Minnesota Books

It is the author's account of building his own log home in remote northern Mnnesota. But it is much more. Its a story about undertaking a personal project, that at first consideration seemed impossibly overwelming, seeing it through to completion, and the personal satisfaction and self discovery that came from that. The author is a very astute observer of the natural and human world around him, and of himself. It is practical instruction and observation. And it is poetry. I don't think the author was thinking of Thoreau. But the book does remind one of Walden.

This book traces the inner work and the physical work required to build a home in the woods. There are lots of "how to" details and learning to be had, but for those of us who are not carpenters (or plumbers or electricians), the most interesting sections are about the interactions with people and animals--wild and domestic--that the author describes. I found these encounters moving. The writer's perspective is all his own--clear-sighted, unsentimental, and sometimes a bit grumpy. As you read you will see and hear how he works his way through the world, and that world view will probably work its way into yours.

Inspiring, witty and filled with the raw emotions of life.
This journey through just one year of the author's life will touch your heart forever.
Take a look for yourself if you don't believe me.

When I sat down to read The Weather Witch, I knew that as a mother I could only afford about an hour. Well, priorities change when you become so affected by a book like this one. Wonderful book! Well done!

Yes, I saw it in manuscript form, but it is so elegant in print and so rich in detail besides being both funny and poignant that it's good for a reread any time. There's Casey, the dog, and the tiny trailer, and his orange car that he lived in on the beach at Galveston, Tx, eking out a Minnesota winter. There's his born-again neighbor, Dale, and all the denizens of the Grand Rapids coffee house. There's always the struggle with the logs and the snow and money ... be sure to note his creative, actually healthy meals and there's always an undercurrent of potential danger of various sorts. It's important not to read too fast or you'll miss the tiny switches the author pulls. So enjoyable, but keep the tissues handy.

Fantastic book. I never realized what this area had to offer in hiking opportunities. This book really covers the area very well. The maps and description are a great read and enhance the experience. I've walked a long way in my time and this book just adds to the adventure.

This book is great for visitors to the Twin Cities or long-time residents. Excellent directions and maps and useful and accurate information about the difficulty of the trail, trail length and access, plus special elements of interest. The book reads as though Tom is right there with you. One item that I find especially unique is that this book also presents trails that are accessible to people in wheelchairs or who have physical limitations that would preclude them from enjoying most areas of hiking and yet they can still get the feeling of being in the woods and a chance to enjoy the great outdoors and there are also hikes for the more experienced hiker. Excellent variety of hiking trails for all, plus a few areas that I did not know about and I live in the Twin Cities! Would make an excellent gift!

I knew there were a lot of parks around the cities but this book takes each one with a good trail system and shares the walk with the reader...easy to follow and easy to review to decide which hikes to take. Also like the fact that the author is a naturalist and shares facts and tidbits about the things found along the hike. This is a good birthday or Christmas gift for anyone who is even a casual hiker.

60 Hikes Within 60 Miles: Twin Cities by outdoor enthusiast, hiker, photographer, bird-watcher, and canoeist Tom Watson is a detailed and thoroughly "user friendly" guide to sixty different scenic hikes in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area of Minnesota, including wildlife hikes, historic hikes, urban hikes and even hikes for kids. Packed from cover to cover with maps, information about local resources, trail guides and more, 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles is an excellent and enthusiastically recommended planning resource for Twin Cities area hikers and outdoor enthusiasts looking for exercise, variety, and fun.

Yes, the New Orleans Times-Picayune correctly labeled Bruce Henricksen's book: A spiritual comedy. The author's inventive mind, wit and understanding of human nature allowed me to suspend all belief and most gloriously travel from post Katrina New Orleans to Cold Beak, MN in this mythic tale. He wraps us around odd-ball characters and animals that make the reader laugh and cry. (I looked askance at my own dog quite often while reading.) The author's keen and worthwhile observations we absorb will stay with us and truly makes this a one-of-a-kind gift book.

