Minnesota Books

Tom, I hope you keep track of these things! Thought the book was interesting.

Even if you don't vote, hate wrestling and couldn't care less if Minnesota was part of the United States or not, you'd probably dig this book. It's an engaging read, following Ventura's phenomenal capture of the highest political office in his state from BEFORE day one, and it's filled with anecdotes, lively characters and flashes of endearing humanity. Entertaining enough for even conspiracy theorists. If Ventura didn't exist, the media would have to invent him, he's so engaging, which makes the book soar.

This book is definitely the most comprehensive guidebook to the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, containing over 800 listings of local parks, attractions, accommodations and restaurants (both with price scales included). The kids'section is especially great, with much attention focused on how to get the most bang for your buck when taking the family out to play or dine. Also interesting are the interviews with local personalities featured in the book, including a television horror show host, the former mayor of St. Paul, the owner of Minnesota's Baseball Museum, and the director of St. Paul's Como Zoo.

As a longtime resident of the Twin Cities, I appreciate guidebooks such as these that take into consideration things that I personally have considered local "secret" treasures, such as the beautiful Swedish Museum, Minneapolis' Stone Arch Bridge and the adjacent parklands, the fossil beds in St. Paul's Lilydale Park, and just a ton of other things that there just isn't room to mention. The book makes for a fun read, too, with a great chapter on the history of the Twin Cities and information on the geological makeup of the region in general.

Last summer, I traveled to the Twin Cities to see my Twins play at the Metrodome for the first time (having only caught road games in the past). Taking a three day weekend from work, I wanted to take advatntage of being in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area for more than just a couple of baseball games, and boy did this guide help!

I browsed over a couple of guides in the local bookstore before settling on the Insider's Guide. The information inside was as up to date as could be expected, and using it and a few web sites, I was able to work in two baseball games, the obligatory trip to the Mall of America, a Twins autograph session, trips to the Science Museum of Minnesota (to see the Questionable Medical Devices exhibit), a trip down the part of town featured in the Mary Tyler Moore show, and a quick tour of the Wabasha Street Caves, formerly the hideout of gangsters and the scene of a shootout featured on a History Channel program--all in less than 72 hours!

I even located restaurants near the attractions I wanted to see that served the kinds of food I was interested in--Japanese and Italian at the time--without any difficulty.

Take it from the Insiders when you make your trip to these wonderful cities in the upper Midwest. Minnesota is a hidden treasure that few in the US make it their goal to see--I went for baseball, and came back quite impressed, largely thanks to the Insider's Guide's information.

I would recommend this book very highly to anyone who is interested to know about Zoroastrianism

I am amazed that "An Introduction To Ancient Iranian Religion: Readings From the Avesta and the Achaemenid Inscriptions" is not more generally available (and less expensive!) than it is, since it appears to be the ONLY work of its kind. Be that as it may, this volume gives the reader the primary texts of Zarathushtra, the inscriptions of Darius and his heirs, and the essential texts of Zoroastrianism. The introductions are extensive, and except for what appears to me to be an odd system of transliteration, illuminating. The book as a whole is organized to present texts concerning major figures in the religion in an orderly fashion rather than in their (I gather) extremely mixed-up later format. Translations are clear insofar as this is possible, and where the texts are really obscure, Malandra indicates this. This book is very short (fewer than 200 pages), but extremely clear and fair-minded (as opposed, say to Edwin Yamauchi's discussion of Zoroaster), and definitely worth having for anyone interested in the ancient near east.

