Wisconsin Books

IF YOUR FROM MILWAUKEE, THIS IS A MUST BOOK. PICTURES ARE GREAT. A WONDERFUL GIFT .

The collaborative effort of John Gurda (Seven-time winner of the Wisconsin Historical Society's "Award of Merit") and Christel T. Maass (Academic Librarian, Special Collections Department, Golda Meir Library, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Illuminating The Particular is an impressive compilation of the photography of Roman B. J. Kwasniewski in a documentary celebration of the Polish American immigrant experience in Milwaukee, Wisconsin prior to the years of World War II. These were the critical pre-war years (1913 to 1947) were when the children and grandchildren of the Polish immigrant community in Milwaukee were transitioning and evolving into full fledged American citizens. A strongly recommended addition to personal, academic, and community library Wisconsin History collections, Illuminating The Particular provides a superb visual showcasing of Milwaukee's second largest ethnic group and their distinctive community which developed and distinctively hallmarked Milwaukee's South Side.

I don't know why you'd read this unless you're a McCullers fanatic or you need a reference for a paper, but either way, you are going to be pleasantly surprised. This book takes you behind the scenes of McCullers' life, her thought processes, and her life. And in case you don't know already, she's a very interesting subject. Bisexual and mysterious, she not only experienced pleasure and pain-love and hurt-but also got into a love triangle with her husband. They both loved the same man and wanted him to themselves! You get to read letters that had previously been secret and private and get to hear her motivation and conception of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter from McCullers' own mouth. It's entertaining and informative and when you finish this book you'll have a sense of understanding and intrigue-like you've uncovered a mysterious secret.

The first part of this book is McCullers' "unfinished" autobiography. For me, reading this was like having a one-on-one conversation with a writer that I have read and admired since high school. The second part, wartime correspondence between McCullers and her then ex-husband Reeves, provided a great deal of insight into the personalities of both. I found these letters to be very moving. Also included in the book are previously published notes on THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER along with a detailed chronology of McCullers' life and works. ILLUMINATION AND NIGHT GLARE is a treasure for literary enthusiasts--especially fans of McCullers.

I've just had a lovely visit with the flora, fauna and soul of the Northwoods of Wisconsin. I did not have to travel from my Pennsylvania home to do so. I only had to open this little jewel of a book and spend time with the very real and yet magical photos taken by the author, Trish Kirk, and read the inspirational quotes she chose to accompany them. This book is a perfect gift for those of us who respect "all God's creatures, great and small" and enjoy the beauty of nature in general. If I ever get to Wisconsin, this book will be how I share the experience with others.

Feeling stressed? Pick up this wonderful book and enjoy a superb photographic trip through nature's paradise with thoughtful, inspiring quotations to keep you company. Trish Kirk's love of nature's gifts shines through this gem.

Paul Lay's informative text is a perfect accompaniment to Richard Turpin's stunning, lovely, full color, tour-de-force photographic excursion through the appealing beauty of Ireland's landscape, cities, architecture, and people. Enchanted Ireland is an outstanding compilation of Irish images and a pure celebration of the natural wonder and folk charm of a vibrant people in a land bustling with vigor and cultural legacy. Highly recommended!

Having just returned from a 2-week visit to Ireland I was eagerto get my hands on anything related to the places I saw. So, I took alook at several photography books on Ireland and was losing hope of finding the "right" one, when I started flipping through "Enchanted Ireland." I was stunned by the wonderful photographs, and the great range of both landscape and city/town pictures. There are also some beautful people pictures, including--to my astonishment--Paddy, an accordion player and resident of Inishmor, whom I saw on my trip to the Aran Islands. If you're looking for a wide range of photographs and a good idea of what parts of Ireland look like (and they're stunningly beautiful) then this is *the* book to have. You'll want to leave for Ireland tomorrow!

I must say I was thrilled to come across this book here. James Patrick Sullivan was my great-great grandfather and I knew little about my ancestors before. I would recommend this book to anyone wanting a glimpse of a soldier's recollections of the War Between the States.

