Wisconsin Books

I recently purchased this book from another source. At the time, I did'nt know you had it. However, the book is just great!!! Beautiful photos, of the cottage from beginning, to need for serious repair, to full restoration, featuring Wright influenced furnishings. All in all, a must have for any fan of the greatest American Architect. Thank You

the book is just great!!! Beautiful photos, of the cottage from beginning, to need for serious repair, to full restoration, featuring Wright influenced furnishings. All in all, a must have for any fan of the greatest American Architect. Thank You, Calvin Duane Rhodes

I began to read the story to learn about the submarine operations and found I had in my hands a fascinating tale of smart business, dedicated workers, taking on new challenges and some interesting information on the skill of river boat operations down the Mississippi and other waterways form the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.

There was also some detailed information of the period leading up to WWII, where the Dept of War had surveyed the nation for the potential to convert existing operations into ones suited to the war effort.

Top it all off with the story of contract administration one both ends of that equation and see some actual discussion of the profits made as well as those voluntarily passed in the interest of serving the greater war effort.

This is a great business study and a tribute to the foresight of Mr. Charles West, the primary owner of Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company.

A very interesting piece of Great Lakes history.
This is the story of how a Great Lakes shipyard in Manitowoc, Wisconsin came to produce 28 submarines from 1942-1945. It was written by an admiral who commanded two Manitowoc submarines. After a brief history of shipbuilding in Manitowoc the author describes how submarines which had a minimum draft of 12 feet could be transported through a channel 9 feet deep by carrying the submarines in a floating dry dock. There are details of construction, sea (lake) trials and the hazards of taking the dry-docked boat down narrow stretches of the Mississippi.
There are a number of photos including the cover which shows the sideways launching of a sub. Included is a table of ships sunk in combat which totaled about 500,000 tons.
The company has evolved into making cranes, refrigeration equipment as well as shipbuilding and dry dock operations.

I was fascinated by this story. It will appeal to those with an interest in Great Lakes shipbuilding, industrial history, and the US Navy.

Rufus Dawes writes of his service as an officer of the Iron Brigade's 6th Wisconsin Volunteers from it's formation until his resignation in 1864. Dawes was continuously present in the field almost every day from the day he enlisted, and wrote to his wife even several times a week, yet the book fills a mere 318 pages. His work is based primarily on this large collection of letters his wife had kept throughout the war.

His retrospective reminiscences are interjected only to give us the larger context, and sometimes he quotes the Official Army Reports when helpful. Not only is Dawes a good writer, but because he rose to command the 6th Wisconsin Regiment, he was cognizant of both the big picture and the immediate details of soldier life.

Dawes is an eloquent and sensitive writer. Through Dawes' letters we can feel the stresses and tensions of army life. As a junior officer, Dawes notes his concerns over the seniority among Captains in the Regiment as his primary concern. By 1864, this has shifted to the simple desire to spend time away from the incessant bullets, death and discomforts of war. Dawes' passages on the 1864 Campaign really expresses how different the war became and how really weary the veterans had become. Dawes himself, an exuberant and optimistic spirit always, had become truly weary of war by 1864.

To have tramped with Dawes all over Virginia, to Antietam and Gettysburg and through the Wilderness is an unforgettable experience. I highly recommend this book for the general reader. Of all the first person accounts I have read by Iron Brigade soldiers, this is the easiest to read and follow, and is richly rewarding.

It's sometimes tough finding memoirs or diary accounts that don't get involved in writing battle history on a larger scale that doesn't have anything to with the person writing it. Rufus Dawes heavily battle tormented years in the hard fighting Iron Brigade only covers his involvment and the affairs of the Iron Brigade which I found refreshing to read. Rufus Dawes has wrote down a lot in his diary and also wrote many letters home which are presented very well throughout this book. Most of his diary writings mention the date and the events which occurred. Dawes manages to define daily life activity in the camp and soldier actions. What makes this book exciting is his detail for writing about his involvement at major battles such as Antietam, Gettysburg, Cold Harbor and more! Rarely receiving a single scratch, Dawes manages to live to write about his military life as other officers around him eventually become discharged while a majority die. He gets descriptive at times which captures the chaos and confusion of battle. His writings also talk a lot about the Iron Brigade and it's a great reference for those trying to understand how hard fighting this group of soldiers were. Unlike some recollections or memoirs, Dawes writes very well and makes this book easy to follow and read. At times Dawes was very detailed and explains many army movements and his thoughts about approaching battle and surviving the aftermath. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the Civil War and especially for those looking to learn about the Iron Brigade.

