Minnesota Books

In this book, early, but not that much so, in Agamben's carreer and work, he explores what metaphysics has proposed as the grounds for being and language. As he notes through a close reading of Hegel's concept of the Absolute and Heiddeger's Ereignis, the place of the ground has been a negativity. It is this negativity what remains to be thought in western philosophy, and what relates language and death as ungrounded grounds of being. Divided in daily conferences, with intermitent excursus, a concise and very profound work on both metaphysics and continental philosophy of language. Recommended to anyone who is interested in such subjects.

Agamben analyses the space of negativity in the thought of Hegel and Heidegger. Since Derrida,continential philosophies of language have critiqued traditional philosophy for privleging presence and treating signs as transparent conveyors of meaning. But Agamben, through exacting studies of Patristic and Medieval thought, demonstrates the tradition's awareness of the constitutive moment of absence in discourse. He contends that the deconstructionist critique of metaphysical thinking merely repeats an old problematic and fails to escape the difficulties it reveals. His corrective account of language and the place of negativity within it open a space for the human apart from reductive theories of the self as merely a social and linguistic construct.

Giorgio Agamben's Language and Death goes beyond certain limits - in philosophy, linguistics, and anthropology - while concurrently speaking of the limit, that which is undefinable, lacking, absent. It is a significant work that questions not only self-presence, through discussions of the fractured 'Voice' of the human, but also, in leaving behind poststructuralism, draws out the possibility of a life that has, in some sense, 'abandoned' speech, and accepts something of a constitutive emptiness found in the awareness of death.
What Agamben proposes is thus a truly radical redefinition of the linguistic basis of the human, a linguistic basis, it must be added, which has explicitly political effects. Instead of enclosing humans ever more within the 'prison-house' of language, historically taking the form of the polis or political community, Agamben considers the importance of absence and lack in defining the proper dwelling place of the human. To live in poverty, without a proper home or 'mother tongue' is that which is most human. Emptiness must be taken as the starting-point of all definitions of the human.
The breadth of themes this book covers makes it an important work for any who seek to question the now hegemonic theories of language proffered by postmodernism, as well as those who seek to effect a radical opposition to those institutions and systems whose existence are premised on the fullness and consistency of their speech.

Duff Brenna, who has won numerous awards for his fiction, including the AWP Best Novel Award and a New York Times notable book mention, brings us his sixth novel The Law of Falling Bodies, and it is simply wonderful. The range of narrative tactics includes free indirect discourse, epistolary sections, and good ol' traditional psychological realism. And what's more impressive is how seamlessly and naturally these various tactics work together to make for a page-turning read.

Duff Brenna has been writing some of the best fiction in America for decades. Hopefully this excellent new novel will bring him more the readership he greatly deserves.

Nothing Duff Brenna does in literature will surprise me any more. Long underrated, one can only hope that this amazing new novel, "The Law of Falling Bodies," finally gets Brenna the full recognition he deserves. You can virtually taste Brenna's settings, along with the hopelessness inherent in every fallen leaf or the draining soul of each character -- no matter how insignificant. And yet I'd be leading you astray to portray this as a bleak or depressing novel. The immutable spirit found in the most forlorn of characters soars under Brenna's hand and his humor is as unflinching as anything found by Harry Crews, high praise from me. And war, which seems to be the common denominator of each American generation, is given the fitting importance it deserves - all in the trenches of the minds of the Foggy family. Duff Brenna is as fine a fiction writer that we have working today and "The Law of Falling Bodies" is a high entry in the canon of American fiction. Bravo!

Award-winning author Duff Brenna presents The Law of Falling Bodies, a novel examining the cyclical nature of wars between men, women, and countries. Fifteen-year-old Virgil Foggy is trying to eke out a living on a failing dairy farm in Minnesota. Virgil's mother is pregnant, with a potential sibling the family cannot afford to raise; Virgil's brother has joined the army and departed abroad, yet war for Virgil is a daily reality with his stepfather at home. At times grim bordering on gruesome, The Law of Falling Bodies is punctuated with stark emotional coldness, even slaughter as reflected upon the merciless killing of farm animals for food. An unforgettable reading experience.

This is probably the best book I have read since reading Lonesome Dove many years ago.

