Wisconsin Books

Written by Wisconsin Almanac author and sports buff Jerry Minnich, Badger Sports: Trivia Teasers presents more than six hundred trivia questions about the athletics tradition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Covering hockey, football, men's and women's basketball, and almost every sport from rowing to wrestling, Badger Sports offers its golden nuggets in straight question-and-answer format. Black-and-white photographs illustrate this great collection of the highs, lows, scores, and star players of UW-Madison sports, ideal for hardcore trivia contests and enthusiasts.

Sometimes a novel gives a better understanding of a culture than any number of sociological books. That is the case with this book. It has a familar story, the wife of a rich man runs away with one of his workers and the resulting story of the aftermath.

The story, however takes place on the impoverished farms, in the coffee shops and cafes and with a country where the world can be described in three words: tobacco, coffee and sugar. The place where this culture takes place is Puerto Rico and the setting is 1936 truly 'another time.'

This is not a long story, but very well regarded, winning a number of literary rewards, and a welcome addition to current literature.

Translated into English for the first time by Dick Ringler (Professor Emeritus of English and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison), Bard Of Iceland: Jonas Hallgrimsson, Poet And Scientist is an extensive, 474-page compilation of and commentary upon the poetry of Jonas Hallgrimsson (1807-1845), a Renaissance-style scientist who contributed to geography, botany, zoology, and archaeology. His life, his struggle to help Iceland gain independence from Denmark, and his mastery of poetic verse in context are all showcased in this impressive literary collection, skillfully gathered with astute and insightful commentary by an accomplished Scandinavian literary academician and expert.

These poems were amazing, disturbing, evocative. Phrases and images have stayed with me, and a few times I have had to go back and read a certain poem just to touch them again. The recurrent themes of being and not-being, of what it means to be fertile and not-fertile -- BARDO is a gift, and I was fortunate enough to come across an early copy.

When I told a colleague I was reading a book on Oral History, we both cringed. I had to go on to say it "isn't like that." This is a book that uses people's words about their experience as a clue into the complexity of human history. When historians relate "what happened", they are furthering an establishment version of events. As this book shows, some of the events that people who lived through it recount as most important aren't recorded *anywhere*. Likewise, the accounts that are recorded as history are sometimes considered insignificant by the participants.

Another aspect of this book that is interesting is its cross cultural perspective. The author is able to interpret oral texts in both English and Italian, and has done research in Kentucky and in Italy. His background also allows for literary interpretation, demonstrating that when transcribing oral history, care must be taken to accurately recount verb tenses and pronouns as a way of demonstrating whether a person is stating what happened, or how they interpret what happened, or how they have rationalized what happened to fit their current viewpoint.

I REALLY LIKE THE MAGGIE THORSEN BOOKS. THE CHARACTERS ARE VERY REAL AND LIKEABLE. LOOKING FORWARD TO READING MORE BOOKS IN THIS SERIES (SO FAR 3 HAVE BEEN WRITTEN AND I HAVE READ ALL THREE).

This is a great resource book written through actual experiences of the authors. Great pictures and references. The book shares information that is not readily available through tourist information. It makes you want to get out your bike and ride along with nature. One does not have to be biking to enjoy the Bed &Breakfast establishments visited in the book.

I've read, studied, and quoted Beowulf, but I had never heard it done such a compelling fashion. The language is stirring, and the sound effects are realistic. When you hear this, you understand how this tale survived. The alliteration helped the successive narrators remember the tale and swept the audience along in the story. Great work!

German scholar Detlef Garbe, now director of the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial, produced the first comprehensive historical account of the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses by the Nazi regime. Garbe went to great lengths to produce as accurate account as possible. (There are 210 pages of footnotes and a 40 page bibliography.) He researched a wide range of resources: Nazi government archives, newspaper archives, private documents, unpublished reports, concentration camp memorial archives, Watch Tower Society publications (in English and German), personal interviews of participants, memoirs of non-Witnesses prisoners that were imprisoned with Jehovah's Witnesses, accounts written by former Witnesses, ect. All to get as many verified facts as possible. This resulted in what is now considered the standard scholarly account about the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses under National Socialism.

It must be said that this book is not an easy read. It's not a novel. It's a scholar writing a book for other scholars. There are many footnotes and abbreviations. Garbe always uses the correct terminology to refer to people, places, and ideas But still this book is a fascinating read. You just can't help but wonder why the Nazis spent so much time and effort to try get this small minority (about 25,000 out of 65,000,000 Germans in 1933) to conform to Nazi standards. Yet the Nazis were never able to completely shatter the core of this group. As Garbe says in the preface, page xvii:

"This book reports about religious people who refused to conform to the Third Reich but whose faith in God and trust in his biblical promises gave them the strength to preserve their respect for life, even during those difficult times."

This book is a translation based on the 1999 4th German edition of Detlef Garbe's Zwischen Widerstand und Martyrium: Die Zeugen Jehovas im "Dritten Reich".

Book is terrific because in one place I gain both execution and strategy advice. Connecting these two is where business units and companies get into trouble. I've been in marketing and general management for decades and Beyond Price gets it right--you need a unique business model built on advantages to build an attractive financial position. Product innovation alone can be too easy for competitors to copy.

There are lots of great strategy and execution books out there that provide powerful insights and examples of diferentiation. But, I'm always left with major questions about how to apply the books' ideas. Not only is Beyond Price full of rich insights into strategy and execution, the authors' step-by-step process gives me the guidance I've been looking for.