Wisconsin Books

Once again Professor Ellis has top-roped us Phillistines onto the challenging academic ledge that embraces the exploration narrative as powerful literature. Honestly, his scintillating start is followed by an even more promising introduction that speaks to the Gore-tex and fleece crowd, and draws a circle at base camp. While paying heed to scholarly conventions, Ellis' familar style shares an adrenaline-laced tale with the rest of us that emerges from the dusty and stained journals from the likes of London's Alpine Club. His insightful portrayal of Mackinder's 1899 imperial ascent of Mt. Kenya ressurects images of the Duke of Abruzzi, and his equally thoughtful recitation of Noel's 1924 film documentary of the British expedition on Everest is the stuff of current fancy. But Dr. Ellis initiates the reader 's stunned self-arrest at 58 year old Annie Smith Peck's amazing first ascent of Huascar'an in 1908. Peck, the original post modernist, is equally comfortable planting a banner, VOTES FOR WOMEN, on the summit, as she is detailing the arduous athletic nature of mountaineering and commenting on the rich social, cultural and geographical landscape from which the massif juts. One can only hope that Ellis will abandon his fine research, and ancient volumns, and chronicle his own peripatetic life's journey up the scree slopes of distant desolate peaks; after all, that's where the real story begins. 5.12

The Village by F.J. West details the founding and early implementation of the U.S. Marine Corps Combined Action Program ( CAP ) in South Vietnam.

Marine leaders in 1965 realized that regular infantry units were unsuited for fighting "the village war" in Vietnam. The enemy wore no uniforms and blended into the local population. He never fought except when he had a distinct advantage and ran without shame whenever the tide turned against him. His tactics included assassinations, ambushes, booby traps and the use of infiltrators and turncoats.

A new approach was needed to fight this enemy so the idea of combining local militias with Marines was tried, basing the new unit 24/7/365 in the village it sought to protect. The idea was refined and in later years expanded throughout the I Corps combat zone. West's book narrates the experience of the first Combined Action Platoon, its successes and failures.

There are many valuable lessons in this book for anyone fighting insurgents.

Vic Navrestad, who sadly recently passed away, has written a superb book on the history of downtown Viroqua, WI. The work is quite detailed, and makes for an enjoyable exploration of the commerce and way of life of a unique Wisconsin small town.

Expertly researched and co-authored by Johnathan Kasparek and Bobbie Malone, Voices And Votes: How Democracy Works In Wisconsin is an informed and informative study of historical happenings and significant landmarks in Wisconsin's political evolution. Knowledgeably offering an extensive compendium for young readers to learn from, Voices And Votes grants a comprehensive and thorough analysis of the history and civics of Wisconsin's state, tribal, and local governments. Voices And Votes is very strongly recommended reading material for students and adults for its invaluable, "reader friendly" format providing an accessible reference for Wisconsin's political history. Part of the "Badger History" series from the Wisconsin Historical Society, No Wisconsin school or community library should be without at least one copy of Voices & Votes: How Democracy Works In Wisconsin.

Voices Made Flesh is a collaborative effort of scholarly women's voices in the area of performance studies. The collection demonstrates a wide variety of possible research methods and presentation approaches to deep our understanding of women's experiences of themselves, others and our collective lives. These researchers take on many different topics and make every effort to explain their closely woven personal and scholarly development process from idea, to research, to final product. All the while giving the reader access to her own imagination and potential creative process. A fun read and an inspiring group of projects. A gift to both the fields of Theatre and Performance Studies.

This book is beautifully written and illustrated. It includes many interesting tidbits about everyday things, such as Kleenx, vitamins, and the Ringling Bros. Circus. I've lived in Wisconsin for most of my life and still learned a lot from this book. It is perfect for a Wisconsin history course, or for a child doing research on Wisconsin for a school project.

The pictures are beautiful watercolor collages that make me homesick. In each picture there is a border with the names of towns in Wisconsin that correspond to the letters (ie W is for Waunakee, Waukesha, Watertown, etc.) and each printed letter is shown with its equivalent in American Sign Language.

This book is a beautiful tribute to Wisconsin!

Dr. Larry Nesper's 13-year journey with the Lac du Flambeau Indians becomes a thoroughly enjoyable and scholarly example of modern ethnographic work. The book meticulously details all of the issues relevant to Ojibwe spear-fishing and treaty rights as 1) native tradition, 2) cultural conflict (conflict both within the native culture, and between the native population and the State of Wisconsin), 3) inter-cultural legal conflict and controversy, and 4) an example for current dialogues regarding ethnicity and ethnic conflict, ethnic prejudice, and racism. Nesper clearly outlines all pertinent issues of the 25-year "Walleye War" from every angle, and conscientiously works his way through them, all the while carefully explaining different cultural perspectives. Even though Nesper states that he has become friends with many of the native people about whom he writes, he does not let his own feelings of friendship taint the truth. I recommend the book for enthusiasts of native culture, academics (especially those teaching cultural anthropology), and anyone interested in the history of, and current issues regarding, treaty rights and the relationship between native cultures and state or federal government entities.