Buy this bbok. Jennifer Michael Hecht is a remarkable poet. Wise, clever and funny.

... and first one (my friend) picks up a copy of "Funny" and says to the second one (me), "You should really read this poet. She's fantastic." Well, the joke is on him, because I've been following Hecht's work for a long time, in Poetry Magazine and other places. Because she -is- fantastic and this new book is quite simply brilliant.

I'm usually wary of books with a central theme or conceit, but I waded into "Funny" with full confidence in Hecht's amazing ability to thrill me, chlll me, make me laugh, make me cry, make me think. I'm stunned and humbled by her poems and heartily recommend "Funny" to anyone, especially new poetry readers.

My favorites in this collection are "Propogation of the Species," "Gorilla and the Darkening Room," and the sonnet "Prosody on Comedy." Do yourself a favor and get in on the ground floor with this talented poet, before she wins the major awards that are assuredly coming her way. No joke.

This book is a must read for all Badger football fans! It is a well-written tribute to the great football players that have graced Camp Randall over the past several years!

Drawing from the photos and writings of award-winning authors and photographs at Athlon Sports, "Game Day: Wisconsin Football" showcases University of Wisconsin football teams in general, and what it means to be a Badger football fan in particular. Packed from cover to cover with entertaining and informative anecdotes of past and current players, the stories behind Wisconsin football rivalries and traditions, detailed histories of some of the greats players, coaches, teams, and moments in Wisconsin's collegiate football, lists of the most successful seasons, recaps of the most exciting games every played, as well as year-by-year team performance statistics. Profusely illustrated throughout in full color, "Game Day: Wisconsin Football" will be read with interest and appreciation by the legions of Badger fans -- and should be considered 'a must' for all Wisconsin school and community library collections.

It seems to be commonly believed that Alexander the Great was sexually attracted to both young men and to women. (In fact I've heard that the Greek govenment is suing the recent TV production for claimin this.)

In this book Professor King traces the transition of a society which had subordinated all men, women and boys to higher ranked males to one founded in sexuality. He explores the subject through literature, through the actors on stage, and in portraits from the time.

I found particularily interesting his intrepretation of the many times in Shakespeare's plays that a woman and/or young man exchange identities. (It is perhaps significant that the author worked as a stage manager in Chicago before his teaching career.) This is likely to be a seminal book in gender studies for some years.

King historicizes male sexuality in the Gendering of Men and in so doing challenges those histories that have treated masculinity and male sexuality as a transhistorical given and not as a social construct/ideology that serves specific political (patriarchal) purposes.

Gender theorists, like Judith Butler, have long assumed that gender is performative. That is to say one might be born with a particular sex organ but "gender" is not determined by that sex organ. Thus Butler maintains that gender is not what one is; its what one does. In short "gender" is not a natural category but a practice. Butler argues that gender identity is performative because one constructs what one is in specific social-historical contexts. And those contexts are always changing. In Butler's account new contingencies are always emerging and thus new selves are always emerging in response to new conditions of possibility. However, this does not mean that the individual has any kind of agency in the process for the performativity of masculinity and femininity can be coerced. In fact Butler and King argue that notions of gender (as well as gendered notions of privacy) are underwritten by patriarchal structures.

King argues that in early modern England (1600-1750) body practices were strictly regulated by a pederastic social structure; and that different social spaces/places required the enactment of different body practices. And that because body practices were enacted within a power continuum sexuality was not seen to indicate a particular subjectivity or agency or privacy but rather ones body practices were determined by where one happened to be placed in that power continuum. According to King in a pederastic order (courtier society) both male and female subjects presented themselves as objects for the Kings gaze in hopes of gaining favor. Since a pederastic society is one where status is everything masculinity per se was not yet the marker of privacy, subjectivity and autonomy that later epochs would construe it to be.

