Wisconsin Books

Judy (pal to some) sent this book to me. she like me went to Madison during the late 60's. you did not go to the UW you went to Madison. The school was just part of the place, you grew up in. some never left. I started to read it while reading all my Neuro-Science stuff, my latest kick. then it consumed me. especially the last 100 pages.
this non-fiction book is incredibly well researched and written. history is not easy, nor is reality. of course it is special to me since this bombing took place one month after I graduated and left Madison. it was the exclamation point on my experience. as they say many changes took place.
I think it is a must read for any young person of today. with the war in Iraq it is so timely to see the difference in generations. to see that the generation of then is now the silent majority sitting back and watching history repeat itself, as they say always happens. but then again history is hard to grasp.
I think this book would be the foundation of a monster screen-play and movie. the whole situation has so many angles and levels.
I lived thru this but I did not know anything about this bombing. it was so interesting to me to learn now about it in such detail. but at the edges I shared the same experiences: the Mendota State Hospital for the Insane, professors Mosse and Goldberg, the politicos like Soglen, Mates, the celebrities coming thru town, to disappoint, etc.
I think this book more then any other I have read explores how a young generation was traumatized. back then the terrorists were in the White House. perhaps they still are? out of this trauma came the utter materialism of the last 20 years, this is a perspective as to why. many dreams exploded before and with that building.
Jess, aka Henry Dribble, class of 70

I knew bombers David Fine and Leo Burt as fellow members of The Daily Cardinal staff and figuratively crossed swords with them at editorial meetings over the strident content of staff-written editorials.
Bates manages to weave together an number of parallel narratives so the book reads like a novel. To do this he gives colorful, sometimes cruel physical descriptions of his characters, reconstructs conversations that took place years earlier, and describes the thoughts of characters, including Leo Burt, who has never been found and whom, we must presume, Bates never had the privilege of interviewing. But Bates understands his role as journalist and historian and with the above reservations, I believe he performed it well.
He documents the role of the Army Math Research Center in advancing the military capabilities of the U.S., and does so with a lucidity and economy of words that I never found in the exposes of Jim Rowen, who investigated the AMRC in the late '60's and helped inspire the bombing.
Rads traces the influence of three well-known UW history professors, including the Marxist Harvey Goldberg. Their conflicting views illustrate the diversity of thinking about anti-war tactics and revolution.
It is interesting to note in this book how many radicals turned to violence after being beaten by police at anti-war demonstrations.
At last this book is the story of Karl Armstrong. The narrative reveals Karl as confused, ambivalent and in every instance incompetent as an anti-war terrorist, fugitive and defendent, whose achievements were made possible by the countervailing bungling and in-fighting of the authorities. I can at the drop of a hat regale people with hilarious episodes of Karl's stupid criminal tricks, but of course that shortchanges the gravitas and the tragedy of this major episode in 1960s American radicalism.
I do not fault this book for proposing that abuse by his father laid the psychological groundwork for Karl's venture into violence. Bates did not weave this interpretation into his narrative, and I would be disappointed if an author did not offer his interpretation of events after devoting years to their study. The result is that Karl comes across as a sympathetic character, and his anti-war motivations are not discredited.

There are many accounts of the sixties which romanticize the activism against the war in Vietnam. RADS provides a sober account of the events surrounding the bombing of the Army Math Research Center in 1970. With the meticulous insight of an historian, Bates provides an overview of the events relating to the bombing without the bias of left or right-wing ideology. His riveting account has the ring of journalistic accuracy rather than stooping to advance a particular political point of view.

I read this about five years ago after finding it as a remainder in a supermarket.

What I recollect most about it was the uncanny detail the author came up with. In fact, it reminded me somewhat of at least one of Halberstram's books in that such detail MUST have been contrived. So, while well-written, there were some credibility problems.

To this day, I'm not absolutely sure where I stand on the bombing.

I would recommend it, though, as NOT romanticizing the radical left of that era. There are, of course, some from that time still living in Madison (and Berkeley, and Stanford, and...) reminiscing the period. They're kind of a radical 60s equivalent of the VFW and are just too naive to realize in how much of an Ivory Tower they reside . But there were down sides, not the least of which is graduate students whose entire careers were altered, finished because of this bombing.

