University of Minnesota Books

For all the love the people of the Midwest have for Lake Superior and the Minnesota North Shore, you'd think more people would have written...and published...about their experiences there. But there is a noticeable lack of current nature writing about the lake. This book does a great job of filling in. The various chapters take a rough clockwise journey around the lake, stopping to deeply elucidate one natural history phenomenon after another. For fans of Lake Superior, this is a very welcome and very important book.

Although I have the original book, I'm sure the reprint is very similar, same author, same title. It has wonderful illustrations and stories that historians would enjoy! An entire American Lake Series included other authors with each great lake as a title.

Although a title like "The Last Hurrah of the James-Younger Gang" is good from a marketing standpoint because of the "celebrity" status of Jesse James and Cole Younger, it unfortunately does not recognize the real heroes of Robert Barr Smith's book: the ordinary citizens of a small Midwestern town who in 1876 repelled an invasion by a criminal gang. Smith makes no secret of his sympathies (which I share) when he describes the outlaws as being "no more than orinary criminals, bullies who stole the fruits of other's labors because it beat working and did a good deal to inflate their twisted egos." In other words, don't buy this book if you expect to read praise of Jesse James!

Smith's research into the Northfield, Minnesota, raid is broad, but the nature of the evidence prevents him from constructing a simple narrative with all details laid out in a straightforward, no questions manner. Quick, violent events such as the Northfield gun battle inevitably leave witnesses confused and contradictions are inescapable. Moreover, the outlaws' own accounts appear more concerned with providing excuses and whitewashing their activities than relating the truth. And, finally, the stories from both sides were very often exagerrated and distorted by the newspapers and books which reported them.

Time and time again, Smith relates several different versions of some particular incident, pointing out improbabilities and sometimes identifying the most likely truth, but very often only a best guess at what really happended can be made. Nonetheless, Smith's reconstruction of events held my attention and, in the end, I celebrate with him the victory of those Minnesota farmers and shopkeepers over the hoodlums who thought they would be easy picking.

Susan Smith. Do The Right Thing. Clarence Thomas. Jonathan Markovitz weaves together such disparate elements of contemporary culture into a narrative of how collective memories of lynching have shaped and reshaped modern uses of lynching as a metaphor for race relations. Legacies of Lynching argues "that collective memories of lynching are intricately linked to understandings of a variety of racial categories and that the ways in which we remember lynching therefore help to shape the possibilities for contemporary racial politics" (p. xvii).

Markovitz begins his study by briefly tracing the history of lynching from its roots in American Revolution mob violence through its racialized uses, particularly in post-Reconstruction America. Markovitz's interests lie not in lynching itself but in how people have viewed lynching over time, in how the meaning(s) of lynching have been constructed and reconstructed. Drawing from Maurice Halbwachs and Marita Sturken, Markovitz argues that "the construction and deployment of collective memories is a thoroughly political process validating some versions of the past while marginalizing others" (p. xxii). The rest of his work illustrates how that process takes place in the realms of politics and popular culture.

Markovitz's central argument, that lynching as a metaphor both shapes and is constructed by modern race relations, is well illustrated throughout his examples of collective memories of lynching. Through the place of the lynching metaphor in cinema, racialized violence, and the Hill-Thomas hearings, Markovitz demonstrates that "meaning does not reside within the photographs [the relics of lynching] but is, instead, determined through social interaction" (p. 141). In crafting a work accessible to scholars and to the public, Markovitz helps to define the meaning(s) of the lynching metaphor through examples that both play into and go beyond current culturally constructed senses of that metaphor.

Only at the very end does Markovitz fall flat. In a one-page coda, Markovitz attempts to tie his work into the discourse of terrorism. Although he makes important points about the construction of collective memories of America before and after the terrorist attacks, this discourse only serves to distract the reader from Markovitz's important conclusions about battles over the cultural meanings of lynching and race relations. Markovitz instead should end with the assertion that "[t]he lynching metaphor, and collective memories of lynching, can be reconstructed and deployed in a wide variety of ways and for a seemingly endless number of purposes, but the meaning that is attached to lynching is never arbitrary" (p. 146). These battles over the meanings of lynching, of racism, of race itself, continue.

Jennifer Delton is a political scientist who has researched and written a fascinating history of the regional origins of the "liberalization" of American society in the mid 20th century. Delton is primarily concerned with how three young, liberal political entrepreneurs from the East Coast (Humphrey, Mondale, and Freeman) used US socialists' deradicalization during WWII (when beseiged US socialists gave up advancing socialism in order to coalesce with left liberals and fight fascism) to appropriate the innovative socialist political and anti-racism infrastructure of a peripheral state (MN).

These liberal political entrepreneurs commandeered MN's socialist anti-racist political infrastructure, harnessing it to an ambitious project to modernize (oust Southern apartheid leaders from) the US Democratic Party, in order to provide Keynesianism with political backing for its lower-inequality economic model.

Though the liberals' bold tactics aided the Civil Rights Movement in bringing down formal American apartheid and advancing formal democratization, the tactics failed to bolster Keynesianism. High inequality policy, cultivated in magnificently-funded right-wing social movement organizations, only reemerged more emphatically to dominate the US (and the globe) through the revised political institutions.

If I were teaching in MN, I would definitely assign Delton's book at the undergraduate or graduate level, in conjunction with William Millikan's "A Union Against Unions" (2001). They are profoundly relevant to understanding US politics.