Many historians mark the long eighteenth century as the moment when two things emerged: privacy and heteronormative sexuality. (Many Renaissance scholars would argue that these things existed long before the long eighteenth century). The key argument of Kings book, however, is that "privacy", "sexuality" and "gender" (including notions of interiority, masculinity, feminininity, and the companionate marriage) emerge in resistance to courtly pederastic practices. In Kings account these things all arise as one emergent historical regime defines itself against another residual one.

The most prominent history of the rise of the middle class in early modern England is Jurgen Habermas's. King finds Habermas's widely accepted account whereby (mostly male) subjects become aware of themselves as newly autonomous subjects while reading novels in private to be suspect. King finds that Habermas's account tends to assume that reading practices allow men and women to reflect upon an already existent heterosexual subjectivity. King, on the other hand, sees subjectivity as an effect created and determined by new market relations. This is a key difference between Habermas and King because King, after Butler, believes men and women do not simply read to reflect upon an already existent heterosexual subjectivity but that reading practices, body practices, cultural practices etc...are constitutive acts.

Habermas assumes a sameness and consistency in all male desire throughout history and he assumes that all male desire is always already heterosexual and thus Habermas fails to read gender and gendered notions of privacy as historically constituted categories. Habermas also fails to account for the fact that a diverse population of emergent male and female subjectivities may respond to the same historical conditions and each other in vastly different ways. Kings takes into consideration both residual and emergent gender differentials and so his account allows for much more subtle and nuanced (and much more interesting) readings of seventeenth and eighteenth century texts and the residual and emergent subjectivities that they describe.

It is to the theatre (instead of the novel, Habermas's form of choice) that King looks for evidence of an ongoing attempt to produce/evolve/negotiate/regulate/disrupt/enforce notions of subjectivity (ie gender practices, gendered notions of privacy); it is also to the theatre that King looks for the political causes/implications of these new practices.

A fascinating book.

Anyone infatuated as an undergraduate or an adult with Hemingway, Stein, Fitzgerald and the other heavyweights of the literary and artistic circles of the first half of the 20th century will frolic through Wescott's biography with glee. It's like peeking through a keyhole into the private lives of E.M. Forster, Christopher Isherwood, Marianne Moore, Jean Cocteau and others through the filter of Wescott's own unusual life and literary struggles. More importantly, it gives access to Wescott -- a masterful writer who has become a best-kept secret and deserves to be reinstated in the context of his talent and his time. The post-WWII Wescott (who didn't write for publication) is revealed here publicly for the first and, perhaps only, time. A very interesting biography that spans some of the most important decades in American literature.

Don't be frightened by the university press imprint: this solid biography isn't a bit stodgy--it's compulsively readable and full of great celebrity and sexual dish. Readers of Continual Lessons, the Wescott diaries Rosco co-edited, will be delighted at the opportunity to find out more about the life and experiences of this important gay figure. Fans of George Platt Lynes's male nudes will be interested to find out more about the photographer's complicated life and some of the men who appeared in his photos. Those who've never heard of Wescott are in for a treat. Glenway Wescott led a fascinating life: he was a beautiful boy wonder in 20s Paris, and later divided his time between literary and gay Manhattan and the idyllic country estate of his wealthy sister-in-law. He and lover Monroe Wheeler had a relationship that spanned seven decades; he shared his lover for years with Lynes; he had lots of lovers on the side; and he had a long involvement with the Kinsey Institute, including having sex on camera for the archives. He also had a famous case of writer's block, but came back stunningly twice: once with a popular bestseller, once with a gem of a novella, The Pilgrim Hawk (rediscovered regularly, most recently by Susan Sontag in The New Yorker). Wescott was a famous raconteur, and this entertaining book includes great memories and anecdotes in his own words--Don't miss the story of how Edmund Wilson dropped a shrimp in Edith Sitwell's hair-do at a cocktail party (p. 155).

Hadassah Magazine August/Sept 2005

Glimmering Girls: A Novel of the Fifties by Merrill Joan Gerber, The University of Wisconsin Press, 249 pp., $26.95.