LIKE OTHER BOOKS ABOUT VIETNAM I DO NOT THINK IT REFLECTS THE TRUE HORROR OF THAT TIME, BUT FEEL IT IS PROBABLY BEYOND WORDS. I FOUND IT VERY INTERESTING AND PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES CAN SEE THAT THEY REALLY CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE. VERY IMPRESSED WITH HIS DRIVE TO EXCELL. IT REALLY HELPED SINCE BOTH MY HUSBAND AND I ARE FROM FERTILE, MN. WE REALLY ENJOY LAND O LAKES CHEESE AND PICK SOME UP WHEN WE ARE IN THE AREA. VERY INTERESTING READ. IT IS JUST LIKE YOU ARE LISTENING TO HIM TALK.

Vietnam veteran Jon Hovde teams up with Maureen Anderson to bring us a real life tale of heroes, redemption, sadness, suffering and joy! Jon's life story "Left for Dead - A Second Life After Vietnam" will inspire you and it will also make you very aware of the sacrifices that many veterans have made on the personal level. This book tells it like it was and allows you to view a part of the veteran experience that mostly remains hidden from the public view.

We find that Jon is very much a human being with all that baggage that comes from being a baby boomer growing up in the 1950's and 1960's. That includes his days spent driving fast cars and getting drunk. But his story takes us to new places of the heart and the spirit as we follow along on his personal journey through his life. We are there with him when his body is ravaged by war and his life is almost taken from him. Then we get an insider view of what it was like to recover and try to move on with his life. As a reader you will find yourself rooting for him as he begins his new life with a wife and family.

The thing that will impress you most when reading this story is the author's lack out anger or outrage at what the war did to him. He accepts life as it is and moves onward as best he can. Of course, with all that happened to him it is matter of time when he discovers that his workaholic attitude is killing him and that he needs to focus on his family and personal needs. He deals with many issues from PTSD to excessive drinking to depression but it is all just a part of the healing process for Jon as he continues to move spiritual and emotionally forward with his life.

This book is riveting--once you read the first few pages you will not put it down until you have savored the final words on the last page. I know that is what happened to me. The book will inspire you as does his life to many people. Jon is a special person and is now doing much through his public speaking and now his book, to inspire and to help others.

This book gets the MWSA TOP RATING - 5 STARS! A must read book

2005 Silver Medal Award for Military Non-Fiction!

I was interested in reading this book, due to living in Minnesota and just to look at the pictures too! Wonderful book, storyline and art work are top notch.

I own all David Geister-illustrated books. Although Kathy-Jo writes a wonderful tale, it's David's illustrations that truly bring it to life.

This is a great book- if you want to know the background to midwestern history or have little kids who like brilliant paintings- this is a wonderfully written and presented book. My kids adore the images and it generates a lot of parent-to-child discussion. It is a warm and inviting tale, and you'll spend a lot of fun time with kids pouring over the detailed images by Mr. Dave Geister. Highly recommended!

If you've ever spent a winter in the northwoods, and even if you haven't, you'll enjoy this book. He accurately chronicles living in a small town in northern Minnesota. His writing in excellent, and as you read you will feel that you are standing next to Peter as he sees the wolves and the northern lights

Peter Leschak's style of writing tales of life up north is both immediate and reflective. He starts out philosophically sounding a bit like a contemporary Calvin Rutstrum, but avoids being "preachy" by moving quickly into interesting but everyday stories of rural life. I am glad he has written other books: I plan to read them all!

Peter is one of the best authors I've read. The reason I address him by his first name is because *know* him.. Lives quite close to me. I've read each of his books several times over...and as for the feeling of "being" in the north woods, I sent a copy of this book to a friend in Texas--and she said she felt as if she were here. I promise--once you read this books, you'll be hooked, and want to go one with each of them...

This is a great book of stories. I like to read before bedtime in the evenings, and usually I take several evenings to finish a single story. However, with this book, I found myself wanting to read more than one story in an evening.

I use a benchmark to decide whether or not a story is good. If I keep thinking about it for hours (or days) afterwards, that means it was a good read. The stories in this book produced images that stand out so vividly that, in memory, it is as if I saw them in a movie or even in real life ... the boy charred by lightning, dangling from the windrower as it goes round and round ... the deer carcasses hanging from trees in the night.

No other author has produced lingering images in my mind that are any more vivid than those generated by these stories. The only other author who did as good a job of that (for me) was Isaac Bashevis Singer.

I've had the opportunity to meet Kent Meyers in person. He gave a talk for Northern Hills Writers, our little group here in Lead, South Dakota. It's amazing how much effort he puts into his work, and it has paid off in this collection of stories. Reading Kent's work is not, however, a lazy affair. Your mind's eye must be open.