This is a thoroughly enjoyable book for me, as I am the great-granddaughter of Mickey Sullivan, or "JP" as we Sullivans call him. I read this book before visiting Gettysburg and so was able to retrace his steps. Gettysburg has an surreal quality about it and still seems alive with the spirits of those who fought there. JP was fortunate to come home from that war. Books such as these that speak with the actual words of the soldiers help you to understand the times and the feelings of those who fought there.

Lance Herdegen brought my great-grandfather to life for me - an opportunity I would never have experienced if this book had not been written. I have also listened to Mr. Herdegen speak, telling stories about the Civil War, about the "Western" soldiers from Wisconsin, and the Wisconsin Native Americans, who enlisted as "French-Canadians" since as native americans they were considered at that time to be "foreign" peoples...how incredible that seems to us now.

The Civil War will long hold interest and mystery. I think you will enjoy this book, as well as the others written by Lance Herdegen. He is a great authority on the Civil War

Killer Crónicas asks the following questions, among others:

* What is the nature of the exquisitely ambiguous pleasure we experience in passing as members of the local community?
* What are the costs of being identified as an insider, or outsider, by members of the communities in which we travel?
* How might the experience of being at once inside and outside be specific to pan-Latin and Jewish post-holocaust cultural identity, without regard to location?
* How to develop a language limited enough to connote specific geopolitical contexts, yet broad enough to denote the simultaneity in memory of related circumstances separated by distance and time?

Killer Crónicas draws from multiple genres, such as the literature of travel in Spanish (cartas de exploración, of discovery) and in English (here, the Anglo-American category of life-writing, which includes biography, autobiography, and letters, is helpful.) Particulary original is the sustained and studied attention to the traveler's status as a consumer. Underlying the internationalism and bilingualism of Chávez-Silverman's accomplishment is a creativity comparable to Latino performance artists such as Coco Fusco (author of English is Broken Here) Guillermo Gómez-Peña, or code-switching poets such as Tino Villanueva.

I personally find Gloria Anzaldua's work almost unreadable (there's no rhyme, reason, or inventiveness) while I think that Cherrie Moraga is good for her work's characters and dynamic. In Killer Crónicas what's original is how the writer focuses attention on the relation between what we say and how we say it in one or both languages, showing how the mind moves at the moment of the "switch." This work demonstrates a mode of thought familiar to those of us who work in multiple cultural locations, reproducing the habit of thinking in multiple languages. This challenges the hegemonic attitudes about what constitutes linguistic propriety in either Spanish or English by pointing up the complexities of both languages. Also the mixture of languages legitimates a practice that is very widespread: the INVENTIVE use of multiple languages, registers. Read this very contemporary, brilliant book for the puns, for the writer's inspired, faux, alternative, and refused translations. Killer Crónicas is steeped in multiple literary traditions: Argentine, CalifAtzlan, On the Road-Trippers, but most of that incomparable Spanish-language genre that is so definitive in the New World: the Crónica. Let Susana Chavez-Silverman be your guide and you will travel far, far indeed.

Clever, sassy, intelligent, poetic... continual code-switching is a wonderful vehicle to convey the sensations and experiences of a multi-cultural life. Her poetry invokes the intimacy I often feel when back in a long-lost land. Her quick wit and carefully-chosen details chronical well the feelings of isolation and observer-looking-in that seem to dog me wherever I land.
This is well worth the read.

Ordinarily political biography is long on the public lives of its subjects, and skimpy on the private lives, no doubt because when a political figure deposits his or her "papers" with some library or institution he or she deposits only those papers pertaining to the public or political life. This entrancing study relies on the personal letters of not only Fighting Bob LaFollette and his wife but the letters of their four children. The book follows their private lives and reflects their public lives as they affected their private lives. Thus we get a much more intimate look at the lives of the famed LaFollette family, including all four of the children: Senator Robert F. LaFollette, Jr., Governor Phil LaFollette, and the two daughters. This is a study of a very political family from a standpoint such as I never have read before. It is a highly interesting work

Weisberger's book is well researched and politically accurate. A wonderful portrait of the La Follettes. Captivating.