I lived in Madison at the time of the legal procedings of the three captured bombers. Rads is the most comprehensive account of the bombing that I have personally read. However, I agree with a previous review that Bates mistakingly attributes Armstrong's actions to his family history. I believe that Armstrong was motivated personally from his experiences in Chicago during the 1968 convention, and seeing the escallation of the war. I went to the Madison Public Library and read the newspaper files on Armstrong and the others, and there were important events especially after Armstrong's return to Madison that were ommited. I believe that the single most important lesson from this book or from other events of that era i.e. Kent State, is that it was local people, hometown people that were involved in the anti-war movement. These people included both yound and old. They were not communist-sympathizers or professionals from out of town. Young men from Karl and Dwight Armstrong's east-side Madison neighborhood were much more likely to fight and die in Vietnam than men from David Fine's or Leo Burt's background. True, Fine did not light the fuse, but he got off much eaiser than the Armstrongs

I totally enjoyed this book. It probably meant more to me because I have a Madison and Northern Lake home. I could relate to the cultures of both areas as expressed by the author. I became aware of this book when driving my car from my cabin to Madison and it was being read on Public Radio on Chapter A Day. I couldn't wait to get home and order it.

Star Lake Saloon is a what my father used to call, "A sleep robber." The author snares you so completely into the life of hcr characters and their dilemma of stopping a mining conglomerate from spoiling the sleepy paradise of a resort in Nothern Wisconsin, that you have to read "just one more chapter" to see what's going to happen. It's a bit like trying to eat one
potato chip.

For those who have grown up with memories of summer sojourns in resorts like Star Lake Saloon it must be nostalgic to read this book. For those of us who were not fortunate enough to have that experience, Star Lake Saloon and Housekeeping Cottages make us feel as if we have.

The novel is complete with sex, romance, mystery and history woven into a tight structure, as well as a very bequiling dog.

As a native of Wisconsin who loves the north woods and Madison alike, I enjoyed this book. I think it is always enjoyable to read a fictional story set in a place you are familiar with. Sara Rath did a good job capturing life in Wisconsin, complete with the ever-present mining controversies we have. I also enjoyed the language her northwoods characters use-not too far off the mark!

The story itself transports Hannah Swan, a filmmaker from Madison, into Antler, WI when her long-lost uncle dies and leaves her a Housekeeping Resort. Hannah begins a journey with her inheritence from denial to acceptance of the property, the community, and the people she gets to know.

The story isn't deep, but it is heartwarming. I would say that some of the sex scenes are gratuitous and unnecessary, but other than that, I enjoyed this novel.

The characters are well done, the pace and lifestyle well-represented, and the struggle of historic and environmental preservation versus corporate "progress" well portrayed in this book about Madisonite Hannah Swann's reluctant transplantation to the Northwoods. This is a genre spanning tale of mystery, ecological impact, coming of (change-of-life) age, and reluctant romance. It is marred by gratuitous sex, seemingly stuck in there just to "pidgeonhole" it into a market in which it didn't need to strive to fit. /TundraVision, Amazon Reviewer

Star Lake Saloon and Housekeeping Cottages appealed to me for many reasons, not the least is that I happen to be the owner of a Northwoods Housekeeping resort and could relate to the main character, Hannah, on several levels. I enjoyed reading Sara Rath's descriptions of Star Lake, the broken down lodge and cabins, the look of the lake, the smell of the pines. She captures the essence of Northern Wisconsin beautifully. What troubled me about this story, however, is that I never felt a strong sense of empathy for the main character, Hannah Swann. To me, she wants to be a confident take-charge woman, spokesperson for an important cause, but nearly everything she does, she does reluctantly. It was hard to get behind her and cheer her on.

Hannah is a poetry instructor from Madison, Wisconsin, who also writes documentary films. Apparently educated and sophisticated, she is nevertheless having an odd affair with a married man, a "malacologist," which, I learned, is someone involved in the "scientific study of mollusks." His name is Tyler and while his occupation ultimately plays a role in the story, what stands out is his awkward sexual dysfunction, and a couple of sex scenes that almost made me throw the book aside. Most of the other secondary characters are flat and predictable. They include Hannah's daughter, Chloe, a vegetarian with a pierced nose, who is a political activist, and her trusty, but never fleshed-out boyfriend, Eric. Dan Kerry, Hannah's rugged, fishing guide/flannel shirt wearing love interest, and a sleazy lawyer, the villain named Denny. Hannah's mother, Lily, is nosy, self-centered and highly critical of her daughter. On the other hand, the one character who does stand out is the feisty Ginger, saloon barkeep, who is a tell-it-like-it is kind of gal, who not only puts Hannah in her place, but offers a true and entertaining Northwoods vernacular. Whenever Ginger is in the room, it's a guaranteed entertaining read.

There is little mystery involved with the plot of the underhanded mining company supporters trying to take over her newly inherited land and much of what happens is highly predictable and contrived. It's a quick read, the writing is average and I recommend this book to readers who want to get a taste of the great Northwoods. Three and a half stars.