This is my 3rd Kent Meyers book and I can't recommend them highly enough. What a writer! His works are as emotionally jarring as those by Chuck Palahniuk without all the violence and the craziness. This is a book of short stories and each one packs a wallop.

One of my favorites was "Abiding by Law" which speaks to the universality of human emotions, our fear of the unknown and love for the safe and familiar, the strong drive to protect those in our family. This story has a wonderful aha moment, when a man's protective shell is cracked by a smile and a bow, a gentle nudge from one of those amazing people who are able to form bridges between people, and he is able to reach out a helping hand to his neighbor.

In "Making the News" a farmer creates sculptures out of cars.
"We were in the grove. Mammouths Resurrected come into view. Ed'd turned three cars into mammoths, put thick legs and trunks on them, and tusks,and he'd half-buried one so it looked like it was climbing out of the earth, and the second one was leaping like it'd just shook free, and the third was in full run, its trunk raised. From a distance they really did look like mammoths. The rock pile of all the rocks Ed's father and Ed and Gray had picked out of the fields was in the center of the group, and second mammoth looked like she was leaping over it, her front legs curled up for the leap.

'I don't see how he does it,' Paul Alcorn said. 'Everywhere you turn, there's something new.'

We stood looking at the sculpture, the wind making light scatter through the trees.

'It's like he's trying to bring it all back,' Paul Alcorn said. 'That's what it feels like. Everything that ever happened here.
Everything that's lost, he's trying to retrieve it.'"

A fine and very satisfying collection of stories with a strong sense of place (southern Minnesota) and the people who inhabit it. Meyers' stories represent the narrative tradition found in "Winesburg, Ohio" and "The Spoon River Anthology." He has a gift for capturing the way rural Midwesterners speak, and each of the stories is a dramatic monologue in a distinctly different voice. He also has a remarkable ability to evoke in words the experience of physical sensations -- qualities of air and movement, nuances of deeply felt emotion and memory.

There are frequent references to the topography of the land and the traces left behind of geological ages past. This awareness of prehistory and the cycles of seasons, migratory birds, and extremes of weather, frame the lives of characters who live and work in rural communities and on family farms. A young man is struck by lightning while operating a combine. A crew boss at a corn processing plant must deflect the mounting rage of an itinerant employee. A young woman struggles with her father to hang onto a farm he no longer wants. A young farmer restores a section of his cornfields to wetlands, so geese will stop again on their seasonal flights. Two bored teenagers invent a death-defying game played out nightly on country roads.

Although often haunted by isolation, loss, and regret, these are richly experienced lives, lived by people reminded daily of their vulnerability by the vast, open land around them and their dependence on one another.

I've got Douglas' book today for her take on ham radio (I'm part of the Amateur Radio community) and I was very impressed with the rest of the book. Though I wrinkled my nose at the over-emphasis on the gender conflict in radio, Listening In reminded me of a time when people participate in a common culture instead of idly sitting by listening to the umpteenth Top 40 hit made by over-commercialized "plastic" bands.

The ham radio chapter was simply great and I give Dr. Douglas her due for mentioning the American Radio Relay League as the national association for hams. From this chapter, I can see why hams have a nurturing touch in their approach to life! The section on radio comedy is well done (the comedy bits are good for a chuckle or two). I recommend it to those who have a deep affinity for radio and communications.

Radio has become such a background part of our lives, we forget just how astounding an impact it has had on our culture and psyche. Susan Douglas brings it all back to the foreground in her book "Listening In." This is not just a chronicle of the development of the media, this book takes us deep into the social impacts of radio, and how it changed how we react and interact with each other. Douglas has perfectly captured the feel and "tone" of different periods of radio listening, and explores a lot of the psychological aspects of how radio let us sample and explore different parts of our American cultue in a safe and nonthreatening way.

As a present-day radio fanatic, the book gave me hope: hope that the medium hasn't been corporatized into complete blandness. Radio will continue to evolve, just like our American culture.

Whether your're a radio technology type, an old time radio fan, or just a student of American history, you'll find something to love in this book.

Please take note that Susan J. Douglas' (Times Books, 1999) is no mere history of radio. It was triggered by a request from the Sloan Foundation that was preparing a series of books on technology and American culture; and the emphasis is not on the details but on the general effect radio has on us from its beginnings. And take another note. This is too enjoyable a read to be considered a textbook.