"The following is a sign found posted in northern Wisconsin in the late 1980s: " First Annual Indian Shoot: Plain Indian...5 Points; Indian with Walleyes...10 Points; Indian With Boat Newer Than Yours...20 Points."

" Each Spring when the ice clears, the Anishinaabe ( Chippewa) harvest fish from the lakes of Wisconsin and Minnesota. Their ancient subsistence fishing and hunting tradition is protected by treaties and reinforced by Federal Court rulings, but for years they were met by stones, racial epithets, and death threats hurled by local sports fisherman, resort and cottage owners, and other white neighbors.

Walleye Warriors tells the exciting and empowering story of how a multi-race and class alliance of Anishinaabe (Chippewa), local residents, and activists defused these dramatic and tense confrontations by witnessing and documenting them. The walleye warriors and their supporters were successful at protecting Chippewa sovereignty despite the attempted use of racism, economic threats, and local government manipulations. "

Being a "Plain Indian" in northern Wisconsin, who lived here during the times described, I say this is a good read. Ho wa.

Joseph Miller's Way of Death is an exhaustingly long volume for a non-academic reader, but a rich and rewarding one, if you like your history deeply rooted in archival sources. The title (and headings such as "Floating Tombs" and "Merchants of Death") make the book sound like popularization, though they actually are more a reflection of Miller's penchant for metaphor, which gives the book an almost Tolstoyan quality. Indeed, the division of the book into discrete sections that view the Angolan slaving economy as it affected those involved (native African individuals and polities, mixed-race "Luso-African" traders, Brazilian ship and plantation owners, Lisbon-based merchants, Portuguese governors) lets you see his subject with a depth and complexity reminiscent of good fiction. But it doesn't make Way of Death easy to read-the section most like a narrative account, which ties together a number of the previous threads, doesn't come till well after the 500th page. Miller feels no need to summarize political history, so I recommend as background an earlier short work such as David Birmingham's Trade and Conflict in Angola (though its economic history needs correction in the light of Miller's research).

Trained as an Africanist, Miller is particularly sensitive to the Central African sense of wealth as people rather than as goods or specie, and the different political economies leading from one kind of wealth to the other-a linkage that passes from the traditional elders and lineage systems, in which control of land and women's fertility was power, to the monarchs and warlords who used material goods to acquire dependents, to the merchant princes who stockpiled goods and slaves rather than dependents, to Luso-African traders who provided the link between textiles, muskets, and rum from Europe, Asia, and Brazil and the slaves given up by Africans. The boundaries were not stable, and the "slaving frontier" moved east from Luanda and the coast in jumps, partly in response to periodic war and drought. After three and a half centuries, this "catchment zone" for captives spread across a vast expanse of Central Africa from the Congo to the upper Zambezi and the edges of the Kalahari.

From the perspective of Atlantic economies, the financial basis of 18th-century Luso-Brazilian slaving was very rickety. Exchange of precious metals for slaves was rare. Those most immediately concerned on the African end took European goods to sell on credit and only saw reimbursement after the surviving slaves were sold-at more or less fixed prices-in Brazil. The chronic undercapitalization of Angolan slaving and the dependence of both the Angolan and Brazilian side on credit extended by Portuguese and (indirectly) British merchants is a major theme of the book. The appalling death rate among captives between point of capture and delivery in Brazil made slaves a highly perishable commodity and considerable financial risk. Those seeking to wrest a profit engaged in "tight-packing" on slave ships, which meant cheating on official capacity and reducing space for water and food in order to fit more slaves on board-which raised the death rate on ships even higher. Miller's title is no hyperbole-between the long trip from the hinterland, the dreadful conditions in Luanda barracoons, and the middle passage, a minority of those who began the "way of death" reached Brazil.

A must-read for anyone seriously interested in Central Africa or the Atlantic slave trade.

University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Emeritus of Slavic Languages and Literature Gary Rosenshield presents Western Law, Russian Justice: Dostoevsky, The Jury Trial, And The Law offers a new interpretation of classic author Dostoevsky's greatest novel, "The Brothers Karmazov". Closely exploring how Dostoevsky contextualized his portrayal of trials and trial participants in the political, social, and ideological framework of his time, Western Law, Russian Justice reveals that Dostoevsky directly confronts problems in the legal system that have plagued the United States up to the modern day, particularly in the past two decades. Chapters specifically scrutinize the realization of Russian justice, the perils of narrative empathy, and the imprisonment of the law itself in "The Brothers Karmazov." A thought-provoking, in depth, and sometimes highly technical literary analysis, especially recommended for college libraries and literature students.