Oh, and by the way, GREAT cover art. Hats off to the graphic designer.

Michele Cozzens, author of I'm Living Your Dream Life: The Story of a Northwoods Resort Owner

This is the greatest thing since sliced bread! You can find your way into or out of anywhere with this atlas! Just love it... especially when navigating around construction, road closures, and flood damaged areas. I love how it has every little country road listed in it... you can literally navigate anywhere. And I'm a person who usually gets lost at the drop of a hat.

This map is the thing to have if you live in Wisconsin and plan on going anywhere outside of your stomping grounds. The backroad details are a great tool if you ever get detoured off of the course that you know. My wife was on her way to work (3o miles away) one morning when a fatality traffic accident rerouted traffic off of the freeway into the windy backroads of southwestern Wisconsin. There was a trooper at some dinky road directing all of the traffic onto it. From that point, there wasn't any help to guide her way to a place she could get back on the road she knows so well. She called me from her cell and I tried to give her a route from what I could find on mapquest until she got too far into the sticks and we lost connection. After a couple of bad guesses on which way to go, eventually she managed to find a county road and made the right decision and got back to the freeway. From that point on, we made sure that one of these is tucked under her car seat not only as insurance for these situations, but as a guide to any time we travel a decent distance. Very detailed and accurate. A must have.

This gazeteer is very useful for planning outdoor trips...canoeing, camping, etc. It even includes wineries and seems to be very accurate so far.

Excellent source for finding all of those back roads that lead me to those favorite fishing streams. Also great for navigating my way through the bigger cities.

Once again DeLorme has put together an extremely valuable resource. Backroads, lakes, trails, all seem to be accounted for. I spend nearly all of my time in Burnett County and could not find anything missing or incorrectly labeled.

I use this book as a companion to the Minnesota Atlas. Both are well organized. It helps when weather watches and warnings are issued, the small crossroads and hamlets mentioned on the television are often confusing. These atlases are very helpful.

Finally the book is fun to read. Just browsing can teach one much about what is located where in the state. These books are very well done.

This book is a great resource when looking for paddling trips in Northern Wisconsin. I have found it to be helpful planning trips to rivers we have never been kayaking on before. If you are a paddler in N WI this is a must have!

This book is very informative. You learn what type of water you will be traveling, where the landings are and anything else you may need to know. I would highly recommend it for anyone who likes to canoe northern Wisconsin.

I bought this book to prepare for a trip with my son's boy scout group. I was very helpful in the planning of the trip

Mike Svob has done a very good on this book, and has included a few new rivers, but the definative work still has to be the 1972 "Canoe Trails of Northeastern Wisconsin", by Wisconsin Trails Magazine, now long out of print. The maps are better, and the entire river is mapped, not just the turisty sections. If you are just going for a day or two, this is a good book, but if you want to travel a longer distance, find the original maps.

I was happily surprised at the amount of information in this book. I was particularly looking for information on kayaking Wisconsin rivers that have few rapids. (recreational family touring)This book contained excellent maps, information on where to enter and exit rivers, areas that may need to be portaged, what types of rapids you will encounter (all the different classes of rapids), what you will see, etc. I am very happy with this book. I also purchased PADDLING SOUTHERN WISCONSIN: 83 GREAT TRIPS BY CANOE AND KAYAK.

This is one very gifted writer. His economic prose are perfect. Skin River is a masterful page-turning thriller. Bravo, Mr. Sidor!

Never a dull moment with this thriller. An entertaining, page turner, that never lets you down. I'm looking forward to his other books.

I enjoyed Steven Sidor's first novel, Skin River. He sets a tale of a very damaged man who takes out his revenge on the world by murdering and dismembering young women.

Our hero has a checkered, organized-Chicago-crime past, and he's trying to exorcise his ghosts by making an honest living in the small town Midwest and letting time heal his psychological wounds.

He grudgingly must take up arms again as his past confronts him in his hometown, and he manages to find out who's behind the killings in his small town. Sidor does not overwrite, and his brevity makes reading his novel a pleasure. His style is thoughtful and somber, without being too heavy or taking itself too seriously. Mr. Sidor is a welcome new edition to the genre, and I look forward to his next work.

Interesting hero, over the top serial killer, good basis for future tales. We really don't need monsters to make this work. The author has enough with average Elmore-Leonard-like gangsters to carry the day.