My favorite chapter was the one called "Radio Comedy and Linguistic Slapstick." Here only a few comics are used as examples to support her several theses, one of which is the emasculation of the American male by the use of such high-pitched speakers as Jack Benny and Joe Penner. Of course there is lots of room for argument, but she does let the facts speak for themselves (pun intended).

The other chapters are "The Zen of Listening," "The Ethereal World," "Exploratory Listening in the 1920s," "Tuning In to Jazz" "The Invention of the Audience," "World War II and the Invention of Broadcast Journalism," "Playing Fields of the Mind," "The Kids Take Over: Transistors, DJs, and Rock 'n' Roll," "The FM Revolution," "Talk Talk," "Why Ham Radio Matters," and "Conclusion: Is Listening Dead?"

Which of us has not been affected in many of the ways Ms. Douglas points out in this book? Therefore, which of us can afford to miss being shown how radio has helped make us what we are? And I do hope she produces a similar book about television.

this one's good. very informative study of an area not yet touched upon by authors, modern or classical.

Throughout history, boys have always been more aggressive and prone to misbehavior than girls. At least that is the common perception. According to Kenneth B. Kidd in his new book Making American Boys, the scouting/camping movement that began in the early 20th Century was geared towards harnessing male adolescent aggressiveness in constructive directions. This movement was so successful that our contemporary ideas about boys and how to raise them came from the Boy Scouts.

This is an amazing and informative book.

I thoroughly enjoyed Kenneth Kidd's publication. "Making American Boys" delves into a variety of influences upon the typical American boy. It was rather comprehensive in surveying the past 150 years and brought all elements together nicely. I especially enjoyed the exploration of feral tales. I would recommend this book to those studying aspects of adolescent males, as well as anyone simply interested in the psychology behind boys! Two thumbs up!

The combination of poetry and photography make this book appealing for a variety of readers. The photography is especially humorous, for ex., a piece called "Second Service" pictures a chapel half full of hay. The poetry is entertaining and classic Minnesotan, covering fishing, Norwegian humor, landscape, and of course, climate.

These poems and the accompanying photos bring back memories of summer vacations spent visiting relatives in northern Minnesota. Word scultures, along with visual portraits of life "up North" will make this an enjoyable read for you. If you liked the movie "Grouchy Old Men", you will love this book. Anyone with a small town experience will chuckle at the poignant humor and sigh at half forgotten memories remembered. I bought three more copies to share with friends and family.

I lived in Minnesota for 11 years. While working on the Eastern Coast of the United States for a while I happened to find myself in a rather large bookstore in mid-town Manhattan on one of my weekends off. Upon browsing for nothing in particular, I happened upon the book Minnesota Gothic. I brought it home and read through it all in one evening (it's not big at all). Upon completion, I realized how much I missed Minnesota. The poems are simple yet heartwarming, and fun to read while the accompanying pictures add more clarity to the uniqueness of the authors' Minnesota. The authors caught the spirit of that state as well as anyone could, including the likes of the more well known Garrison Keilor. The book is Minnesota, and anyone "from here" or the upper mid-west will easily identify with it and simply enjoy it.

This is one of the best series that I have ever read. It is a must see but beware, once you pick it up you will not want to put it down.

The best part of this story moves along faster in this book than the first 2 in this series, but not so fast that you're left wondering what happened. Thorliff continues to work for Elizabeth's father at the newspaper as Elizabeth goes to medical school, and when tragedy strikes Blessing, Thorliff goes home to help and eventually convinces Elizabeth to come when a doctor is needed desparately.

I noticed a couple of earlier reviews disliked the idea of Elizabeth and Thorliff being a couple, but it wasn't unexpected - the story in Book 1 allows readers to get to know Elizabeth pretty well before she ever lays eyes on Thorliff, so it's obvious she was introduced to us for a reason. I'm sorry things didn't go well with Anji, but at least Thorliff was spared from being in a "love triangle" with both women.

My only complaint about this book is that there isn't a 4th in the series - I would love to see Thorliff start a newspaper while Elizabeth sets up a medical practice in Blessing. (Of course one can imagine their own ending but I hate loose ends in a story)

This is a fabulous ending to the triology on Thorliff. Although I might have been rooting for another ending (Anji, why'd you marry that other guy!) this one still won me over. The book made me cry, laugh and share it with all my friends! I can't wait to go back to Blessing later, I have completely fallen in love with all the characters.