A pioneer for openly homosexual writers, Christopher Isherwood was known for more than just being a gay author - he was a master of his craft who didn't let that label control everything he did. Writing novels alongside for film and theater, Christopher Isherwood was one of the better writers of the 20th century and now in "Isherwood on Writing" we now hear from the man himself as he discusses his craft and the life and times of his heyday in London and Hollywood and literary friendships with other great authors such as Virginia Woolf and Aldous Huxley. Despite all the notes that may suggest otherwise, Isherwood comes out as profoundly American, making "Isherwood on Writing" highly recommended for both academic and community library biography, literary studies, and gay studies reference collections.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Christopher Isherwood is considered a major Anglo-American novelist. He was a pioneer in the gay liberation movement and the founding father of modern gay writing. In the late 1950s and early 1960s Isherwood presented a series of lectures at various California universities on the theme "A Writer and His World." In this series of lectures Isherwood for the first time commented openly about his craft-on writing for films, theatre, novels and spirituality. James J. Berg, dean of social sciences and arts at the College of the Desert in Palm Springs, California has now assembled in Isherwood on Writing these lectures. Dean Berg has also included a forward by Professor Emeritus Claude J. Summers of English at the University of Michigan, Dearborn.

According to Summers, reading these lectures after fifty years of their delivery "is to observe an accomplished and versatile artist in the process of evolving. It is also to feel-acutely-through their reticences and euphemisms-the constraints he felt then at speaking openly about homosexuality even at liberal universities before congenial audiences." What is noteworthy about these lectures is that they offer to the reader an invaluable peek into a caring writer's literary approach and theories at a critical era of his life, a time when he was rethinking his career.

Beginning with this very interesting Foreword, Berg presents a comprehensive introduction where he introduces us to Isherwood with an overview of his intentions and methods for the lectures. It is also pointed out that the book collects for the first time transcripts, edited and annotated, from the three lecture series that were given at Berkley in 1963 as well as previous lectures in 1960 at the University of California, Santa Barbara and subsequently at the University of California, Los Angeles. Berg also informs his readers that the introduction explores the various issues he encountered while putting together the book.

Among some of the issues explored deal with the fact that although the American period of Isherwood's life is well documented in his diaries, there still exists many misconceptions about his work and experiences in the United States. We are also apprised of the fact that when Isherwood began lecturing publicly he was not shy about proclaiming his personal views such as loyalty oaths in Santa Barbara in 1960, although his employment the previous year was predicated on his signing a loyalty oath for L.A. State College. In another section we read about Reading the American Isherwood where it is shown that his literary reputation is far from settled.

After this wide-ranging introduction, Berg then goes onto divide the book into three parts that deal with a writer and his world, 1960, an autobiography of Isherwood`s books, 1963-65, and Isherwood`s lecture with his notes pertaining to such subject matters as influences on writing, why write at all, what is the nerve of interest in the novel, writers and the theatre, writers and films, writers and religion, writers of the thirties, the novel as an experience, voices of novelists and dramatists in the modern era, what is a novel and the novel and the novelist.

A sampling of one of Isherwood`s challenging lectures finds him throwing out the question what does it mean to write and what is it all about? According to Isherwood, he wrote in order to find out what his life meant and who he was, as well as finding out if there's meaning in the external world. And as he continues, if there isn't any meaning, he imposes a meaning of his own. To quote Isherwood: "You have this material, this thing is passing by, what does it all mean? Who are these people? Why am I here? What is it all about? And so you grasp at this thing and try to understand it."
In another lecture Isherwood examines the nerve of the interest in a novel. He asks what makes a novel vital alive good great? Throughout the lectures Isherwood describes his writing relationships with W.H. Auden, E.M Forster, Virginia Woolf, Stephen Spender, Aldous Huxley, and Somerset Maugham. He also refers to his experiences in the film industry in London and Hollywood.

Isherwood on Writing is a moving and memorable book that provides a wonderful resource for writers and readers as it powerfully covers the world of the writer and in particular a major figure in twentieth-century fiction and the gay rights movement.

Norm Goldman, Publisher & Editor Bookpleasures

Freelance writer and photographer (and Lake Superior resident) Peter Oikarinen presents Island Folk: The People of Isle Royale, an eminently readable history of the working fishing community that is the people who call Isle Royale home. Illustrated with a scattering black-and-white photography revealing the natural beauty of the land and the hardy spirit of the people who live there, Island Folk: The People of Isle Royale lives up to its title with its chronicle of memories that tell how the island transformed from a simple fishing village to a popular destination for tourists who come by boat or seaplane. Especially recommended reading for anyone preparing to see Isle Royale for themselves - or for armchair travelers ready to savor the next best thing to visiting Isle Royale's residents in person.