Maybe I've just hit my limit of the anti-hero, and I freely state that I need to feel an affinity to the characters to really like a book. I know others have really liked this book, but I found myself reading to get to the end, particularly as you know, fairly early on, who is the killer. In fact, I felt more emphasis was spent building his characters than the protagonist. On the plus, it is well written and suspenseful, but I'm going back to books where there are protagonists I like and maybe even have qualities I can admire.

What a visual treat this book was. For anyone that has seen a painting of Carl Larsson's home and fallen in love with the clean lines and colors of Scandinavian interiors, this book carries that love to the next level. Wisconsin native Loran Nordgren created a home using the traditional elements like built-in beds, carving, colors, but added some contemporary conveniences. The books chronicles the planning and construction of the house, but the wealth of photos and design ideas have wide appeal.

As a lover of the traditional Scandinavian home style, and the owner of four such homes, I found this book truly helpful in decorating all of them. The authors, including Ms. Sears have such an passionate eye for this unique and gorgeous style.

I give Mr. Nordgren the owner high credit for the obvious mega $$$ he spent to have his Carl Larsson dream home come to life. However I concur with a prior reviewer that the interior decorating is sub-par with oversized furniture & decorator pieces that evoke a Non-Scandinavian feel that appears to conflict with its authetic Scandinavian backdrop of the houses interior details. If it was my money $$$ I would have sought out correct period Scandinavian antiques or had authentic pieces recreated from scratch with a 100% effort to create the Nordic "look". Would recommend the book as a strong buy with great design ideas throughout.

As a folk artist, I am interested in European interior design. My interest in Swedish design lies in the magnificient use of color. This book provided what I needed.

This is an excellent pictoral review of a lovely home recently built in the Wisconsin countryside. The book is full of great ideas for both interior and especially exterior architectural details. As an interior and architectural designer, I have stolen ideas extensively for a Scandinavian style home I am working on which is currently under construction. The house featured in the book is beautifully done, but not for those seeking a subtle take on the Swedish/Scandinavian home. Disneyesque could aptly describe the overall look and feel of the home. This is not to say it does not have a great charm, but it slams its design concepts home with no punches pulled. It is an American interpretation and distillation of Scandinavia.
There are a lot of great ideas for color and design for the built interiors, but I found the interior furnishings and accessories to be ameteurish and do not live up to the professional standard of the architecture that contains it. The furnishings are rather middle of the road contemporary country style and do not suit the carefully orchestrated design concepts of the architectural designer. For instance the sofas are large and clunky, and are upholstered in a bland fabric - none of which would ever been found in a house of this type of traditional Swedish home.
With that caveat I highly recommend the book to those who admire the Scandinavian style and especially to anyone planning to design and build a home in this style.

Unforgettable, obsessive, poignant. McCartney explores his topic with a jeweler's eye, cutting for us new facets into the Tao of the world.
An extraordinary book by a writer who plays for real.

In The End of the World Book, author Alistair McCartney pulls off a really neat trick--by way of some writerly sleight of hand, he manages to leaven his ruminations upon the gaping maw of the ever-present abyss, historical atrocities and apocalyptic inevitabilities with absurdity and humor, suffusing the entire work with a buoyant, even cheerful, sense of melancholy. This is not gallows humor, but an enervated despair that embraces life in all its sublime wonder as wholeheartedly as it seeks detachment and disconnection. Stepping through the doorway of the first few pages and entering the book is like walking into a splendid curio shop--so many marvelous oddities! such a thrilling array of objects and abject thoughtstuffs!--you don't know what to pick up, or where to go next. So you find your own rhyme and your own reason, and make your way through the book as you please: flipping pages and stopping at the entries that catch your eye and clamor for attention; crisscrossing from reference to reference; reading all of A before moving onto B and then to C in doggedly linear fashion; or scanning the pages in search of the not-infrequent mentions of twins, dreams, cholos, white Jockeys, Franz Kafka, knives and wrists, the never-before-told history of pornographic films, his mother's hot pink dressing gown, boys, or his boyfriend, Tim. The End of the World Book is sly, sexy, playful, blazingly intelligent and delightfully unsettling. If the book is a novel, as the dust jacket proclaims, it is an early entry into a brave new world of novels, the sort of novel that may well toll the end of the world of books as we know them. (Which would explain both the author's melancholy, and the book's buoyant good cheer.)

"The End of the World Book: A Novel" is definitely not a novel in any traditional sense of the word. It is largely an autobiography, mixed with fantastic dreams (in which death is a recurrent theme) and homoerotic allusions, captured in the form of an alphabetical glossary that is reminiscent at times of Ambrose Bierce's "The Devil's Dictionary."
A great benefit of this format is that one can pick up the book, read a fourth of a page, and put the book down again with a whole new train of thought started by one of the entries.

