Minnesota Books

Here's a short quote from this book:

"The ... narrative overflows with familiar icons of childhood and small-town American life - daydreams and disappointments, abseball and Boy Scouts, lawn ornaments and storm windows, Main Street and Founder's Square. But Keillor works his local-color material so that it debunks the same sentimentality and nostalgia that it evokes. ... in the final analysis the narrator's praise for small-town America is about as trustworthy as the boy's booming baritone."

Such a complex fella. Keillor left Lake Wobegone for a clear and understandable reason: he was stultified by the environment and the atmosphere where "artsy" types were viewed with deep suspicion and contempt.

However, this was the ground he stood on, unlike so many others, and it became his lifelong meal ticket...

Phelan's book is still cutting edge. She asks and answers important questions about how to identify political battles and mobilize for change. Should women fight for 'women's issues'? Does the entire GLBT community have a responsibility to each other to stand shoulder-to-shoulder to fight for marriage rights? Phelan's book offers an interesting insight into questions such as these and challenges many "party lines" about unity and political accomplishment. The book is brief and easy to read. A perfect text for a women's studies course or for anyone interested in political activism in the postmodern world.

Jasentha Cliffwalker is a Nidé Apache woman who lives most of the year in a tent with Striker, her coal black German Shepherd. She is an eco-biologist who is studying brown bats. She has been living on Bodine land outside of Tombstone, Arizona for the last four years doing this. In fact she grew up on Bodine land as her father worked for the Bodines.

Morgan Earp Bodine is the acting sheriff of Tombstone as his brother Wyatt Earp Bodine, the real sheriff, has had to take some time off because of his wife's complicated pregnancy. And yes, before you ask, there is another brother and his name is, surprise, surprise, Virgil Earp Bodine.

One day, Morgan comes by Jasentha's camp and all of a sudden it seems those old sparks are igniting. You see they were in love when they were children, only Morgan's father didn't want his son dating a Nidé woman and Jaz's father didn't want her dating a white man. So now they are the best of friends and he has given her unrestricted use of Morgan land to conduct her studies. However bats are not the only reason she needs to use Morgan land. She has another secret reason. One she can't even tell Morgan about, but will she tell him once the romance starts heating up again? And it will heat up it again, you can bet you bottom dollar on that.

I just love the stories written by Anne Marie Duquette. Ms. Duquette always delivers delicious romance and a first rate story to go with it. Her characters are as real as your neighbors, just a darned sight more interesting. I loved this book and I think you will as well.

A Harlequin Dreamers Review by Gracie Houston

Carlson is a wonderful storyteller. Her humorous account of working in a formerly all-male company full of good-ole boy Minnesota Scandinavians provides a wonderful backdrop for a discussion of the history of gender issues in the workplace. "The Girls are Coming" is a piquant slice of American history which precedes the more modern, white-collar lament of the 'glass ceiling'.

As a student of the Hindi film, this book is a rich resource on the music of the Hindi film. Many times film music is more popular than the film--being released prior to the film, film music is often the bellweather as to a film's success or failure!! This volume will give you new insight into how music is made, marketed and exploited to enhance a film's success, or failure!

THE GOD-SEEKER (1949) is, in my opinion, the most under-rated of Sinclair Lewis's many novels. Contemporary critics treated this late work as if they were waiting for an aging Babe Ruth to break his own home run record once again in his final year at bat. Perhaps THE GOD-SEEKER lacks the wall-clearing oomph of ELMER GANTRY, but it is a solid inside the park home run by a master student of American evangelical religion. It is time for a publishing revival of THE GOD-SEEKER.

For the novel is vintage Sinclair Lewis. Hero Aaron Gadd falls in love with two women at once durng his career as a novice missionary among the Minnesota Sioux. He faces the recurring Sinclair Lewis "great decision:" to be single-minded (and probably celibate) in the pursuit of (in this instance "religious") greatness or instead to "play" with women and bloviate, hunt and fish with men friends and other distractions. There is no happy compromise with any man's call to any form of greatness.

The story moves quickly from one scene to another: with Aaron Gadd a youth in rocky New England, coming of age on the wild Minnesota frontier, maturing into a solid, sometimes avant garde citizen of Territorial Minnesota.

And then there is made-in-America religion throughout: churches and fads of the late 1840s: cultists, nudists, free thinkers, Calvinists and anti-Calvinists, theologians and American pulpit glory seekers. The book is worth reading for its serious, humorous and satirical portrayals of religion if for no other reason.

