Wisconsin Books

Terese Allen is one of Wisconsin's finest cookbook authors who draws upon her years of collecting Wisconsin ethnic food traditions, teaching cooking classes, and working as a professional chef, caterer and restaurant manager to produce truly "user friendly" cookbooks showcasing some of the finest dining Wisconsin has to offer. Hometown Flavor is her newest cookbook and continues to document her considerable culinary expertise. From Tomato Wild Rice Soup with Italian Cheese, Smoked Fish & Fettucine with Fresh Vegetables, and Lamb, Potato & Asparagus Stew, to Spareribs with Onions, Apples & Maple Syrup, Door County Barbecue Sauce, and Cactus Salad Tostados, Hometown Flavor offers taste-please, appetite satisfying fare. But the thing that truly sets this wonderfully unique, enthusiastically recommended contribution to the kitchen cookbook collection apart from all others is her fascinating and informative tour of Wisconsin's cheese factories, butcher shops, bakeries, and other specialty markets.

Honey Girl is one of my favorite books. I've read almost all of Madge Harrah's books and Honey Girl is by far the best.
I highly recommend it.

This is a valuable book (resource) for budding entrepreneurs. It seems to try to cover all the bases for starting a small business, but it can't do them all well in the space available between its covers. The book is only 288 pages long. If you are in the planning stages of starting a small business, then I highly recommend you get a copy of this book. Read it, study it, and outline it. There are helpful checklists to help you grasp the subjects. You will come up with a plethora of keywords and terms that you will want to google to find Web pages giving more detailed (and maybe more current) information.

I am a SCORE counselor (Senior Corps of Retired Executives) who typically does face-to-face counseling sessions three nights a month. It would really be neat if my clients would read this book BEFORE they came to their session with me because they would pretty much be "educated customers" ready to ask educated questions. Our sessions would be so much more beneficial.

My favorite chapters were:

1. Initial business concerns
2. Your business' structure
3. Business start-up details
5. Sources of business assistance (SCORE is mentioned here)
7. Your smart business plan (and a good sample plan is included)
8. Obtaining the financing you need

The book is weak when it comes to how the Internet can be used in corresponding, hiring, and marketing. But this is just one example of how googling keywords and concepts found in the book will make the book more complete. Don't treat the book as authoritative on the law. It isn't. Nor was it ever intended to be. It is light on tax information as it relates to small business.

I was particularly impressed with the material presented in Chapter 2: Choice of Legal Entity. That subject is sorely ignored in most small business books, and it is critically important. It is a subject I regularly must spend a great deal of time discussing at my SCORE sessions. This book does a pretty good job on the topic.

Chapters 4 and 9 through 12 are easy to find fault with. The topic of each could fill a book. But having these topics covered definitely will help a budding entrepreneur know some of the issues they raise.

I would have liked the book more if Chapter 6 (marketing) had been less superficial. When I read it I got the impression that the author was more a public relations expert than a marketing expert. I generally categorize public relations as a subset of marketing. Marketing includes advertising, public relations, and a whole host of other promotion techniques. I did not get this message when I read the book. I also would have liked the book better if the Internet, email, and Web sites had been discussed more. But there are many books on those subjects. Therefore, I can't complain too much about the limited discussion of computers.

When you read this book it may feel a little like it was produced on an assembly line. Maybe it was? There are 51 versions of this book sold; one for each state and the District of Columbia. Content is king, and this book has it. 5 stars!

From the moment I put this CD in my player, I was mesmerized!
I have never heard duets so perfectly performed, two players so perfectly matched, with such talent! It is a true pleasure to listen to these recordings.

Jerry Apps is a born storyteller and an observant historian of rural life in Wisconsin, past and present. In Humor From The Country, Apps has collected a wealth of anecdotes and stories celebrating the lighter side of country life. With stories based upon childhood memories, Apps reveals that country folk always knew how to have fun between their chores. Blending nostalgia with his own special brand of storytelling, Jerry Apps's Humor From The Country is a "must" for anyone who enjoys a trip down memory lane with a truly gifted guide.

This book was a great help. Before I got it, I would just walk out in the woods and start shooting at deer, squirrels, porcupines, cows etc. If I heard somebody else cussing and screaming and firing off a gun nearby, or a State of Wisconsin employee shouting into a bullhorn, then I knew trouble was brewing and cleared out. Now, I have this best bet guide. Know where to go, where not to go. Legal, illegal, all the game shot or still something to shoot at. Save on gas.

I was a student at Lawrence University, majoring in Russian and I had the great pleasure of having Richard Yatzeck as an advisor and a professor, so I must admit that I might be a bit biased in my review. He's a great person who enjoys the simple life first and foremost, but just happens to also be a talented writer and Russian professor at a highly esteemed university. What's more is that I totally love the outdoors and everything associated with it as well as "the good ol' days" when development in Wisconsin was scarce, so this book speaks especially to me. But that's no reason to ignore the fantastic stories he recounts in this book.
The stories tend to be short, so you can read them one at a time and get a good impression of the thrills and frustrations of the hunt. There's a good amount of emphasis on the good, quiet life in Wisconsin, and a real appreciation of nature, all told subtly alongside the real stories. It conveys a sense of appreciation that I think even a city dweller would understand. Finally, Hunting the Edges makes you feel the cold of an early November morning in the woods, or smell the griddle in the cabin right before you set out for the daily hunt.
What makes this book really fun to read is Dick's humor. His mishaps in missing out on a choice buck due to plumbing problems in his house, a friend's failed endeavour in falconing, or failing to catch a fish during an expedition with a fellow professor (who happens to practically hold a masters degree in the art of fishing as well as Russian History) reflect his easy going nature and positive attitude. I found myself cracking up on many an occasion while reading this book.
If you've got an interest in hunting and fishing, this book is definatly a good choice. I'd even reccomend it to nature lovers, and go as far as to have people who regard hunting as wrong read it, because Dick hunts without all the macho city slicker attitude. For me, this is what real hunting is all about.

