Minnesota Books

I don't have the right to upload images of the dust jacket, but this has the blue and red graphic on the front, with a sepia-toned image of a fair below, and a bluish-tinged steamboat landing above. The actual authors as printed are Lucile M. Kane and Alan Ominsky. It is a hardback book, a little larger than letter-sized paper (quarto).

Broken out into different time periods, it addresses the history of the Twin Cities from when the first Europeans found it and started trying to take advantage of the falls of St. Anthony (where the Minneapolis milling district rose to national leadership) to the landings at St. Paul, the uppermost navigable part of the Mississippi river.

The edition I have ended in the 1980s, it would be nice to see it brought back and re-released in a new revision with better images. I think the limitations of printing and imaging technology resulted in some older photographs not being rendered very well.

While this is a pictorial history, and includes artwork and posters as well as photographs, there are textual introductions to each era that the book is divided in. You don't necessarily get an in-depth knowledge of a particular time or entity (such as the Twin Cities Rapid Transit streetcar system), but you get a broad sampling of many noteworthy things.

For those who are web-saavy, it is worth knowing that many of the photos in this book are not ones digitized by the Minnesota Historical Society for their on-line photographic collection.

As a longtime Minnesota resident and Gopher fan, I have yearned for Minnesota's return to college football prominence - Big Ten Championships, the Rose Bowl, National Championships, all of it. While this season offered fleeting promise, I eagerly anticipate our return to on-campus football in 2009. Surely, next year...

Until then, University of Minnesota Football Vault is a great book to read and browse through if you want to reconnect with Minnesota's proud football past. From Nagurski and Gibson to Barber and Tapeh; from autumn afternoons in Memorial Stadium through the frustrations of the recently completed Metrodome era, this book walks through Gopher football history complete with outstanding photographs, interviews, anecdotes and stats.

This book is a well-written and beautifully organized volume that deserves a place of honor on the shelf or coffee table of any true Minnesota fan.

Whereas you didn't have to splurge for Rose Bowl tickets again this year, this book will make a great gift.

SKI-U-MAH!!!

Besides being very informative on aspects like academics and safety and security, this guidebook also has a lot to say about the culture of the school and surrounding area. I think details really make this book stand out, like the Inside Scoop, all the student quotes, and grades given to each section. It was great to find info on dining and housing (on and off campus), transportation, and all the stuff in between.

Our usual image of the Scandinavian immigrant is that of the Minnesota farmer. This isn't just because of Garrison Keillor. Most of the history books about Scandinavian Americans have been writtten at Lutheran colleges in the Midwest, and they focus almost entirely on the Midwestern experience. Yet as Jennifer Eastman Attebery points out in this book, by 1920 some 20% of Swedish Americans were living in the West. Even in the Pacific Northwest, where there is a major Scandinavian museum, there have been very few books written on the western Scandinavian experience, and there is basically nothing about Scandinavians in the Rocky Mountain states. Attebery, based at Idaho State University, has been working to fill this void, and this book is a major contribution. In the West Swedes took part in all the adventures of the frontier: prospecting and mining, building railroads, cutting timber, cowboying. Their stories are far more diverse and entertaining than those of Midwestern farmers. Attebery tells their stories through their letters. This is a scholarly book, so the opening discussion of methodology may be a bit abstract for the general reader. But then she offers chapters organized around different aspects of immigrant experience, such as work, religion, and community, chapters offering an interesting cast of characters and stories. A 70-page appendix offers the actual letters.

URBAN PLANNING TODAY is part magazine, part newsletter, and part book report on the latest problems and debates facing urban planning. Here various contributors provide articles on projects from different backgrounds and goals in urban and regional planning, juxtaposing development strategies and issues with criticism and legal notes. Any with an interest in successes, failures, and evolving perspectives will welcome this addition to a college-level collection strong in urban studies.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

There are secrets buried in these elegant pages. At least one of the lithographs of Mr. Lewis has been decried as fanciful. It is not. What historians claims does not exist is in this book. THe truth is coming out. Mr. Lewis will be revered as a final witness to the one of the most amazing secrets of American history when it does

This book chronicles in letters and missives, from all the parties concerned, the genesis, evolution, and eventual completion of Verdi's masterpice, Aida.

Busch's massive work (over 650 pages) collates a huge amount of material, that any musicologist, student of opera, University voice teacher, or devotee of this opera would be pleased to have on their shelves.
First printed in 1978 by the [ahem!] University of Minnesota Press, the work has been out of print for some time. This reviewer would strongly encourage it's reprinting, for serious music lovers everywhere.

This is a very compelling book that shows how financial markets of many types are created through politicized processes of discourse, court challenges, and regulatory regimes. What is particularly useful about this book is that the author does not just stake out an interesting argument, she also provides a good deal of evidence to make her case. For example, she charts how different forms of finance are made distinct from "gambling" through discourse, regulation, and court decisions.

This is a must have for anyone who cares about Minnesota and it's ever changing landscape. The perfect marriage of words and Brian Peterson's photographs. Stunning, compelling, important!

Richard Kearney's philosophical approach to the question of imagination takes into account the related disciplines of history, sociology, political economy, theology, art, and art criticism. He investigates the concepts of imagination as they appear in the Hebraic and Greek traditions and as they emerged through the medieval, modern, and postmodern periods of our cultural history. This historical inquiry gives a context to his insightful articulation of the postmodern time and the concept of a creative imagination as a passing illusion of the western humanist, consumer, capitalist culture. He proposes the possibility of a postmodern imagination capable of preserving the functions of narrative identity and creativity - or what he calls the poetics of the possible.This includes a response to the postmodern dilemma with a reinterpretation of the role of imagination as a relationship between the self and other, a democratization of knowledge and culture, as ethically and poetically attuned to the lost narrative of historical meaning,and as inclusive, empathetic, versatile, open minded, and diversive. This book is a vital, intellegent analysis and guide for creativity, art, and imagination in our present postmodern culture.