Minnesota Books

Thomas Shevory (Professor of Politics, Ithaca College) presents Toxic Burn: The Grassroots Struggle Against the WTI Incinerator, the environmental true story of East Liverpool, Ohio, which has suffered from a massive hazardous waste incinerator located in the eastern Ohio River Valley since 1993. The incinerator burns 60,000 tons of hazardous waste each year, has encountered dozens of accidents, and is only 100 yards away from an elementary school. Toxic Burn tells of the grass-roots movement against the incinerator. Interviews with key members of the movement, copies of official documents, and more spell out how the incinerator came to be, and the obstacles and victories that the counter-movement faced. An in-depth case study of how ordinary people are a necessary counterbalance to the power of corporations, and how new environmental models devoted to protecting the life and health of those at greatest risk is desperately needed.

The great American writer Hemingway wrote about the "lost generation" the fellows who came back from WWI and wanted more than the nine to five grind. Enter Charles Ira Cook who headed north to Minnesota to get the wilds out of his system on the advice of his father. Charles goes up with a friend who soon enough pines for the city life and goes back. Picking up a local man for a new partner Charles is off again in a highly descriptive book that reads fast and is so enjoyable. I loved the part when Charles and his partner Bill listen in the dark as a weasel chases a mouse around the cabin rafters. The story also shows what to look out for when a weasel doesn't have anymore mice to chase. Charles plunges into these woods with an open heart and his deep love of them. The locals are sometimes over taken by his lust for life as he traps,fishes and describes everything he see's - like a pet beaver that can sit at the supper table and drink from a cup. I only wish he would have wandered futher east into Canada and bumped into Jim Vanderbeck the real life person in Stephen W Meader's book Trap Lines North one I read every year. This is a book I will read again and it comes with a fold out map in the back. If you're after a good read and an adventure this is for you.

When discussing a particularly strange moment in Philip Roth's _Patrimony_ where a Holocaust survivor's memoirs turn out to be an account of his sexual exploits, Michael Rothberg points out that "there might be something pornographic about making images and ultimately commodities out of the Holocaust. It is as if the fundamental obscenity of the events themselves cannot be represented without a _pornographic_ contamination of the person doing the representing." Throughout his study of Holocaust representations, Rothberg is painfully aware of this danger of contamination and commodification at the same time as he himself, of course, has become part of this ever-increasing discourse on the Holocaust. What saves him and his book is not only an awareness of the dangers and his consequent self-consciousness but also the very method and theoretical apparatus that underlie his study.

As the title _Traumatic Realism_ indicates, Rothberg strives to think simultaneously the two opposing tenets of Holocaust representation: on the one hand, we find an obsessive demand for realism in the form of verifiable truths, facts, and details; on the other hand, the utter extremity of the Holocaust seems to have removed it from our field of experience, thus foreclosing any ability to represent it realistically and as continuous with our reality. This focus on the extraordinary results in representations that fetishize the impossibility to comprehend the Holocaust by stressing its traumatic aspects only.

Rather than trying to decide on one approach or the other as the "right" one, Rothberg succeeds in showing how both modes are compelling and necessary at the same time as neither one can be sufficient or comprehensive. Nor does he attempt to find a common ground between the two by creating a happy union but instead emphasizes the radical antinomy the two constitute. In all the various texts he discusses--philosophical, literary, and cultural--Rothberg exposes the tension between the two approaches within the texts themselves, i.e., he shows us how the representations already have this dichotomy built in.

One particularly compelling example is his discussion of Charlotte Delbo's trilogy _Auschwitz and After_, a powerful account that coincidentally is used as exemplary by two very opposing theorists, Lawrence Langer and Tzvetan Todorov. Using Delbo's moving testimony, Rothberg shows how both Todorov's emphasis on the normal and everyday as well as Langer's attempt to establish the concentrationary universe as utterly exceptional and extra-moral are insufficient. In other words, his discussion reveals the need to simultaneously think the opposition, an approach warranted by both the structure and contents of many survivor testimonies that perform the juxtaposition of the normal and the unthinkable at the same time as they describe the absurd contradictions and oppositions of camp life.

Moving easily between a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches, Rothberg discusses Holocaust representations as varied as Ruth Klüger's highly self-conscious eyewitness testimony, Art Spiegelman's comic book _Maus_, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. One thing all his selections have in common, however, is the tension between the traumatic, nonrepresentable scar left by the concentrationary universe and the need and desire to account for the camp world in all its parts.

_Traumatic Realism_ is a well-written book that revisits familiar sites like _Maus_ and _Schindler's List_ with new and insightful readings at the same time as it introduces some lesser-known texts like Delbo's and Klüger's. What distinguishes his book, however, is the clear thesis that drives all his readings, and it is this thesis that has an impact beyond the scope of the particular texts discussed. Bridging the traditional gap between postmodern and poststructural theory and historiographic approaches to the Holocaust, Rothberg shows himself an expert in both as he lets the two encounter one another and communicate over some of the less traditional texts of the literary canon of the Holocaust.

Personally, I found the book exciting and stimulating, both in its command of theory and the ease with which Rothberg integrates it as well as for his close readings and particular interpretations. I would recommend this book to any student of Holocaust literature and anyone interest in the issues of representation in the postmodern age.

