Minnesota Books

This book is so much more than recipes. It has timelines that document the owners of lodges still active and those that the government bought out in the 70s. Each lodge/resort/outfitter featured (and there are so many!) begins with a few pages of history and information about the people who pioneered the Gunflint Trail and those who are the current owners, followed by recipes featured by each lodge. It's a fascinating read and rather tough to put down. After possibly wearing out my dad's copy I had to buy one for myself.

Highly recommended for anyone who has visited the Gunflint Trail and those who enjoy the history & people of northern Minnesota. The recipes are a great bonus! :-)

The profits of this book go to the Gunflint Trail Volunteer Fire Department.

This book, written by the leader of the 1934 Teamsters strikes, and the man who organized the first national organizing drive of over-the-road truckers, Farrell Dobbs, outlines the real life struggle of the Minneapolis Teamsters to maintain their union and build others. Politics meant not supporting Democratic and Republican "friends of labor," but fighting for independent working class candidates and a labor party. Politics meant the union reaching out to align itself with the unemployed, with women fighting for their rights, and with the small farmers.

This book is a blueprint of the kind of unions we need, unions where the working membership has taken them back from the bureaucrats, and use them as weapons not only in the struggle of the workers who belong, but all the oppressed, unions that will be key to the struggle to wrest power from the rich and put it in the hands of the workers and the farmers.

While this book may not be available at times from Amazon, it is always available from booksfrompathfinder, a vendor you can reach by clicking on new and used at the top of this page!

I am greatly impressed with the approach taken by Sassower. There are many efforts in academia to teach scientists ethics, but often they are ineffective -- if not down right pro-tech propogandist. Sassower takes an important first step by acknowledging that many scientists do face ethical dilemmas within their work or work environment, but back away from them due to various social pressures. How do we face these pressures as a society? What are steps for both scientists and citizens in attempting to better govern scientific activity and discovery? The points made here are practical, and meaningful. This highly readable text is perfect for the college-level classroom, as well as for the reflective scientist.

Tempest in the Caribbean would amount to a tour de force if it had been written by a lifelong scholar of Caribbean literature. Given that most of Jonathan Goldberg's previous work is on the English Renaissance, it's both a tour de force and a wonder. Placing issues of sexuality at the center of his readings without displacing the centrality of race, gender, and colonialism, Goldberg offers exact and startling articulations that I hope will inspire many further projects.

I had the fortune of having one Roderick P. McDonald as my instructor in this topic, in the very last semester he taught at the University of Illinois before he retired and returned to his first love, Sydney. This textbook is, essentially, an expanded version of his lecture notes. (As an aside, Rod writes pretty much like he speaks---dry British wit and all---so if you read his book you will get a decent idea of what he is like in person.) Test Theory takes McDonald's basic position that test theory is an integrated field, ranging from classical test theory as a computationally feasible special case of the Spearman factor model all the way to item response theory, which is a nonlinear model that adjusts for the nature of binary data. The factor model is the glue that holds everything together. McDonald's perspective that the confirmatory model makes more sense and that once you have learned it, the exploratory model will be simple to understand, almost as an afterthought, is a very nice bonus. Other books on this topic, by contrast, do not give the reader a sense of the unity of the topic.

There are a few downside to the book. First is that it has a lot of typos. You should definitely make sure to get the errata, which used to be available on the publisher's web page. Unfortunately, the book was written in a fairly antiquated typesetting system and not done in LaTeX; it could really stand an update. Second, the book has no exercises. I have some worksheets from my days at Illinois passed from TA to TA until they got to me. I should get them scanned and put on the web. Third, the publisher also indicates that a suite of free programs (Confa, Cofa, Cosan, NOHARM) written by Colin Fraser (one of McDonald's students) is available, but I cannot find them at present. If you want to do EFA, you can get Michael Browne's CEFA, but having free and simple CFA, SEM and MIRT software would be awfully nice....