Beautifully illustrated throughout with full-color photography, "Landscape With Native Plants Of Wisconsin" by Lynn M. Steiner (one of the Midwest's most respected garden writers with a life-long interest in native plants) is an essential instructional guide to successful native-plant gardening in Wisconsin. This is the first gardening and landscaping guidebook to focus specifically on the use of Wisconsin's native plants and native-plant communities in home gardens and landscapes. All the basic information is provided, including how to determine what level of native-plant landscaping is appropriate for where the garden is to be located in the Badger state. This thoroughly "user friendly" compendium of expert advice on the process of designing, implementing, and maintaining a natural garden includes plant lists, solutions to commonly encountered landscaping issues ranging from deer-resistant plants, to shade gardens, to water-wise gardens, what native plants work best in different garden styles, water gardens, rock gardens, humming bird gardens, butterfly gardens, and so much more. With descriptions of some 500 Wisconsin native-plant species, varieties, and cultivars of flowers, trees, shrubs, vines, evergreens, grasses, ferns, and groundcovers, "Landscape With Native Plants Of Wisconsin" is the definitive and strongly recommended reference for any Wisconsin gardener or landscaper wanting to utilize and incorporate Wisconsin native plants.

I bought two "Landscaping with Native Plants of WI, one for me and one for my daughter's birthday. 99.9% of the pages have colored pictures. It give about a half page for each plant providing a good description and concise info on native habitat, uses, good compantions, site prep. It covers flowers, grsses, ferns, vines, evergreens and desicuous shrubs and trees. I would recommend the book.

Some people do not realize how important the fans and god are to a game. The fact that some one realizes the fans (Chapter 2) Makes this reading book worth all of the time it takes to read it.

This book brings out the true meaning of what these champions are all about. Steve captured the gripping effect Christianity has on many of the Packer players. I enjoyed the book and have had many associates enjoy the book.

The book arrived in excellent condition within scheduled delivery time.

Thank you,

Francine Keehnel

I have often read that literature is food for the mind. If that is so then poetry must be food for the soul and this book a feast for the spirit. Where literature deals with ideas, fantasies and the human condition, poetry deals with the emotions, the spirit; the very qualities that raise us above the lower animals (no comments from PETA, Please!). Poetry reaches into each of us and touches that elemental being that many of us deny exists. The Legend of Light by Bob Hicok reaches in and not only touches but pokes, prods and grabs. This, his second book, is the result of winning the Felix Pollack Prize in Poetry administered by the University of Wisconsin. His writing style is deceptively simple. He does not try to fry your brain cells with polysyllabic words or convoluted conceptual phrasings or make you tap a rythym. Instead he speaks to you using common vocabulary but painting such vivid imagery that your hackles rise and you shake to settle your fur. Much of his work has a dark side or, rather, addresses the dark side we would rather ignore. Some poems are equipped with claws that dig into your heart and squeeze till tears come, tears not of pain but of empathy, of compassion. I could not finish his poem Visiting the Wall until the third attempt, his descriptive phrasing affecting me the same as if I had been there. I don't think Mr. Hicok was old enough to be a brother of mine from the 'Nam but he let me once again cry. Another favorite of mine (actually, all but about two are favorites) is Surgery. If memory serves, this was written after his own surgery. If you have ever been undrer hte knife, you can feel as he speaks. "Masked, they cut you, peel back your skin for the legend of light to enter your body. In this moment they love you......." In AIDS, Mr. Hicok manages to convey nothing of being a homosexual, a drug addict or a maligned lover; He does not rail at the injustice of it all. What he does very well is impart the feeling of loss, the joy of love, of needing and being needed. His poetry deals with the frustration of not being able to communicate these things, of being blocked out and locked in. In the end, as the narrator leaves home, his last thought was But all I can think of is that you love as you have to and die the best you can. In the end, that's all that any of us can hope for. This slim volume (79 pages) has affected me more than most books I've read in the past year. Much of the work, as I said earlier, deals with the dark. The dark in us, the dark around us. From Neighbor, about a man living under the bridge to Dogfish Mother all are guaranteed to open the your spirit-eyes and make you feel again. It has taken me most of a year to read, re-read digest and accept what he was trying to tell me. I understood and felt everything but I also had to accept it. I have at last and encourage all of you to do the same. Thank you for joining me. Joe Zucatti