University of Minnesota Books

Great book for someone who visits this area. Gives us outsiders a peek into what life was like for the "pioneers" of canoe country.

This book began our American Studies graduate seminar at the U of Minnesota, taught by the author. It is a gem, a concise and yet thorough analysis, particularly in the case of post-world war II American intellectuals like Hofstadter and Niebuhr. It is a serious work of intellectual history, influenced by the ideas of William Appleman Williams, Thomas Kuhn, and Benedict Anderson, and delivers a very different conceptualization of cold war consensus historians than what most historiographies offer.

Philip Young is I believe the first critic to provide a clear understanding of the Hemingway code - hero. The hero is not as some may think the public figure hero the bullfighter, or the champion boxer or even the commanding soldier . The hero is like Hemingway himself and like Jake Barnes and in a way Nick Adams the one who has been wounded in the war and who must somehow " be stronger at the broken places". The public hero in his ' grace under pressure ' may give an example. But the code hero the true Hemingway hero has to imitate in silence without complaint, without big words, without heroic proclamation of himself those simple right actions which answer the situation. This is in accord with the famous Hemingway passage when he speaks about the inability after the War to use words like ' sacred ' and ' patriotic' , the big words. The code hero instead wounded, numbed must act in a kind of clean and efficient almost ritual way in restoring himself and the world. Simple action with a minimum of words. Action which is repeated almost like a ritual. Action which has something of the quality of the famous Heminway style with its hypnotic Biblical simplicity and its conjunctive connections. The rhythmic ' and ' and ' and' of Hemingway's prose conveys too the mirror of this kind of redemptive action.
An excellent work for better understanding the whole structure and basic meaning of the Hemingway word and act.

Champagne's critique and recommendation make for an interesting and thought provoking read. His ideas are a warning for our future thought that academics have a responsibility to understand.

this is just what I was looking for. methods of measurement and recording joint motion. not too much information, just enough. thanks

Or "How to Make Friends and Influence People"
This is a book about the nature of power, language, and behavior. Peckham starts with an interesting pragmatist premise: the meaning of a sign is the response to it. This may seem like a tautology but it's not; Peckham states that language is slippery (predicting and predating the post-structuralists and Derrida) and that language, essentially, is about regulating behavior. The book follows these premises through out the social landscape.

His statements about language resemble, to me, late Wittgenstein because he thinks that language has rules that are almost endemic to their structure and these rules are used by us to categorize and divide the quotidian corporeal world (and this leads us to inscribe these structures into the larger world). His social beliefs mirror Bourdieu and Foucault, in a way, by claiming that social roles and states have to keep their populace under control and that this means, in modern times, trying to regulate their desires.

At first it seems like a depressing book with "no way out" but at the end he goes into "social transcendence" which is a fancy way of saying that society sometimes fails and creates people who don't "fit in." Sometimes.... hell, most of the time, this is a bad thing (sociopaths, Jim Jones, Hitler, etc.) but sometimes its a great thing that leads to movements that set the larger culture in slightly new directions (which isn't necessarily good, but that's not the point).

You don't need a philosophy background to understand it and although it is dense, it's one of the most rewarding books I've read in the last two years.

Poststructural readings such as these have a lot to offer academia. The play of words, irony, and humor is a welcome addition to the literature of international relations scholarship, a much better influence than the sterility offered by empirical, positivist social science.

Fawn Island is a place where crows serve as alarm clocks, white-throated sparrows leave the tracks of their songs upon the even hush, and chickadees help a woodsman learn to whistle. The island is also a gateway to the sprawling Voyageurs National Park. An accomplished author, Douglas Wood takes the reader into the heart of the deep North Woods with his text (illustrated by his own artwork) that evokes the charm and adventure to be found in the quite of the pine-clad shores, as well as the neighborliness, and independence of those who live in this remarkable place. Fawn Island is enthusiastically recommended, entertaining, and occasionally inspiring reading for naturalists, armchair travelers, and anyone else who enjoys experiencing the what a wilderness retreat in the North Country has to offer.

This is a terrific collection-- and one of the first I have seen to explore the connection between documentary and feminist film theory, history, and practice. The introduction by Walker and Waldman is extremely informative and helpful-- I have used it often in cinema studies classes and in writing papers and it has greatly expanded my knowledge in both fields of study.

Kathleen Jesme is a native of Northern Minnesota, bordering Ontario, Canada in the Lake of the Woods region, and this is the setting of her first book of poetry, Fire Eater. The book moves from her pre-history, the land mark fire of 1910, that devastated the entire town of Baudette and much of the surrounding woodlands, through her own youth as a child in reconstructed Baudette in the fifties and sixties. It continues on through her years, at high school age, as a novitiate in a convent in Northwestern Minnesota. This is the journey of a bright young person, who now recalls her early years and details them into a vivid and beautiful perspective.
Jesme begins her book with 4 poems depicting thoughts or incidents from her childhood, all imbued with images of her recurring theme, fire. In the first poem, "The Arsonist", she relates her remembrances of the time she set the long grass on a popular hill in Baudette on fire, while trying to roast hot dogs.
Excerpt:
And try as she might, she will never be able
to remember it
quite right---

the way the fire truck sounds with its Doppler roar
and the soft swish of voices on the streets
as the news passes,

and later, the thought of burning up
with the grass,
how easy it would have been,

and the way the hill
becomes a black patch of shame she can't look at
until snow comes and covers it.

In the next segment, Jesme takes us back to the fire of 1910.
We learn of the fire itself, it's possible origins, and continue on through the tragic deaths and stories of the survivors until, in the poem, "The Fourteen Unknown", we are at the cemetery where
Excerpt:
In the chaos and fear of typhoid
after the fire,
they buried twenty-seven people
together in a trench;fourteen of them

unnamed
and no one knew for sure
who they were.

As a child, I used to visit them.
While my mother cut
the grass on my grandfather's grave,
I went down the hill to the monument,
to the indentation of earth

Many of the poems in this book reflect the love of nature, particularly in the late Fall, that Jesme has carried with her beginning with a childhood that was lived,in large part, outdoors.
This passion, combined with a quick and discerning mind, has culminated in an impressive store of knowledge and experience that makes Fire Eater the type of book that will have an immediate and profound impact on the first reading, and will certainly have many more riches to reveal as the years go on.
One standout poem, "Let Them", leads to a truly breath-taking conclusion-this is a poem with a good heart, much compassion and wisdom, great lines, and as much as I would like to partially quote from it, this is an experience a reader will want to have alone.
The book concludes with several poems from the poet's convent years. The works in this section are also simply stunning and add real and stark perspective to the readers understanding of one person's amazing journey. "The Pump Room" and "All I remember Now" gave me a small idea of how hard life in a convent could be, yet also a sense of how something beautiful and lasting can be carved from the roughest wood. All of our pilgrimages through life have those defining periods. These quiet and beautiful poems are exactly the kind that will require many re-visits over a span of years to fully appreciate, and I look forward to the pleasure. Very often a good poet can return to you old feelings and memories that you had thought lost.
Kathleen Jesme - Thanks for Fire Eater. Fire Eater - Welcome to the collection of poetry books that I carry with me into the woods on my Autumn vacation. May we have many Fall seasons ahead.