This book contains some marvelous writing, by an author who is imaginative, iconoclastic, erudite, sensitive, and blessed with a keen observation. But despite what it says on the front jacket, the only things that make this a novel are its subversive blending of fact with fiction, and the depth to which it reveals its principal character. There is no plot, and little obvious reason why you should read any one section before another. But you will want to read on, if only for the writing and the chance to immerse yourself in what I can only call the surreal psycho-autobiography of an interesting man.

The book takes the form of an encyclopedia of short alphabetical entries, never more than a page or so, but some as short as a single sentence. The topics for the letter E, for example, are: Eakins, Thomas; Ear; Eastern bloc; Economics; Egypt; Einstein, Albert; E-Mail; Encyclopedia, history of the; Enigmatic; Enlightenment; Erasers; Eternity; Experiments; Exposure; Extinction; and Eyes, bloodshot. In the article on E-Mail, for instance, McCartney imagines how Jane Austen might have used it. The article on the Enigmatic begins "Leonardo da Vinci had it easy," and goes on to imagine how hard it is to represent enigma in today's technological world. The article in between these two, on the Encyclopedia, essentially describes the method of the whole book, and is worth quoting in full:

"The first encyclopedia was created by Aristotle in 322 BC; it was an attempt to bring together all the ideas of the time, but he also made things up. After that, in terms of encyclopedias, there was a long dry spell. In fact, there were none, that is, until the publication of the END OF THE WORLD BOOK in 2008, and the announcement of a policy of continuous and simultaneous revision and destruction: everything in the world is marked fragile; destroy with great care. Here at the END OF THE WORLD BOOK we firmly believe that we must keep categorizing and that this is the only thing keeping the world, and us, from ending. We also believe, firmly, that each category destroys the thing it describes; with each category we move that little bit closer to the end."

The author keeps returning to certain themes, which come to resonate more and more as he approaches them from different angles. One such theme is philosophy, and its losing battle to organize a life that is essentially random and subject to fate. McCartney seems equally fascinated with the artifacts of popular culture, such as old movies, hula hoops, urban graffiti. Central to everything else is his identity as a gay man -- and here I have to say that while I cannot share the talismatic power of his numerous physical references, they work because they take me into his mind, rather than what he does with his body. I said earlier that there seems to be no strong reason to read the book in its alphabetical order, but I need to modify that in the case of two of the most pervasive themes: family and death. As the book progresses, the reader gets a deepening aquaintance with the author's parents, the earlier generations of his family, and his present partner; this balances the otherwise solipsistic quality of the writing by placing it in a wider human context. And while death is clearly the single most important theme in the book, as the title indicates, the author's attitudes to it do seem to undergo a change, from fatalistic at the beginning to almost optimistic at the end. Indeed, despite its apocalyptic premise, THE END OF THE WORLD BOOK is full of life and laughter, and a fascinating glimpse into an unusual mind.

Alistair McCartney's first novel, fortuitously titled The End of the World Book is just out and making a big splash on the literary scene. Darkly comic and deeply erotic, I can promise you that once you read it, you'll never look at apocalypse or global warming in quite the same way again.

It's a novel whose main character--who just happens to be named Alistair--recounts both the story of his life and the history of the world, and even more specifically, the world's end. But what's even more striking and exciting about this novel is that it's also an encyclopedia--A to Z--a kinky, irreverent archive of memories, dreams, homoerotic obsessions and philosophical fixations. And this is not your average encyclopedia! McCartney covers everything from Abercrombie and Fitch to Aristotle, Britney Spears to Socrates, Justin Timberlake to Terrorism, not to forget offering stories about growing up in Australia and his life with another character by the name of "Tim Miller." Playful and accessible, gay readers will be particularly intrigued by its twisted, provocative take not only on core aspects of pop culture but also gay culture: AIDS, barebacking, crystal, gay music, gay pornography, just to name a few.

TEOTWB heralds the arrival of a daring new voice in Queer literature, the literary equivalent of Todd Haynes' collaged post modern films, Slava Mogutin's edgy urban photographs, Hernan Bas's paintings of decadent dandies, and the Magnetic Fields' music, merging irony and classic poignant pop.

