Minnesota Books

Thirteen-year-old Carrie's father told her to leave Hinckley on the train if the forest fire reached town - but Carrie doesn't want to leave her horse. Daniel, one of Carrie's friends, wants to leave Hinckley on the train - but he can't persuade his grandmother to come until it's too late. How will Carrie and Daniel manage to escape?

Survival! Forest Fire is a very good book. The setting is realistic, and the characters act like real people might. For example, Carrie Vaughn, who's father is a volunteer firefighter, disobeys her father when he tells her to take a train to St. Paul. She decides to stay with her horse, Midnight, instead. I think this action is realistic, although it isn't the smartest thing to do in a fire. This book, I think, is a little more exciting than the rest because some of the characters injure themselves, and that makes it harder to escape from the fire. This story was sort of like Survival! Fire, but more exciting, as I have said. I think Kathleen Duey and Karen A. Bale's description was fantastic. It really helped me imagine the setting in my mind. I would like to thank Kathleen Duey and Karen A. Bale on a job well done and encourage them to keep writing these series!

Here are a few of the many reasons I keep reading everything Mike Messner writes:

1) He seems to take the feminist "personal is political" slogan to heart, revealing much more of himself and his own questions and vulnerabilities than most other male writers.

2) He uses both academic and journalistic techniques to research his topics and support his theses.

3) He lacks the arrogance of many experts, retaining an open mind as he delibertely attempts to look at things in original ways.

4) The topic of this book -- and several of his others -- continues to fascinate me. By looking at how we "do gender" in a sporting context, we come to understand so much about how and why any and all women and men behave as we do.

Highly recommended. -- Mariah Burton Nelson

USC Sociologist Michael Messner, who has spent the majority of his academic career studying issues of sport, masculinity, and power has written a truly significant book with Taking the Field: Women, Men, and Sports. The book finds a place for much of his previous research, as well as the research of other gender and sport scholars, to elicit the mechanisms in which gender is produced, reproduced, and contested in sport.

The premise of the book holds that gender is a product of structure, culture, and an individual's interactions within culture. This serves as the launching point for a deft discussion of the affects of sport in America. Messner has a talent for seeing the larger picture in seemingly "normal" events, and in Taking the Field he analyzes the affect that "normal" interactions in sport has on the subjugation of women and gay men, and the real and symbolic violence committed against both women and men by men.

Messner's work is important to scholars of both sport and gender, but is particularly important to gender scholars who too frequently fail to recognize the power sport, and sport media, has in shaping current gender relations, particularly the institutionalization of manhood. But Taking the Field is also highly recommend for anybody who has an interest in understanding the larger implications of American sport, beyond winning and losing. It is a must read for coaches, parents, and educators who have anything to do with sport.

To help us understand how theory hits the road, Messner highlights familiar news events such as the Columbine Massacre, or the 1999 Women's World Cup Championships, and analyzes them from a social-feminist perspective. In such he clearly elucidates the perils of the way we do sport in America and shows us that the concepts and theories he speaks of are not just found on the pages of books - that they are real, with real life application, and have a very real affect on people's lives.

Taking the Field is also important because it brings both homophobia and the mediea into the center of analysis. Whereas much attention has been given to the media's role in gender relations, I have been wholly discouraged by the absence of homophobia from much sport literature, and from sport in gender literature. Taking the Field shows the significance homophobia plays in sport, shaping and maintaining athletics as a masculine and heterosexual institution, and how important sport is in the production of gender

In the end Dr. Messner suggests that resistance to the system is possible (perhaps even inevitable). The masculinist center of sport has a soft underbelly and it is currently challenged by individual sports, female athleticism, the growing presence of gay male athleticism, and progressive individual men who are no longer willing to allow the system to function in a homophobic and misogynistic manner. But while these challenges to a hegemonic masculinity have threatened sport's ability to be openly sexist and homophobic, we must understand how sport attempts to reproduce itself covertly, so that we can continue to progress toward a culture of equality...

I wish he would update the book for the MMPI2. It is invaluable even the way it is!

Lewak's approach to client feedback is unique and powerful, destined to change the face of psychological feedback! I highly recommend it!

In this important book, Bruyneel turns the post-colonialist lens back on the US. The book does an exquisite job detailing the various contests and spheres of sovereignty at play in indigenous struggles. Bruyneel gives equal attention to settler and settled, and avoids the cheap shots of American-Indigenous politics, thinking seriously about the questions of power and legitimacy that define American-Indigenous relations. This books is highly readable, easily teachable and, most importantly, politically engaged in a way that disrespects disciplinary boundaries in American studies, American political development and political theory.

Bruyneel's work is particularly important for anyone studying American politics who imagines that post-colonial analysis is something that takes place elsewhere.

Ron Schmidt is a fascinating story teller who unfolds the history of the City of the Angels based upon the City's most infamous protagonist, the LAPD. We all know the characters: :Hollywood film studios, the Chandlers, Darryl Gates, Rodney King, Tom Bradley and even Humphrey Bogart. Not just intellectually stimulating, but captivating and astonishing. A book every Angeleno should have on the shelf. Ron Schmidt has distinguished himself as a preeminent scholar of LA history. Mike Davis - so long.