Since the post-socialist era, Minnesota has continuously served to provide leadership positions to progressive as well as right-wing liberal political aspirants from the East. Further, while the book finds the progressive roots buried in MN's history, after the DFL's abandonment of the socialist cultural and anti-racism programs linking rural and urban communities, the state's politics have been aligned with the rest of the country and become far more homogeneously conservative. This provides a good basis for a discussion of the importance of red-green coalitions to progressive politics.

As a sociologist, I find another interesting issue that arises from this political history, especially in comparison with the social democratic political histories of the Nordic countries, is the functional role of real Left political organization and disruption in providing necessary ballast for more robust long-term progressive politics and reform.

An amazing insight into the development of the Iranian-American community. This book shows the power of media and politics in the development of identity. The true strenght of this work is that it is applicable to all people. As the role of the media comes under greater scrutiny and people begin to question what they see, read and hear, we understand why this book is so powerful. As Naficy takes us on the ride into Los Angeles, the center of the Iranian-American community, we begin to understand that the construction and creation of the Iranian community is very much imagined and developed by the media and press. This production of identity and image is essential study for all Iranians living in the US and important to all people who want to see how powerful mass media can be in shaping our thoughts, ideas and images of others and ourselves. The only knock on this work is the dense anthropological language that is used to discuss the various psychological and technical subject matters. However that is unavoidable in such a work.

Doty's volume is very popular. Here he analyzes various forms of mass culture, from the Jack Benny radio program to the TV program "Laverne and Shirley" to demonstrate the existence of queer (non-heterosexually coded performance) narratives at the center of all of these cultural productions.

For example, Doty argues that in popular TV shows such as "Alice," "I Love Lucy", "Laverne and Shirley", the show depends on narrating from the perpective of the women in the show. Doty argues that the plot complications almost always stem from some male interference with the pleasure of the narrator, from unwanted suitors to demanding male bosses. Because heterosocial interaction is coded from narrator's perspective as intrusive, Doty labels these plot narratives "lesbian." Thus a queer reading of these shows reveals homosocial, if not homosexual, relationships as the important character and plot elements that are defended.

Then again, it is heterocentrism that defines queer as "homosexual behavior" in the first place, so why should queer studies accept that definition, when its intention is to undermine hetercentrism in the first place!

Jack Benny on the other hand, displays a central character whose behaviors are semiotically coded "feminine." He frets, bites his lip, has a lack of aggressive sexual desire for women, a loose, bouncy walk, and a high-pitched nervous giggle, to mention but a few things. The narrative display a central tendency to displace Benny from situations of power and influence--not the least of which was Benny's self-deprecating humor. Doty reminds us that Benny's biographies are full of his contemporaries remarking on his feminine characteristics. In this case, a queer reading is produced by taking an ostensibly "straight" man and imbuing him thoroughly with clearly "female" characteristics, all of which adds up to a queer character, never fitting in with compulsory heterosexual and masculine traits.

These are just two examples of how queer readings are produced in Doty's work. All in all, he aims to show that it is queerness, not straightness, that lies at the center of mass cultural production. Thus he argues for the overturning of heterocentricity as the dominant way of reading culture. A tall claim, no doubt, but one that is tantalizing nonetheless.

It is undeniable the contribution Mr. Andersen made to the modern development of Minnesota, both as a business person and a public servant. This book is inspirational on a local level, and demonstrates how one person, with the right attitude, can accomplish so much in a lifetime.

If nothing else, read this for an inside glimpse of Minnesota's history and the development of our state as it exists today.

This collection of occasional pieces from the nineteen-nineties can seem slight and derivative by comparison to Agamben's major works of the same decade, coming on the heels of Homo sacer, The Coming Community, The Man Without Content, and The Remaining Time. Means without ends is supercilious about dance, and shows unexpected pietism in the hope for rights "Beyond Human Rights": how meaningful are rights without the conjunction of law and enforcement, i.e. something resembling the state? And there's a puzzling reference to "Beckett's Traum und Nacht" (p. 55). But Means without ends also contains some pearls close to the persistent heart of Giorgio Agamben's uniquely disquieting train of thought: how is it possible to think politics today, in the wake of the Holocaust on the one hand, imposing the heritage of extermination camps that incorporate the state of exception as the essential model of state sovereignty? Agamben's bracing paradoxicalization of politics remains incisively challenging in the "Marginal Notes" on Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle, in the dialogue on "The Face" (whose unidentified interlocutor is presumably Emmanuel Levinas), and in the deeply personal reflections on contemporary politics, especially in Italy. Curiously, the initial words of a passage repeated word-for-word on pages 81 & 95 suggests the absent totalization, and perhaps the subtitle of a major new Agamben in the offing: "an integrated Marxian analysis..."

This is admittedly only the second Isherwood novel I have read...and the first half sets up what I thought was going to be a really good finish...but I was a bit disappointed.

Regarding the various relationships of several members of a family, and a few outsiders, there is really one one thread that comes through as a focal point or 'main' story, and that is of the relationship between the character of 'Eric' and his cousin 'Maurice', as well as the involvement of Maurice and Edward, an older man in the habit of making life more cushy for Maurice, much to Eric's disdain.

Citing moral corruption and the decline of character of his cousin, Eric strives to barr Edward from continuing his support of Maurice with an appeal to the man's better judgement.

Again, this book has a lot of potential, but it just didn't move me the way The World in the Evening did. I give it four stars for Isherwood's writing style, but cannot give an additional mark for content.