Update: After having taught psychometrics all on my lonesome with no one else's lesson plan this Spring 2008, I believe this book is an excellent capstone work. It's too much for most readers, which is why my students got Allen & Yen, but my lectures were based heavily on TT:aUT. I told them if they really wanted to know the material, they needed to take a look.

this book is for the person that drank alcohol to promote his or her self and his or her business...it expresses how fitzgerald got caught up in the martini lunches, wine lunch, evening cocktails, and the no-excuse necessity for entertainment of the people that called the shots in his industry...he takes the gloves off to tell how he feels about AA, and how he will not be belittled by anyone for his alcoholism, but freely admits he was trapped. The book is not for those who adhere to a strict resolution of the alcoholic by the means of the intervention...fitzgerald would probably outlaw that use in new york...and bless him for it if he could...he is smart, realizes his problem and faces it...his wife is the old fashioned pioneer woman, standing by him, never leave him attitude...his children are sort of namby pamby, its not my problem sort of kids, or so it appears...he seems to want his son to be stronger....enough said...if you drink, like to drink, but should quit, read this book and listen to ed fitzgerald...a war hero besides...e.wood

The primary purpose of the occupation of defeated Germany after World War II pursued by American political and military leaders was replacing that country's attachment to the militaristic, dictatorial form of government with democracy. More so than simple institution of democratic forms of government such as legislatures and political parties, democracy as regarded by the American leaders was "a type of behavior, a public attitude, and affective relationship to the state." Gestures, equality among all persons (replacing the Nazi concept of the Master Race), styles of clothing, individual identity, and even types of food were all entailed in this. American leaders aimed at nothing less than a thorough overhauling of German culture, including the German psyche. The media of popular democratic culture of magazines, newspapers, radio, and public talks were the favored agencies for the desired change in post-War Germany. Movies were foremost in this mix of media intended to inculcate the German public in American behavior down to gestures, relationships among citizens, imagery, and so on.

But as Fay--codirector of film studies at Michigan State U.--uncovers, the message American leaders presumed Germans would take from the movies which were supposed to have a major role in the transformation was not the one Germans got. Fay goes behind the celebrities, images, story lines, and ideals and mythologies believed by most Americans to be portrayed in the films to the "hard facts and slippery truths" communicated in them. Among the films Fay critiques for the different messages they sent to the different audiences is the John Wayne 1939 Western classic Stagecoach. To the large majority of American eyes, the movie depicts a band of diverse (white) men and women coming together despite their differences to fight off barbaric Apaches. To the majority of German eyes however, as Fay tenders, the whites were invaders of the Indian lands and had mores and engaged in activities that could be seen as racist; and 100 years following the time white Americans aggressively implanted themselves in New England, as seen in the movie Drums Along the Mohawk also shown to German audiences, Americans were continuing to invade Indian lands and slaughter or relocate the Indians. The ambivalences in such movies, let alone how they could be seen to reflect ideas of racial superiority, needless to say were lost on the American authorities.

Fay critiques not only other Westerns, but also comedies, mysteries, and films with domestic settings and occasionally individual stars such as Greta Garbo for how they cut against the very messages, values, and behavior American leaders thought they were evidencing. In many cases, the lesson German audiences would draw would be the very opposite of the ones the Americans thought they were putting forth. Although the book is essentially one of film criticism, Fay closes it with the unavoidable comparison of the miscalculations American authorities made in the occupation of Germany and similar miscalculations and effects in the occupation of Iraq.

This is THE book for those of Finnish heritage that are interested in a nearly forgotten time in our history. Mayme gives us a gripping tale about her time in Soviet Russia after being moved there by her communist agitator father Oscar Corgan. Oscar was one of the primary proponents of American Finns moving to Russia to begin a new life there. This time is called "Karelian Fever". Mayme's description of her life and times in Russia is harrowing. Even though her father was taken and killed by soviet authorities she remains unapologetic. This is a fine companion piece to "No Home for us Here" and "Karelia".

I was impressed with the main character, Clara Mintz, who was a self-sufficient woman who met every "challenge" with determination to keep her life moving forward. She was always learning new trades to help support her children. She was able to enjoy the moment without living in the past. She did, however, draw strength from happy memories, which helped her face new hardships of the present day.

Excellent pictorial history of the City of Thief River Falls and surrounding area, with some scenes being the only recorded pictures known. A well thought out and organized book.