three: those that need immediate assistance, those that can wait, and those that are beyond hope. This is required reading for anyone who believes the third category should not be growing quite so fast!

Urban communities of color--communities under political and economic siege-produced our great American literatures in the last decades of the twentieth century. Lee reveals the fierce embattled beauty of these places and their books. With sobering precision and compelling moral vision, he maps out the artistry, anxiety, inspiration, loss, and contradiction which are all a part of what Stevie Wonder called "living just enough for the city." This book courageously indicts neo-conservatism's massive looting of civic wealth as a crime against American humanity.

Loved it. Sad to research and find out that Nancy Walker is no longer alive. I wanted to call and thank her for writing this.

Why is the class clown usually a boy? Why does everyone laugh when guys tell fart and booger jokes, but if a woman tells the same jokes, the jokes fall flat? Why do women value a sense of humor in a man, but men rarely mention it as important in their ideal woman? Imagine a woman writing a Dave Barry-style column--it wouldn't work. There IS a difference. Nancy Walker's book really connected with me. I learned about women humorists writing at the same time Mark Twain was, about the minority aspects of humor, and why women are reluctant to appear funny to men, but not to each other. For a scholarly book, this was a fun (and funny) read.