As the title states, "The Garden Book For Wisconsin " is specifically designed for gardeners in the Badger State and offers 191 plant selections ranging from Annuals and Perennials, to Groundcovers and Ornamental Grasses. Now in a newly expanded and updated second edition, each plant in "The Garden Book For Wisconsin" is showcased with a color photograph enhancing an especially 'user friendly' text which provides a wealth of specific and practical advice on planting, growing, and care. Of special note is the use of quick reference symbols indicating a specific plant's sun requirements and such background information as to additional qualities such as attracting birds or butterflies. Wisconsin gardening expert Melinda Myers draws upon her many years of dedicated experience to include personal recommendations of plants that are especially suited to Wisconsin's climate, and includes useful information on companion planting, along with design tips for maximize the use of texture and color in a Wisconsin garden. Simply stated, "The Garden Book For Wisconsin" should be considered a seminal addition to the University of Wisconsin Agricultural Studies reading lists, community library Wisconsin Gardening & Horticulture collections, and an invaluable, indispensable part of every Wisconsin home gardener's personal reference shelf.

This book met all of my expectations. I recommend it to any Wisconsinite who enjoys backyard gardening.

This is one of the books that I refer to often when deciding what to plant in our yard.

Descriptions of the plant, whether it's a native species, and recommendations for certain varieties to look for, are very useful.

Is it a single resource that answers all of your questions? No. But no one book could be, and that's why you choose a few valuable books to provide a range of information.

If you live in Wisconsin, this book should be in your reference collection.

The book contains 445 pages, about 30 pages are on general gardening and 30 pages are specific to Wisconsin. Specific information includes a full page color USDA Hardiness Map of Wisconsin with detail showing county borders, Wisconsin frost maps, monthly temperature & precipation data for 27 Wisconsin cities, lists of Wisconsin gardens and societies, and more.

The remaining 385 pages are about selected species. And these pages contain some of the best information that I have ever read in a garden book. If you buy it just for these pages, you will have an excellent reference book no matter where you live.

The species info covers 26 annuals, 15 bulbs, 17 ground covers, 10 ornamental grasses, 28 perennials, 6 roses, 25 shrubs, 30 trees, 3 turf grasses, and 9 vines, with 160 small photos. The info is perfectly arranged with two pages of text per each species. Each contain a paragraph on when to plant, where to plant, how to plant, care, additional info, and other varieties. My kind of book - all the info in one place and easy to find.

If you garden in Wisconsin, this is a must have book!

Unlike all my other garden books, I actual know of every species talked about in this book. The book talks about the plants we grow in Wisconsin. And best, Myers tells us about some popular plants that don't do well here (I wish the plant nursery would have told me this before they sold me many wrong varieties). I learned this by trial and error.

My only criticism about the book is that I wish she had written another volume. Great information!

The book contains 445 pages, about 30 pages are on general gardening and 30 pages are specific to Wisconsin. Specific information includes a full page color USDA Hardiness Map of Wisconsin with detail showing county borders, Wisconsin frost maps, monthly temperature & precipation data for 27 Wisconsin cities, lists of Wisconsin gardens and societies, and more.

The remaining 385 pages are about selected species. And these pages contain some of the best information that I have ever read in a garden book. If you buy it just for these pages, you will have an excellent reference book no matter where you live.

The species info covers 26 annuals, 15 bulbs, 17 ground covers, 10 ornamental grasses, 28 perennials, 6 roses, 25 shrubs, 30 trees, 3 turf grasses, and 9 vines, with 160 small photos. The info is perfectly arranged with two pages of text per each species. Each contain a paragraph on when to plant, where to plant, how to plant, care, additional info, and other varieties. My kind of book - all the info in one place and easy to find.

If you garden in Wisconsin, this is a must have book!

Unlike all my other garden books, I actual know of every species talked about in this book. The book talks about the plants we grow in Wisconsin. And best, Myers tells us about some popular plants that don't do well here (I wish the plant nursery would have told me this before they sold me many wrong varieties). I learned this by trial and error.

My only criticism about the book is that I wish she had written another volume. Great information!

I really enjoyed this book, particularly since I have a good friend who raises angora goats and I am also a native of Wisconsin. The book made me homesick for Wisconsin and it was also a wonderful story of the range of emotions generated by raising animals.

I am/was interested in raising angora goats. This book provided valuable and informative information on that topic in a wonderful, well written story. I haven't decided if it talked me out of the dream or further embedded the dream but the story was great.

A poetic narrative, this book reflects life on a large scale as it tells Susan's story of raising angora goats on a small Lake Michigan island. I was touched by the depth of feeling Susan expressed in vividly describing everything from learning to know and care for the goats to living in an isolated community which generously offered friendship and support to a new resident and her risky venture.