The blurb on the rear cover describes this unusual novel as "magical realism -- southern style and northern style." Although I'm not too familiar with that genre (I'm mainly drawn to history, memoirs and realistic fiction), I ventured into After The Floods while I commuted to and from downtown Detroit everyday this past Winter/Spring. The weather was cold and dry, or cold and wet; the predominant color, grey; and the exterior of the bus always smeared with salt and dirt. The city was suffering economically and mired in a corruption scandal. Very real, and not very magical.

After The Floods was an escape in one sense, to places (New Orleans after the flood, and Cold Beak, Minnesota) where some animals mysteriously speak, where an obese Birdella May Borguson becomes a local hero as she strips at a local restaurant to lose weight, where time is sometimes suspended, and where a whole host of real and unusual people live, love and survive. I loved the characters, and believed in their world, as strange and irrational as it is often portrayed by Henricksen. In that sense, the book is a worthwhile escape. If that's what you look for in a novel, then go for it.

But in another sense, the book made me look around the bus, so to speak, and wonder about some of the strangers on the bus (who really aren't strangers, because I see most of them off and on all the time). And despite the struggles around, the book helped me to see the some of the magic. And I figure that maybe my time on the bus everyday is a real-life suspension of time.

After The Flood is interesting. And add to that, Henricksen's wonderful way with words and keen sense of observation, and you end up with a great read. Here's a small sampling of his prose: "Happiness never comes alone, it always drags a shadow."

"A voice told me that truth and meaning are wanderers, living here and there, sometimes in a church, sometimes in a book, a river, or a person. And as soon as you're sure you know where they are, they're gone and you have become a wanderer too."

"On warm evenings the ice rink at the recreational complex was a meeting place. Birdie, given her pregnancy and her inexperience with skates, stayed indoors sipping coffee, but many of the others I've told you about glided around the oval plane of ice under blue lights as music drifted from the speakers. Few things are more beautiful than snowflakes illuminated by lights beneath the vast darkness, snowflakes descending on children who duck and dodge among adults, forever losing and finding one another as they call 'Marco' and 'Polo.'"

I'm lucky enough to live in a place where I still get to skate at night "beneath the vast darkness" and experience a bit of Henricksen's magical realism right around me. The cicadas are hissing outside as I type, marking another seventeen year cycle of summers. I suspect that most readers will come away with similar connections to this story, and it will evoke long-set-aside memories. If this is magical realism, then I like it. It now has has a distinct place in my library.

"After the Floods" reminds me of the "Odd Thomas" series by Dean Koontz. I know I did not get everthing on one read and this will be on our bookshelf so I can enjoy it again.

I live in Bruce Henricksen's home city so I may be biased, but to me this is an absolutely terrific novel. It gives us a rich variety of characters, all in recovery mode. I cried in one chapter and laughed until I cried in the next. One of the sites where the drama of healing is staged is the fictional town of Cold Beak, situated on the New Hope River. Fans of Lake Wobegon and readers of Garrison Keillor's new novel, Pontoon Pontoon: A Novel of Lake Wobegon, are sure to take a special delight in Cold Beak. In this town, and eslewhere in the book, magial events underline the theme of upheaval in the natural order. This theme is also reflected in the novel's somewhat deconstructed plot, a plot that makes a couple of large geographical leaps and plays some entertaining games with time itself. Nonetheless, it is all easy to follow and a joy to read. Moreover, there are moments of rare lyrical beauty. This book is five stars all the way.

The book is in excellent condition and the delivery time was quite brief. Great service and great product!

Ferguson's book is a powerful analysis of the epistemological bottlenecks that plague development policy and the World Bank's approach in Africa. World Bank's economists usually put a discount upon rigorous social research requirements in the way they explain cause-effect relationships of the African economic deficits. With commanding persuasive force Ferguson shows how the peculiarities of the African context are dissolved in a (anti-contextual) cut-and-ready, illogical analytical framework, rendered 'logical' to best accommodate World Bank's internal bureaucratic rationality. One should not wonder why the policies born out of such an 'Anti-Politics Machine' by and large remain in de-phase with the very notion of development.