Merrill Joan Gerber's Glimmering Girls recreates with cool humor and aching passion what it was like for college-educated young women to grow up at a time when the spirit of the age remained the `50s, even when the decade changed. The story is set in conservative 1959 and ends with Francie's college graduation. Although the feminist, free-wheeling `60s don't explode until the new decade is half over, Francie's not waiting. A good Jewish girl, whose letters home to her parents in Brooklyn are filled with appreciation and updates on her life--from studying hard on a pro forma education major to observing the rules of the heavily chaperoned dorm. Restless to experience life, and unlike her more typical roommate Mary Ella Root, who looks to get a Mrs. degree, Francie falls in with Liz and Amanda. The two propose that they move in together off campus - with three guys. one of whom, though of Francie's "tribe," is in love with Liz. The other two are amiable identical twins in love with cars.

As Francie discovers, however, experiencing life involves secrecy and taking half-understood risks, some of which propel her into anxiety. Having run off for a couple of days with Liz and Amanda and the twins to a lakeside cabin, will she ever get back to finish her term paper? Could she become pregnant if semen leaks through her skirt? Will she ever get back to civilization and her term paper, having run off for a couple of days with Liz and Amanda and the twins to a lakeside cabin? Will she and Joshua, a Jewish boy and fine pianist whom she beds and loves, get together again?

Meanwhile, Francie, a Phi Beta determined to be a writer, is turned down for a graduate school fellowship by a dean who says women are unreliable. Though she is poised on the edge, uncertain, Francie senses that "something is definitely going on here, something shattering and monumental enough to bring tears to her eyes." One thing's for sure, Francie and Liz have escaped from "the innocence of the Garden of Eden, no longer glimmering girls, more like illuminated women.

Gerber movingly captures the ambivalence of the coming of age of bright young women, and of the brave new world in which they will make their way. That Francie is Jewish and far from home gives the tale special resonance. Her path may be rougher than Liz's or Amanda's, but then again, she's burning bright.

--Joan Baum

Although I "went away to school" to what I would have thought was college vastly differernt from the Florida university that is the scene of Gerber's most recent triumph, the similarities among the experiences of her young woman protagonist and mine and those of my friends startled me. I guess that for almost everyone who was a teen in the 1950s in the USA the intense repressiveness made secret-keepers and rule-breakers of us all. Glimmering Girls is both a wonderful novel, beautifully written and absorbing, and an important social document that I hope will be read by many. Gerber successfully recreates a time when women's bodies didn't belong to us, when female sexuality was supposed to be an oxymoron, when the MRS. was a degree more devoutly to be wished for than a PhD, and "true love" and its "inevitable" consequence -- a happy marriage -- was the only legitimate transition to adulthood for a girl. And yet, for all the astute revelations of the repressiveness of life for women in the decade before the Women's Liberation Movement began to stir, there is no hint in this book of the polemic; it's just a wonderful story about a time that is thankfully past (although the current administration seems to be doing its best to revive it) -- or is it?

Mr.Rashid has captured the true essence of the wonderful Wisconsin waters and the serene sport of fishing. What a beautiful and flowing account of the love many of us have for angling activities. Through his lens and brief but appropriate text, Bob has illustrated an everlasting tradition so superbly. I thank him for the memories.

Gwenyth Ann Reilly Sisson

Wisconsin has long been a land of streams, ponds and lakes suitable for fly fishing and the angler's art. In Gone Fishing, photographer Bob Rashid has wonderfully captured and preserved in vivid imagery the pleasures and adventures of men, women and children fishing Wisconsin waters from spearing sturgeon through the ice on Lake Winnebago to pursuing the wily muskie on a quiet night in Vilas County, to trout fishing a farm field stream. Here are memorable scenes of Wisconsin's fishing traditions including fish fries and catfish queens. With Rashid's reader friendly text accompanying his outstanding photography, Gone Fishing is a "must" for anyone who ever picked up rod and reel or tried their luck at spearing in Wisconsin's bountiful waters.

This book is really great! It's extensive coverage of the Golden Era of U of M football should be in every graduate's library. The author has extensive knowledge of this era - his father having played in it. If you want to know some fun facts, this book is for you!

This book has a lot of very useful statistics. It is excellent for report writing, and for "taking a trip down memory lane"