This is a marvelous first time out for an author who took to heart the adage "Write about what you know." Yet what Susan Basquin came to know was something few women learn. Late in her 40s, after several years as a writer for a weekly newspaper in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she accepted an invitation from her brother to start a goat farm on an island in Lake michigan, off the tip of a peninsula in northeastern Wisconsin. She wanted to do something different--and different this book is.

It is full of life and death and the natural order of things--which, of course, is life and death. Knowing nothing about goats or farming or island life, or anything else that she had chosen, Basquin just did it. Starting with 21 angora goats, whose wool someday was supposed to bring a profit, she set about keeping them alive and growing the flock, which ultimately numbered 100. The emphasis soon centered on keeping them alive.

Disease, accident and injury were her companions, and she learned how to cope with each of them. With the help of the tight-knit island community, she became a farmer equal to anyone. But isolation--and sometimes loneliness--also became familiar to her. For six years she ran the farm. But then her brother decided to shut it down.

Basquin returned to Santa Fe, and now has written this memoir. it sings with a commitment to life, and the new life she found for herself, surrounded by goats on an island. This is not a life that most women, or men, would choose. But for anyone with an imagination, it is a compelling read. It will make you wish you had been there--and glad you were not. It will expand your concept of the possible. What is still waiting for us all?

When Susan Basquin's brother suggested they join forces and develop an Angora goat farm on Lake Michigan's remote Washington Island, she jumped at the offer. The isolation and rural environment would offer her free time for writing and contemplation -- or so she thought. What Susan found out first hand is the sheer physical and mental effort that goes into raising a herd of temperamental goats. For the next six years she struggled, growing founder of her animals, and discovering unknown reserves of strength and energy within herself. Goat Song: My Island Angora Goat Farm is the riveting memoir of Susan's life on Washington Island, a fascinating chronicle of her affection for her animals, her determination to overcome feelings of insecurity, and her reflections on island life. Goat Song is ardently recommended reading for anyone who has ever felt the urge to get away from it all and take the rural life in some isolated Eden.

This is an enjoyable and highly educational contribution to the field of urban history. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, "the Cream City" (the name is derived from the cream color of the bricks used in many of its early buildings -- clay from local quarries was yellow rather than orange or red) tends to be belittled or overlooked with Chicago to its South and Minneapolis and St. Paul to its Northwest.

That's a shame because Milwaukee has a unique and colorful history of its own apart from its more prominent regional neighbors. To the extent that Milwaukee's history has been obscured or neglected, John Gurda's book redresses that oversight.

The author does a thorough job of charting the city's growth from its first settlement by various Indian tribes (Pottawanomi, Chippewa and Menomee) retreating from the hostile Iroquois, visits by explorers such as Father Marquette and Louis Joliet, and its satellite status as a secondary trading post for fur trappers based in the larger city of Green Bay, Wisconsin employed by their parent company in Montreal, Quebec. Following the War of 1812, in which both the Americans and the British claimed victory, an exclusion act was passed and many French Canadians had to leave the territory or apply for American citizenship. With the fur trade in decline, early inhabitants turned their attention to real estate development and exploiting the excellent harbor that made the Port of Milwaukee a major destination for ships on the Great Lakes.

Large scale emigration from Europe coincided with the admission of Wisconsin to the union as a state. Germans fleeing from the Revolution of 1848 made Milwaukee their adopted home and made an indelible impression upon the city. Gurda also relates how the loss of the steamship, "The Lady Elgin," which sank after a collision with a lumber boat near Winnetka, Illinois, devastated Milwaukee's Irish community. Many prominent Irish civic leaders were aboard the ill fated excursion ship.

The railroad and real estate speculators, the industrialists, the brewers and the socialists are all included in the story as well as Milwaukee's working relationship and economic and social rivalry with Chicago. As a flatlander with numerous relatives in the Badger State and in the Beer City, I know some of the details by heart and have the bruises to prove it, but John Gurda taught me some new angles. Profiles of important local nineteenth century leaders such as Juneau, Kilbourn, Mitchell and others are included.

The book is lavishly illustrated with drawings, photographs and detailed maps. Milwaukee's geography played a large role in the city's development and the sectional politics that divided various ethnic groups to the present day.

For anyone who has lived in Milwaukee or has ancestors who have lived there, this book is definitely a "must read". What makes it so interesting and informative, apart from the author's lucid and refreshing style, is the liberal use of photographs of persons, places, things and events representing the era being described, as well as, numerous maps and charts clarifying the subject matter. We found it helpful to have a street map of Milwaukee, which we frequently referred to. By the effective use of illustrations on almost every page to illuminate the text material, author Gurda has succeeded in producing as close to a "living history" as a book can become.