By
Cyril FEGUE

I was referred to this book by my lecturer in applied athropology. Reading it caused me to rethink and rewrite my assignment. Fergusson can be a bit irritating but he certainly has researched his field well and shows a great insight into the politics of foreign aid and economic development in the 3rd World.

Ferguson's study of development projects in Lesotho brings a much needed dose of reality to the subject of modernization and aid. While others might stress the need for appropriate technology or bog the reader down in economic formulae, Ferguson examines the ways in which local and global politics influence the success of even the most carefully planned and well-meaning of projects. A must-read for anyone interested in the development business.

I think I read all of Max Schulman's books while attending Florida State University in 1947, the year FSU was born. Until then, except for The Holy Bible, I had read little fiction and suddenly realized what I'd been missing. The best part was talking with girls about my new reading habit. It apparently impressed them and I got laid a lot. Thanks, Max.

At the suggestion of my father, who read the book while in the AirCorp in WWII, I decided to read this book. I believe it to be one of the funniest books I have ever read! It is a timeless classic about a small town boy and his transition into college life. It covers all the problems that freshman face: going to see an advisor for suggestions on classes, the courses themselves, the attempt to make friends, the different type of people one meets on a university campus, and the homesickness one feels for their family and an old love. This book is a well written comedy that you will not be able to put down!

When I was in high school I was a big fan of the writer Max Shulman. He published "Barefoot Boy With Cheek" in 1943 when he was in his early twenties, a new graduate of the University of Minnesota. ("The University of Minnesota is, of coure, wholly imaginary.") There he had earned a reputation as the editor of "Ski-U-Mah," the campus humor magazine. He published a half dozen novels, two of which became musical comedies on Broadway, while two others became television series and movies. He is probably best known for "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis," which became a successful TV series, and "The Tender Trap," a movie starring Debbie Reynolds.

I recently came across a well-worn copy of "Barefoot Boy---" in a used-book store and read it again. It's an outrageous satire of college life, a story of the hilarious freshman year of Asa Hearthrug at the (imaginary) University of Minnesota.

"St. Paul and Minneapolis extend from the Mississippi River like the legs on a pair of trousers. Where they join is the University of Minnesota."

Asa is promptly registered into a liberal arts program in order to become a "well rounded-out personality," and is then recruited into the Alpha Cholera fraternity, where he emotionally joins in singing the frat song:

"Stand, good men, take off your hat
To Alpha Cholera, our swell frat.
In our midst you'll find no rat,
And don't let anyone tell you that."

He soon meets Yetta Samovar, and is promptly recruited into the Minnesota Chapter of the Subversive Elements League, where he emotionally joins in singing:

"Workers, workers,
Don't be shirkers,
There's a job we have to do.
Flee your prison,
Collectivism
Is the thing for you to do."

Back at Alpha Cholera he gets invited to a sorority song-title party at Beta Thigh, which he attends as "Tea for Two," with a silver tea service balanced on his head. His date, arranged by his frat brother, is the beautiful Noblesse Oblige, whose song title costume includes a smudge pot attached to her navel. "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," of course!

Asa becomes torn between Noblesse, the fraternity, and the Belongers, or Yetta, the Subversives, and the Unbelongers.

He loses his bid as the dark horse candidate for the student council, flunks all his classes, and returns to his home at Whistlestop and his girlfriend Lodestone La Toole.

Each chapter of the book is preceded by a penetrating quotation in French or Latin, like the one I chose as the title for this review.

An appreciation, or at least a tolerance, for silliness and absurdity is the minimum requirement to enjoy this outrageous satire of college life. I will highly recommend the book to those with that appreciation or tolerance.