Astonishly good, satiric, often true, deeply tragic is chapter 41 in which "I, Black Wolf, son of Shining Wind, of the Wahpeton Council Fire, being a pure-blood Dakota and a member of the medicine lodge, but having attended a school of the white people [NOTE: OBERLIN COLLEGE], am herewith warning my people...." against the white invaders and their superstitions. To this patriotic Sioux, the Catholic Trinity is Father, Son and Mother Mary. "The Protestants have no trinity, but a four-god council consisting of Father, Son, Holy Spirit and Satan." White people's demigods include Santa Claus, witches, vampires and spirits of the dead. This is cross-cultural humor verging on the intoxicated (which Black Wolf sometimes was). But Jesus was a brave, poor, humble "beautiful young god" whom the Sioux can easily worship.

THE GOD-SEEKER is not on film, is not one of the 25 known movie or TV adaptations of a Lewis novel or short story. But it should be. It tells one person''s life from boyhood to a religious mission, to service to slaves and the poor, to mastery of a craft, to marriage and fatherhood. And it presents many snapshots of American religious leaders, real and fictional. The novel abounds with the religious texture of America, mainly northern but also southern in one or two cases.

At the close of Ch. 16, one of the youthful Aaron Gadd's Massachusetts pastoral mentors left this advice somewhere deep forever in Aaron's memory: "Our forebears ought to of loved the Baptists, but they drove 'em out. If you ever get to be a minister, Aary, you love wrong Christians just as much as you love right Christians. The shadow of the same cross falls on both of them."

THE GOD-SEEKER is studded with descriptions, aphorisms, debates and humor which thoroughly deserve new readers.

-OOO-

Good does an excellent job ,when compared to the rest of the philosophers,economists,and psychologists who have written on Keynes's views on probability,in realizing that Keynes's probabilities were fundamentally intervals(upper-lower limits or bounds) defined by inequality constraints.Unfortunately,Good never specifies where ,in Keynes's 1921 A Treatise on Probability(TP),that Keynes does this.The answer is in chapters 15 and 17 of the TP.Keynes then applies this approach in chapters 20 and 22.Again, Good is correct in stating that Keynes's treatment, in chapter 20 of the TP on analogy and induction, provides the best mathematical-logical treatment of the subject(TP,pp.235-37,254-257).Good never takes Ramsey to task for his completely false characterizations and claims about Keynes's nonnumerical,non-comparable,indeterminate probabilities approach supposedly not using any numbers at all.It is incredible that this blunder has been universally accepted by economists,philosophers ,and psychologists for over 80 years.Similarly,Good fails to state that Keynes's approach is an improved and modified version of Boole's original interval estimate approach contained in chapters 16-21 of Boole's 1854 The Laws of Thought.Lastly,Good overlooks the work of Theodore Hailperin, who showed that all of the Boole-Keynes problems could be restated and solved using linear programming solutions techniques.
Good does correctly show that Ramsey's theory only works if all the probabilities are " sharp"(unique,precise,exact,single number answers)and is severely constrained in the cases where probabilities are not " sharp".

I recommend this book.It at least demonstrates a satisfactory,though not full and complete, understanding of Keynes's contributions to the logic of probability.

Paul really outlines in alternating chapters the demise of the heartland's habitats for birds, grasses, and grazing herbivores that once dominated the scene. He explains some of the keys in this transformation, beginning with how we farm and how we farm. Ultimately though, he offers solutions and provides some hope that habitats for prairie animals and the prairies themselves could all return if our culture chose to eat Bison meat instead of cows. I read this when it was published many years ago and haven't for one day forgotten the lessons he taught me.

On alternate chapters there is story about him returning to his roots, which is nice to space out the heaviness of the serious chapters. This part of the story I can still remember a little about, but it's not the crux of the book, just Paul's style.

The Great Minnesota Touring Book: 30 Spectacular Auto Trips by Thomas Huhti is a superbly organized and presented traveler's guide to planning a personal or family road trip vacation among Minnesota's most scenic, historical, or exciting places. The offered tours span all parts of this great state. Enhanced with maps, explicit directions that make mention of every single turnoff in every detail, trivia about the sights to see while en route, and so much more, The Great Minnesota Touring Book is a thorough, handy, and welcome resource and reference for self-directed tours.

This book goes into the creation of the Great Northern Railroad, by J.J.Hill from its component railroads. Luecke includes newspaper excerpts dealing with the railroad from towns along the Great Northern right-away, along with his historical research. This adds a touch of the excitment felt by the people who depended on the railroad for their lifeline to the world. The book was well researched and has some excellent photos. Each book Luecke has written has been better then the last. The one place that still has room for improvment would be the addition of a few more maps, with some additional detail. Other wise a must have for any serious railfan or Minnesota history buff