I moved to Atlanta from Cincinnati and really miss the city. Laura captures the foibles and charm of the area with wit, compassion and charm. Her observations make you laugh out loud. She's never mean, but always entertaining and perceptive. This is a "must-read" for anyone from Cincinnati and anyone from everywhere else who possesses a sense of humor!

Reviewed by Y. Stephan Bulbulian

Armenian poet David Kherdian's book, "I Called It Home," is a pleasant, appreciative memory of his boyhood, growing up in the Armenian neighborhoods of Racine, Wisconsin. This assortment of delightful vignettes, warmly recant the times and characters that shaped the life of the Armenian-American literary treasure. Here are stories of curiosity and discovery in a innocent time of a nearly-forgotten past. Son of immigrant parents, while in the course of reaching maturity, amuses in life of the recreated Armenian village in diaspora. Old world traditions are adapted to meet the demands of the new land. It is an all new existence for the people forced from their ancient homeland by the prospect of annihilation the Ottoman Turkish government. In the exercise of seizing life, in and around Racine, Kherdian writes of boyhood friends and the play that "gave form to the ritual dance of childhood." He juxtaposes the influences of Armenian home-life, when Armenians lived in the ghettos, to the ability to "be able to stand-up to the corruption of the street." Kherdian writes of a common experience in the Armenian home of the past. "A common denominator of poor Armenians," the "dripping, fermenting ritual" of making madzoon ( yoghurt, a Turkish word coined by Americans). He discovers that he is "one-third madzoon, and the two-thirds doesn't matter." It is a pained and confused young man who recoils at being called a "dirty Armenian," when he knows that his living habits are cleaner than Americans. The same Americans, defeated in poverty, whose only superiority is their sheer numbers. He remembers his father whose face he sees on every street corner during a summer spent in Greece. A father, completely out of place in Racine, poorly speaking English with a thick accent. A janitor at the local tractor factory, h! is father was an intuitive cook whose every meal was a masterpiece,. As a boy, Kherdian throws himself into life around Racine "with abandon." The secret part he keeps to himself is open only to nature, and sharing the landscape. He reinforces his belief in the Armenian character, "- in it's integrity, resilience and fortitude, while saluting his parents for being able to instill "a pride (in his) heritage." The meaning of David Kherdian's life becomes a metaphor of fishermen and their line. Always the fisherman, he discovers the ultimate mystery of the Root River (racine is French for root) that runs through the city. The river and city become the extensions of all rivers and cities in his life. Racine is a place where "sailboats, rowboats, tugs, coalboats and barges" travel Lake Michigan and the rivers, find "the piers with early morning fishermen." Little by little, Kherdian transcends the discovery that "the life he was given was the life he needed and growing up was to reveal the meaning in his life." This book quietly gives thanks to the family, people and places of Racine shaped poetic life of David Kherdian. The place he called home.

Goodkin, Richard E. "In Memory of Elaine Marks: Life Writing, Writing Death". University of Wisconsin Press, 2007.

Expanding Awareness

Amos Lassen and Literary Pride

When Elaine Marks died in 2001, the world lost a powerful voice. Marks had been widely associated with and respected as an authority on French literature, women's writing the theory of feminism and Jewish studies. She was a giant among French literary critics and added an entire new dimension to the study of the written word. I remember way back when I was an undergraduate and had taken my first feminist literature course. In one of the opening lectures we were told about the French feminist literary tradition ad names that were mentioned then have since become legendary--Helene Cixious, Luce Irigary, Kristeva and Elaine Marks. Little did I know then how much these women would influence my thoughts or my life. These women held sway over intellectual, political, ethical and even sexual domains. Marks possessed a rigorous intellectual mind with which she explored many different and diverse areas of thought and helped to develop modern existential philosophy. She wrote about Colette and Simone de Beauvoir and she did so with an authority heretofore almost unknown--especially by a woman. To me she ranks right up there with the philosopher Michel Foucault as a symbol of brilliance.
In "In Memory of Elaine Marks", editor Richard Goodkin has paid her long overdue homage. He has chosen eleven essays that revolve around the central ideas of Marks's work--lesbianism, Judaism, pedagogy, women's biography, Jewish identity, memory and mourning, community, isolation and death. These essays show how Marks saw the world existentially as she explored the human experience in an attempt to try to make sense of how we live, love, die and mourn.
The book not only celebrates the life of marks and her contributions to the world, it is also a sensitive and moving way by which to remember her. For women to reach the intellectual heights that Marks and her coterie did was a new experience for the literary world and oftentimes we do not consider the role of women in the rise of modern intellectualism. Goodkin's book may very well make us look at the issue in a new way.
Marks challenged but she was also greatly loved. The volume gives us a chance to rediscover what we may have missed or even to discover it for the first time. Reading Marks for the first time for me was a haunting experience. She boldly said so much of what believed but never had the courage to say. Her penetrating intelligence and her complex ideas will always be a part of me. The one thing that Marks said is something I think about a lot and that is that the reason that we read and write is not because we want to change the world but it is to "deepen our awareness of being in the world and having to take leave of it". We all know that our time here is measured and we all want to believe that our life here has made a difference. We all want the world to be better off when we leave than it was when we entered. Elaine Marks managed to do just that and what a great goal that is for all of us.
"In Memory of Elaine Marks" is quite an expensive book at $65 but it is well worth every penny. To be able to think deeply after a good intellectual read has no price and its value is something we cannot count.