You may or may not be aware of this characteristic of Minnesota Scandinavians: We LOVE to make fun of ourselves!

I first read this book in high school (in the mid '50's). I still haven't stopped laughing when I think about it. I want my h/s son to read it, since he's thinking about going to college soon. I think Asa's adventures would help him. Or, have I misspelled "Asa's name." I sure hope not. It's a great book, really, and are Shulman's others.

I have a number of baking books but this one offers something new. The baker's stories are interesting and the idea of forming a bakers club is great. I have used three of the recipes in this book in the last week and they have all turned out wonderfully. I do not always have such good luck with bread recipes and feel that the ones in this book have truly been used with sucess by real people who bake on a regular basis and have lots of experience with these particular recipes.

Not only covers different types of bread recipes but also gives some background on the bakers. Have already used one of the recipes, intend to try more soon.

A fun book to read even if you don't bake. The recipes are well written and an enjoyable experience to bake. The only book you will need to get started or to expand your knowledge.

Easy to follow recipes.. I have not been disappointed with any of them. The bio of each baker is interesting. Highly recommended.

This is a wonderful guide into Minnesota's past. Letters and articles accompany photos that bring you to places that you've been and acquaint you with it's character. Truly a terrific book for those that love the warmth and charm of the characters and life that make Minnesota home!

An excellent collection of diaries and letters from Minnesota territory days thru early in her statehood. Accompanied by many great photo's depicting the times.A great fireplace companion!

An excellent collection of diaries and letters from Minnesota territory days thru early in her statehood. Accompanied by many great photo's depicting the times.A great fireplace companion!

Bring Warm Clothes : Letters and Photos from Minnesota's Past was written by a former columnist for the Minnesota Star and Tribune, Peg Meier. It is a great treat, both as a peek into the past and as a well "written" work of history. The author includes pictures, diary entries, newspaper articles, letters, and government documents to create her biography of the state.

The book is heavily illustrated. Among the visual works are paintings of Minnesota from its exploration years, mostly by Seth Eastman and Karl Bodmer, which capture the rustic and wild character of a land yet untrammeled by the fences, industrial complexes and housing developments with which most of us are familiar. For those who like to see photographic reality, there are photos of Minnesota's early pre- and post-statehood years during the 19th Century and of the 20th Century up to World War II. The former include pictures of the Civil War in which the volunteers of the First Minnesota Regiment participated. In all some 25,000 men from the state fought in battles like Bull Run, Antietam, and Gettysburg, losing some 2,500 men, almost one out of every ten. Other photos show the old homes, city and town streets, early industry, sod homes, and family and other groups that bring to life a time past.

Particularly enjoyable were the letters from the early settlement of Saint Paul and Minneapolis as presented in the merry correspondence of the Fuller family, and the witty press releases of Jane Grey Swisshelm in her paper the St Cloud Visiter, later the St. Cloud Democrat. The letters of Harriet Griswold reveal the fact that boom and bust economy is not new to our era, when her correspondence goes from exuberence and big plans in October of 1856 to bearly hanging on in September of 1858. The Civil War diaries of Sam Bloomer and Isaac Taylor and the World War I letters of Philip Longyear, an ambulance driver at the French front, bring those conflicts to a more vivid reality. The plight of the Native Americans and the fear and reactionism that the Indian Wars generated is also covered.

The author has, wisely in my opinion, allowed the primary sources speak for themselves. She adds very little interpretive material of her own and then only to clarify where necessary or to provide follow up information.

One of the principle points of note is the fact that most of these people had many of the same problems we have, and that they bring some of the same perspectives, same blind spots, and same sense of humor that we bring to our own daily lives. They lived one day at a time, facing an unknown future with the same uncertainty that we do. Some stories came out with a happy ending, some did not. It makes one wonder what some future writer of Minnesota history will say and think of our own times.