An interesting and original approach to the powers of the mass media on the citizenry of Los Angeles, specifically, from the turn of the 20th century to around 1973, with ramifications continuing on to the present day. Schmidt's thesis concludes that the powers-that-be of LalaLand have used the persuasive power of the press(specifically Harrison Grey Otis and the L.A. Times) and the entertainment industry(movies and television) to provide role models for L.A...ones which strive to inculcate the virtues of self-reliance, justice and respect for the law, albeit safely within the confines of the prevailing political power structures. At best, they would create model citizens who would imitate these qualities and thrive in a community of hard-working and productive law-abiding citizens...but without the political and progressive independence which would jeopardize the status quo. At worst, they encouraged a passive and subservient relationship to those in power.

According to Schmidt, after the riots of 1965 put paid to the loftier model described above, this strategy, further championed by L.A. police chief William H. Parker and exemplified by the 1950's incarnation of television's Dragnet, devolved into a rather cynical attempt to train Los Angelenos to respect the law and accept the fact that their city was a dystopian wasteland. They had better get used to the fact that they may be forced to cooperate with the police at any given time. In other words, keep your nose clean, don't rock the boat, and cooperate with the powers-that-be.

Schmidt makes it clear that to imitate (but not strive beyond) the populist vision of America, the individualist who by definition followed no particular drummer is an inherent paradox, and that such a strategy is doomed to failure. In his final chapter, he uses the themes of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner as an example of what such an approach might have in store for Los Angeles if taken to the nth degree. Food for thought for Los Angelinos and those interested in the plight of urban communities everywhere. I must also mention that there are photographs (many saturated with irony), and illuminating (and where Dragnet is mentioned, very funny) endnotes.

The "Tilted Arc" is one of the more important and known leftovers of history of public art . In this book Harriet Senie give a vision to us of the process of order of this sculpture and of the some interveninentes that had supported and attacked this work of art. For beyond all the polemica that Richard Serra range excited, the author very raises pertinent questions on the public art, and points the reasons that had marked this controversy. It will be that the demolition of a workmanship will arise a dangerous precedent that will go to put in risk the programs of public art? It will be that from the moment that the state and the public contests a workmanship, this will have to be placed another place or only destroyed? These and other questions are boarded for Harriet Senie, that of shining form contextualize one of the sculpture pol?micas of century XX.

Tilted Arc by Richard Serra, one of the largest public sculptures commissioned for a Federal building, was removed from its New York site in 1989, only eight years after it was installed, as a result of the most famous conflict between artist and public opinion. The book describes in detail the fate of a difficult work by this great (if macho) living sculptor, analyzing the multiple issues and problems that surround the public art process. Harriet Senie is one of the very rare modern art historians who have concentrated on public art, and the one who knows most about its history and politics. Unencumbered by the complexities of present critical theory, she writes in the simple language of the journalist (not inappropriate for the subject and its audience), trying to be fair to all points of view.

The Preface of the book outlines its entire content, while the four chapters (1. Commission, Installation, Removal; 2. Public Opinion; 3. Reframing the Controversy; and 4. After Tilted Arc) are neatly divided into many subsections with titles easy to follow. A Conclusion summarizes the subject and the complex questions it raises. In-between, Senie manages to discuss quite a bit of Serra's art before and after Tilted Arc, and to quote his uncompromising and always illuminating opinions... The fifty-five b&w reproductions, while of rather grim grayness, illustrate adequately the artist's related works and comparable public plazas with sculptures by other artists.

Aside from bringing together a great deal of material about this particular public art debate, Senie's book is also an invaluable source of information on public art policies in this country and on the history of federally-sponsored public art of the last quarter of the 20th century (the NEA and GSA programs). While perhaps a little repetitive, it is a goldmine of information and a must for artists, historians and policy makers interested in public sculpture.

Good book for this kids. They will want you to read it again and again.

A beautiful book detailing our unique winged friends. I enjoyed learning along with my boys! The illustrations are precious with great attention to detail. I liked that they are shown in various stages of development and in their natural habitat. A must have for all nature enthusiasts~ Thanks for the journey Katrina!

Author, Alice Vollmar has live in Minnesota for the past 28 years. Who better to write a book about the area? Divided by region, this book offers information on dining, recreation, lodging, camping, and rates each using a four star system. It takes the guess work out of planning a trip to the area. A great guide for visitor and resident alike.

In addition, "101 Things To Do on the Wisconsin Great River Road", is a great gift idea.

This travel guide book is one that you'll actually keep in the front seat of the car and use. It's a nice size and contains lots of extra resource information, too.

I purchased this book not knowing anything prior about it or the author, Robert Treuer. I found the book to be thoroughly enjoyable and hard to put down. I have had it for less than a year and have already read it twice. I highly recommend the book for anyone who is a nature lover, has strong family values, or has ever dreamed of (or experienced) living in the country.

A gentle flow of beautiful words and thought, all coming together to expose his wonderful view on human and natures life. I will never look at trees, tree farms and those who create and manage them the same again. Treuer has given me new loves--life and the time we borrow our space, and nature. Treuer has surely connected with nature. I recommend it most highly.

Gamboa is, quite simply, a genius. This is not hyperbolie.

This book documents one of the greatest artistic minds in Chicano art, American art, and art in general. This work will rupture your reality. Read it.

Harry Gamboa, Jr. is the most important figure in what could loosely be termed the Chicano avant-garde art movement. His innovative work is grounded in histories of political activism, particularly the Chicano civil rights movement. This book is exciting on many levels. It showcases Gamboa's role as an interdisciplinary thinker, writer, and visual artist. A must have book!