The author, Peter Oikarinen, is a lifelong resident of the Copper Country and is intimately associated with Isle Royale and its people, past & present.

It's a fabulous look at Island Life before the takeover by the National Park system, centering on its commercial fishing history & families.

This book has been long out-of-print, however, it is now available again via the University of Minnesota Press in a better format that contains additional material.

I just returned from Isle Royale as Pete's assistant, he having been hired there as a contractor; as such, I was able to see the Island like very few people can, priviliged to tag along with the finest mentor around, Pete Oikarinen.

From the time we shipped off from Houghton, MI aboard the Ranger III (with everyone ashore yelling at Pete "Did ya bring your keppu?") to the time we returned to Copper Harbor on the Isle Royale Queen (courtesy Capt. Don Kilpela), I was amazed not only by the size of the Island but the friendliness/helpfulness of the National Park staff, the frequent moose sightings, the opportunity to fish for lakers in such fantastic, unspoiled settings and yes, the ability to lay eyes on some of scenes as described in this book, Island Folk.

Do like I did and read this fine tome, then sail the Big Lake to Isle Royale ... satisfaction guaranteed.

A heartfelt touching memoir of growing up chinese in an all white community during the McCarthy years of the 1950's. Ching , the heroine wants to be one hundred percent all white American girl and go to the senior prom. No invites from white boys; enter
Bingo Tang, son of St. Paul ganglord who fills her imagination with returning to China. She will lose face if she doesn't marry
mother's choice, a rich restaurant owner from Chicago. What she decides may surprise the reader. Good for giving teenagers a look
at being "non" white in a small midwest town.

Good reading for anyone interested in learning about the Chinese American experience growing up in the USA. It gives you insight and a perspective from a minority viewpoint as well as a child living in the society of the majority. It is written from both the heart and the mind with much verisimilitude. I highly recommend it!

I bought this book for an employee who had decided to move from sunny San Diego back to the town where she grew up, Minneapolis.
It's cold there and this book was quite appropriate. She loved it, as did others in our work group. For 5 bucks, don't hesitate - this is a great gift.

Cathy McGlynn and Bonnie Stewart have put together a collection of one-liners sure to tickle your funny bone and warm your heart. Order one for yourself and a friend who lives in the South!!

Noa Steimatsky (associate professor of film studies and art history, Yale University) presents Italian Locations: Reinhabiting the Past in Postwar Cinema, a thoughtful examination of how fascism and World War II forever changed Italy, as reflected through the works of four Italian filmmakers. From the documentary work of Michelangelo Antonioni on the River Po to the creations of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Roberto Rossellini, and Luchino Visconti, Italian Locations is fraught with works that defined a sense of place - a place transformed and reconstructed in the wake of destruction. A handful of black-and-white photographs illustrate this thoughtful analysis, especially recommended for college library shelves and students of historical Italian cinema.

Steimatsky describes images and the tone in which they are pictured of the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1966 film "The Earth as Seen From the Moon" as "reconstruct[ing] the ramshackle, marginal world, seeing its humility as grandeur, its muteness as eloquence, its tragic-comedic resourcefulness as a 'desperate vitality'." Such circumstances and characteristics applied to large sectors of Italian society in the post-World War II decades. Steimatsky's timeframe for the postwar cinema stretches to about the latter 1960s. As with the foregoing comments on aspects of Pasolini's films, the author does not basically engage in interpretation (which often becomes overwrought or fanciful with many critics) nor in explanation (which can become didactic or wallow in the elementary). Instead, her style is basically explication, or clarification for properly orienting the reader as a premise for moving on to other matters regarding the subject at hand.