Originally published in 1917, reissued in 1987, now released again with a new introduction by Jeffrey R. Hansen, Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden presents an agricultural calendar year's activities as remembered by Buffalo Bird Woman, an accomplished Hidatsa gardener born around 1839. Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden was a doctoral dissertation by a man who believed "It is of no importance that an Indian's war costume struck the Puritan as the Devil's scheme to frighten the heart out of the Lord's annointed. What we want to know is why the Indian donned the costume, and his reasons for doing it (p.xix)." Wilson also went on to write Goodbird the Indian His Story and Waheenee: An Indian Girl's Story (biography of Buffalo Bird Woman, 1839-1921). Using biography to study a culture was effective because it highlighted the variety of traumatic cultural shifts, changes, and transmutations painfully experienced by Buffalo Bird Woman and her family. The use of empathy informs the dated, 'superior' dominant culture outlook. Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden has been called a classic anthropological document. It certainly is that and more. As a model of respectful viewing and learning, as a mirror of the complex lifeway of ;the agricultural Plains Indians, as a chronicle of human adaptation, survival and ingenuity in the face of cultural disenfranchisement, Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden sets the bar for the standard. In addition, it gives eloquent testimony to one of the enduring gifts of the Hidatsa - their varieties of corn, squash, beans, and sunflowers. Even more enduring, perhaps, is the contribution highlighted by Jeffrey Hanson: "buffalo Bird Woman's Garden is not the end, but the beginning. It is a foundation, a viewpoint, and it presents a cultural relationship with nature that we can all appreciate and from which we can all derive benefit. (p.xxiii). Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden describes planting, preparation, cultivating, harvesting and storing practices, as well as traditional songs and prayers sung to honor and encourage the garden's yield. Beautifully detailed drawings by her son Edward Goodbird illustrate Buffalo Bird Woman's descriptions of gardening and storing produce and other activities. It is easy to see that modern ethnologists and authors such as W. Michael and Kathleen O'Neal Gear drew fairly heavily from the information presented in Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden. This is an enduring testament to a lifeway revalued today perhaps more as it should be.

Nancy Lorraine, Reviewer

This is a Minnesota Historical Society reprint of the anthropological study done by Gilbert Wilson in 1917, originally published as "Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians: An Indian Interpretation." Wilson was among the first of a new school of American anthropologists that felt Indian cultures should speak for themselves, and not be spoken for by "white man's" interpretations. Consequently, the book really is, as the subtitle says, "an Indian interpretation." Most of the text is translated directly from Buffalo Bird Woman's own words, complete with stories, jokes, and personal anecdotes about village life. By the time you are done reading it, you will feel as if you met her personally.

I bought it because I am a Minnesota gardener, so I wanted to see what tips I might pick up from the ways of the indigenous people. The book is rich with useful gardening lore, including diagrams of various tools and structures, along with detailed descriptions of the different kinds of beans, corn, and squash that the Indians grew. Plus, there are native recipes you can try.

I was surprised to learn that, when the Indians dried squash, they didn't use mature fruits with hard skins like we do today, but preferred to cut them when they were 4 days old -- at about 3 1/2 inches diameter. They were more tender that way, easier to slice, and they dried better. The best squashes were marked in the field and allowed to mature for seed.

I also found it interesting that the Indians kept the different colors of corn separate, not like the multi-colored "Indian corn" we buy today for fall decorations. Although Buffalo Bird Woman did not understand the science behind genetics, she and her fellow Hidatsa gardeners did notice that corn varieties will "travel" (her word) from one patch to another if different colors are planted too closely together. So, women with adjoining fields would agree to plant the same varieties side-by-side, to help prevent this "traveling."

The Hidatsa women also understood the principles of good seed-saving techniques, and carefully chose seed from the very best squashes and corn ears in the crop, thereby improving their strains from year to year. Composting, however, was apparently unknown. Leaves and brush were burned, not composted, and they regarded manure as a dirty substance to be removed from the garden. But the Hidatsa did know the value of fallowing, and would allow a less-productive field rest a minimum of two years to renew itself.