Beginning with the area's first native inhabitants encountered by French fur traders Jacques Vieau and Solomon Juneau near the confluence of the Milwaukee, Menomonee and Kinnickinnic rivers where they empty into Lake Michigan, the author fashions a detailed and colorful mosaic of Milwaukee's history down to the close of the twentieth century. In the second half of the nineteenth century the population of the city grew rapidly as immigrants from Europe sought escape from political persecution and successive crop failures. Most of the new arrivals were from Germany and they were very successful in transferring their customs and culture to their adopted city. Milwaukee reigned as the nation's "Deutsch Athen" until the beginning of World War I. "Gemutlichkeit", a cozy atmosphere for making one's self at home, became Milwaukee's trademark. The city's Teutonic influence was apparent in its beer gardens, choral and gymnastic societies, stage productions and German language newspapers, as well as in the thrift and industry characteristic of its workers.

Political and social scientists are sure to delight in author Gurda's account of Milwaukee's Socialist government and the manner in which successive municipal governments dealt with the social problems of an era. With but few interruptions, Milwaukee's Socialist Mayors ruled from 1910 to 1940. The first was Emil Seidel whose private secretary was Carl Sandburg who went on to win Pulitzer prizes in poetry and history, but the most noteworthy of them was Daniel Hoan who ruled Milwaukee for 19 years. A former city attorney who had parlayed his role as protector of the public weal against The Milwaukee Electric Power Company, he brought honesty and efficiency to the city's government. Time magazine, in its cover article of 1936, wrote: "Daniel Webster Hoan remains one of the nation's ablest public servants, and under him Milwaukee has become perhaps the best governed city in the U.S." It must be noted, however, that Milwaukee's Socialists were pragmatic rather than extremist in practice. Without abandoning their principles, they were able to accomplish many significant things by compromise and example despite the fact that they most often lacked a majority on the city council. The book clearly points out that Milwaukee bcame famous for many things other than beer and Harley Davidson motorcycles. To name but a few: its world famous system of neighborhood parks, its zoo, harbor and dock facilities for ocean going vessels, heavy industries, tanneries, foundries and machine tool manufacturing. It also became famous for the pride with which homeowners maintained their property. The extensive eight page bibliography provides a valuable resource to the reader wishing to further explore a particular historical point, and the twelve page index proved to be an easy route to the book's subject matter.

It is not hyperbole to say that author John Gurda's book seems destined to become one of the most fascinating and easily read accounts of American municipal history ever written. Genealogists, in particular, will appreciate the following wise observation found in the author's Forward: "I am firmly convinced that, as the velocity of change increases, it is increasingly important to rebuild our connections with the past, whether the past involves our families, our home communities, or our entire society. We do so not for comfort but for context, not to feed a misplaced sense of nostalgia but to broaden our understanding of the world around us. History, at its root, is why things are the way they are."

I picked up this book on a whim at a local bookstore, and found it to be a wonderful read. I've always been curious about the history of the area I grew up in, and this book gives a solid introduction to the area. I cannot speak for history buffs of the region, who might quibble with a fact or two, but I'm glad to find such an engaging book on the subject.

Hard to understand the first reviewers remarks.if you buy a book called the making of milwaukee then it better have tedious detail on the subject. this book delivers. the whys and wherefores of milwaukee icons unfold for the reader and visits back to milwaukee become all the more memorable when you know the true history. this is an excellent read not only about milwaukee but about the history of the european melting pot as it grew in the midwest.this book reads like the 'forest gump' narrative of milwaukee...all of the icons come alive in a quick and thorough way.

Milwaukee, how I love thee. Let me count the ways. Those of you who have never been to Milwaukee, or -God forbid- only know what makes the news (kids beating a man to death on a porch, how much the Brewers suck, or Jeffrey Dahmer) ought to invest some time in this midwestern jewel. This is a nice book that helps explain the vibrant background of this metro area of 1.7 million. Famous folks weave through the narrative and we learn about the making of such places as the world famous Milwaukee County Zoo, Milwaukee Art Museum, Miller Brewing, the world reknowned Milwaukee County Museum of Natural History, the Schlitz Audubon Center, and the Mitchell Park Horticultural Domes. John Gurda, resident historian, provides an in-depth view of these places and many other items that have shaped Milwaukee; the settling of the area, bridge wars, the growth of the city and suburbs, annexation battles, public services, neighborhood developent and decline, civil rights, urban blight, changes in industry and service trades, freeway construction etc. etc. The book is also peppered throughout with wonderful archival photographs. A must for any student of urban studies or public administration.

Recommended.