Steimatsky, who teaches film studies at Yale, considers the study of film as a part of cultural studies. In so doing, the author regards Italian film as having a major role in restoring and in so doing reinventing to considerable degree Italian society after its decades of Fascism under Mussolini and alliance with Hitler and the society's devastation in World War II. This is a large claim going beyond the perspective of many critics, film historians, and such of expounding how film can represent situations or issues; make impressions on masses of viewers; and stir imagination. These and more inhere in this author's appreciation of the Italian film. Notwithstanding the novelty and even possible hyperbole of the author's regard of Italian film, one agrees with it. Film in Italian culture is seen to have had such a role considering the weakness of institutions such as government and the military in Italian society.

Taking the top directors of Rossellini, Visconti, and Antonioni with Pasolini, Steimatsky devotes a chapter to each; in which she focuses on each director's primary theme or distinctive style. Antonioni's films, for example, are characterized by their display of modernism. Rossellini depicted "corpse-cities" where children and adults and sometimes foreigners tried to live a normal life in a pre- or post-civilizational condition while also trying to comprehend the enormity of the changes they face symbolized by the destruction of buildings, familiar places, etc.

It is when Steimatsky departs from her spare identifications of elements of a scene that the critique opens into the area of cultural studies around theme of the renewal of post-War Italian society. The author's insights and formulations range from the sociological to the religious to the psychological. In discussing the "Altered Terrain" created by the director Antonioni's camerawork and varied subjects, the author sees "[b]etween quotidian detail and a movement of emptying-out of the landscapes, fragments of river life, less-than-episodes, and unpursued plot clues traverse...the documentary body" of one of his films. Cinematic aspects, images, and subjects of Pasolini's films present an "aesthetic system [which] draws on the potency of the devotional image, whose reverential archaism also carries a realist claim."

This is film study at its most engaging, stimulating, and informative.

Joe Amato's book on his family is an excellent demonstration of how family history should be written. It combines genealogy, local history, European and American history, and most important, family stories, to give the reader much more than the pedigree skeleton we genealogists are accustomed to. This book gives us the whole body - the muscle and flesh of history, the brain of stories and memories, and the heart of the descendant's own feelings about the ancestors he knew and loved. I am using this approach as a guide to writing my own family story.

Amato has written an unusual, nay a unique book, that blends his substantial skills as a professional historian with the tools of the anthropologist, geographer, philosophy, and genealogy in order to trace the history of his family back seven generations. He writes of the struggle of his poor "mongrel family," tracing their roots to Ireland, Prussia, Sicily, French Acadia and elsewhere, describing the difficult struggles against poverty, disease, wars, and discrimination, in a relentless but mostly futile quest for the American Dream. This is much more than a family history. It is a "bottoms-up" look at the underside of American history as generation after generation struggled to survive against great obstacles, moving inexorably westward in a largely failed search for productive farmland, and then in the twentieth century, joining the new migration to industrial cities in a renewed quest for decent wages and a modicum of security. Written eloquently, solidly documented, and well grounded in historical literature, "Jacob's Well" subjects Amato's ancestors to the harsh scrutiny of historical fact. This is a must read for those interested in a new type of family history, and for those interested in the plight of the American poor from early colonial times to the near-present.

This was wonderful. So insightful to learn about the man behind the stories.

I picked this long out of print book up at the Monterey Aquarium - kudos to Western Flyer Publishing for bringing this fantastic book back.

There are two "bibles" for people who want to know about John Steinbeck - Jackson Benson's biography and this one. Personally, I prefer this one because it covers the golden age of Steinbeck and his friendship with marine biologist, philosopher and brilliant mind, Ed Ricketts.

If you've read Cannery Row and Grapes of Wrath (among others), you've gotten a glimpse of Ed RIcketts. In Richard Astro's book, you get the "toto-picture" of the man. Steinbeck's literature has been called simple. Yeah, simple as a Zen painting. Richard Astro shows how the collective (and at times drastically different) philosophies of these two men spawned one to create some of the greatest stories ever told. Stories that can be read and appreciated by a kid in middle school and then upon rereading, it is discovered how many layers lie beneath the tightly plotted tales. Astro's book digs deep too and is a valuable, readible and thought provoking journey into a remarkable friendship.