Some of the techniques in this book are still quite useful today. I have begun pre-spouting my squash seeds, and planting them in the SIDES of the hills instead of on top, to help prevent the heavy rains from damaging the seedlings. Some of the fencing designs have found their way into my rustic Minnesota garden, too.

This book is also a priceless resource for "living history" re-enactors or "back to the land" homesteaders who might want to know how to build a traditional corn-drying platform, a food-storage cache, a homemade rake, or any of the other tools used successfully for many centuries before the Europeans came here. Simply a delightful book!

This is a unique and irreplaceable book. In the early 20th century, the author interviewed Buffalo Bird, an old Hidasta Indian woman about Indian farming methods in the mid 19th century. The result is a primer on how the Indians grew corn and other crops on the Great Plains. Interspaced with the explanation of agricultural techniques are charming stories, songs, recipes, and ancedotes told by Buffalo Bird. She also describes how the Indians preserved their crop.

The Hidasta lived in North Dakota and this book is a primer on how to garden in the State without recourse to chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or motor powered equipment. The Hidasta grew five crops: corn, beans, squash, sunflower seeds, and tobacco. Their methods of cultivation, storage, and usage of each crop is described, usually with enough detail to be copied by the modern low-impact sustainable agriculturalist. A large number of illustrations and photographs supplement the text and show how the Indians built fences, dug storage pits, dried squash, and laid out their fields.

A good introductory essay introduces the Hidasta, Bird Woman, and the author to the reader. The whole book is only about 150 pages, but there's a wealth of cultural and agricultural information here presented in a charming and easy-to-digest format.

Smallchief

A "must have" for anyone who is interested in doing a garden using authentic Native American practices, as used in the tribes in the Missouri Valley area. Details on laying out the garden, maintaining it, food storage, construction of tools, etc. are all included with sufficient clarity for reproduction.

I liked this book a lot. The author has a knack for choosing to present facts that are interesting. Made me want to get out into the woods.

'Nuff said. The rating-stars do not apply, as I have not seen the book, and am not likely to until I can find out more on its content. *-(

This is a great field guide to all the creatures you might encounter on a canoe trip in the North Woods. It is very succinct, yet written in an interesting prose, with about 2 to 3 pages dedicated to each animal, fish, or insect it describes. We consider it an essential part of the gear we take on all our canoe trips up North. You will not be disappointed in this book. Great for all ages.

An excellent overview of wildlife of the Northern Minnesota area. There are interesting and informative descriptions of everything from birds to insects to fish. The scope of the book is so broad that only a few of each type of creature can be listed, but he has chosen the ones, such as loons, herons, and otters, that are so special to the North woods. Highly recommended.

the book was in excellent condition. and i would recommend the seller to others. i am satisfied with the service i got.

Frances Densmore lived with and studied the Chippewa people of Minnesota for several years. Her research has proved an invaluable resource for anyone wishing to know more about this fascinating cultural group. This book is chock full of information, from naming ceremonies to marriage customs to burial rites. If it were not for Mrs. Densmore, many valuable facts on an important people group would be lost

Chippewa Customs is a detailed and facinating book, containing extensive information that will assist in my research on the history of the Chippewa tribe. This is my first tool to begin my search for distant ancestors. God bless the Author Frances Densmore.

I wasn't sure what I was expecting when I picked up "Chippewa Customs" by Frances Densmore. Written in the early part of the 20th century, it's a book that has remained readable and certainly enjoyable throughout the years.

Frances Densmore paints a very vivid picture of the Chippewa/Ojibwe people, from how they picked their names, to what they wore in winter, to the fact that they liked fish-heads as a delicacy, or the sleeping arrangements inside the family wigwam. It's absolutely screaming-full of all those little details that you're constantly trying to find but never can seem to put your finger on.

They're right here, of course! My only complaint is that the ceremonies (Marriage, births, etc) are only touched upon barely. I would have liked to hear more about those particular aspects.