My relationship with illness has been one of familiarity and knowledge, debate and desperate effort for control. My mother died of cancer, despite living long past the feeble deadlines the "experts" gave her. My father died after a series of faulty surgeries, which were said to be "routine." Combined with a life in a body fraught with gynecological complications, my relationship to illness, medicine, physicians and treatment has been cynical at best. Confessions and narratives like mine, Diedrich argues, are worthy of examination, and she takes on a number of published biographical tellings of life with illness as a means of unpacking how we construct illness itself. Entering the field at a moment where confession is on the rise and public profession of personal issues is predominant in nearly every outlet, this work values confession and narrative in a way in which the act itself, when combined with modern medical practices, is transformative.

Diedrich's success lies in her clearly articulated and enacted process of interdisciplinary effort to read both the body and the narrative as actively working together under the ideological regime of modern medicine. Reading through Foucault and the question of the material, disciplined body, as well as taking on serious critique of a recent rise of cultural confession in both the world around us and in literature in particular, Diedrich successfully finds a narrow, specific path upon which to walk her analysis. Her findings reveal that not only does medicine itself "live in symbiosis" (one of the phrases a practitioner uses to describe a woman and her cancer) with a patriarchal regime, but it, as is easy to surmise, objectifies women and their bodies. She chooses to move through popular narratives on cancer, AIDS and Tuberculosis to demonstrate how and where the construction of illness happens.

What her analysis gives us, then, is a new means of agency within the system found when she dissects how the narrative and personal relationship with treatment and illness works to shape and redefine both the illness and its practice. Such redefined territory also allows for a space for physicians to interact and relate to patients and families in new ways. Diedrich's work is not only valuable and an earnest addition to feminist theory, it is an excellent display of contemporary post-structuralist and psychoanalytic theory at play.

Since we live in the South, but are building a cabin in Northern Wisconsin, we were at a loss for landscape ideas. General gardening books and catalogs do not specify a broad range of trees and shrubs to successfully grow in this climate. Rather than giving the reader generalized information about a specimen, this author provides detailed facts about the necessary soil, water, sunshine, and other care. Included are types of problems including temperature, susceptibility for diseases, insects, fungi, and any other difficulties the specimen may attract. In addition, ideas for placement and the positive aspects of each item are detailed. The pictures and clear prose make this a must for even the practiced gardener.

Andrea Liss is a professor of mine and I have to say that this book is excellent!!!! She has an amazing way of making the reader really think about this subject in a whole new way. It is VERY moving to go through the pages, reading true stories. I HIGHLY recommend this title to anyone interested in the Holocaust.

I am listed as a co-author of this book. I helped with the study of the Minnesota Legislature that engendered this book. The study took place from 1984-1986, and was commissioned by the Minnesota Legislature.

The study was a rich and layered look at the Minnesota Legislature, and at how state legislatures have changed over time. If there is an animating finding in this book, it is a working hypothesis that state government has grown complex, and that therefore state legislatures need to professionalize.

This belief gives rise to a call for higher pay for legislators, for annual budgeting periods, and for unicameralism. Many of these reform suggestions are animated by a concern for the increasing empowerment of the executive branch, at the expense of legislative powers and governance.

Twenty years later, the book is still quite good. Some details need to be brushed up, yet the sections of the book charting the changes from the non-partisan legislatures of the middle twentieth century to the more partisan era today are decent and have held the test of time.

I admit to a bias in favor of this book, which I helped research and in a very small sense write. It would not be of interest to any who is not a lover of state legislatures, or of the Minnesota legislature, or both.

Every now and then you find a book, you read it,
and it truly changes you. Such a book is Anthony
Bukoski's collection of stories, Twelve Below
Zero. The strange characters living in its pages
touch the reader and stick in the memory: Augie
Benner, who smelled so bad the local townspeople
made him wear a bell so they knew he was coming;
Luanna, receiving the last sacraments and lament-
ing her sins; Syl Magda lying in her bed in the
cold, dying. The settings of the stories also
remain in your mind long afterward: the spit and
herring scales on the floor of the End-of-the-Line
Cafe; Harry's pulley and basket mail delivery in-
vention at the Armitage Hotel; the incredible
cold outside the House of the Blue Rondo near
Lake Superior.

Bukoski has an amazing gift for storytelling and
his stories move, delight and disturb the reader.
Some, such as "Great Sea Battles" and "The Kissing
Booth," are howlingly humorous, whereas others,
"Ice Days" and Twelve BElow Zero" come to mind,
carry with them a sense of local, yet universal
tragedy. Many of the stories are set among the
cold lonliness of northern Wisconsin's winter;
Bukoski was born and raised and now teaches and
writes there. If you want an unusual treat,
something which will remain with you long after
you put the book down, something refreshing and
unique and mysteriously wonderful, find a copy
of Anthony Bukoski's Twelve Below Zero.

A varied yet cohesive set of short stories that capture the heart of St. Paul, MN. A small yet very urban city. Check out "Chicken" - a quirky, endearing tale.

As a Minnesotan, the loss of Paul and Sheila Wellstone, along with their friends and staff, last October was one of the worst days in my life.

I had followed Wellstone's senate career with admiration and his passion brought out the passion for helping people in me. For a couple days after his death, I thought that the passion was gone for good. Once my immediate grief had ended, I was able to realize that whatever Wellstone had given me, was still there.

This book captures the energy and passion of Wellstone's twelve years in the U.S. Senate. It also shows the sadness and heartbreak of the thirteen days between his death and the 2002 elections.

Highly Recommended!!