Minnesota Books

For every good and fair minded person to read. It really opened my eyes.

I am disappointed in this book. I expected something more philosophical and/or well written. I admire Wellstone's work as a politician but find his writing rather mediocre. American history and politics are my meat and bread. This book does not meet my standards. I usually buy books since I'm a bookaholic, but i wish I had borrowed this from the library. It does not meet my standards.

I was a great admirer of Paul Wellstone ever since the fall of 1990. Although I have lived in Minnesota since 2001, in 1990 I was a college sophomore in another state who was writing a paper studying the 1990 elections. I follwed the 1990 Minnesota Senate race, and was pleasantly surprised when he went against the predominate "conventional wisdom" and scored an upset victory (he was the ONLY Democrat to defeat an incumbent that year).
For someone like me, who has been quite frankly sick and tired of the right-ward drift of the Democratic Party and the "play it safe" convetnional wisdom, Paul Wellstone was the antidote.
I enjoyed the autobiographical narrative of this book, it brought back a lot of memories. I enjoyed his frank discussion of the inner working of the US Senate, and I especially enjoyed the later chapters where he offered hope for a people-centered, progressive politics.

This is the type of feel good no meat and potatos thinking that permiates the liberal left. An agenda designed to fail from start to finish because the author refuses to accept the reality that regardless of what you do money does not solve problems, accountability does.

Great book that begins where he was in college and how he and his wife met and how they became the activists they were and what a real progressive is or at least should be. And that being a liberal is nothing to be ashamed of! Sadly the Senator died in 2002 just before he would have been reelected to the Senate. Some of us still believe it wasn't the innocent accident some say that killed him when the plane he was on went down.

Having said that let me rave about this book. I go to Chapter 9 titled A Winning Progressive Politics, where the author notes 'A progressive politics is a winning politics, as long as it is not organized in a way that is top-down and elitist. It must respect the capacity of ordinary citizens and focus on workaday majority issues. I have never understood arguments for the need for politicians to 'move to the center' to get elected. What is the operational definition of 'the center'? If what is meant is that you need to have more votes than your opponent, then I am all for being in the center. But this is too obvious. If what is meant by the center is the dominant mood of the populace -- the issues that are important issues to Americans and what they hope for--then I would again argue for the need to occupy the center. A politics that is not sensitive to the concerns and circumstance of peoples lives, a politics that does not speak to include people is an intellectually arrogant politics that deserves to fail.'

Page 206 of the same chapter 'Clearly, there is a forgotten American majority. It is precisely this America that our politics today fails to serve fully and fairly. This America faces major challenges: low wages, insufficient health care, nonexistent pension coverage (the majority if private sector workers have no pension coverage), daunting child care expenses, rising college expenses, and exorbitant housing costs. These Americans can't hire lobbyists. They can't fly senators and congressmen to resorts. They don't fill the campaign coffers of political candidates. Only when these Americans are given proportional voice in politics can we claim to live in a truly representative democracy.'

Page 208 'Not only do Democrats have too timid and downsized an agenda, we also have failed to confront conservatives on core value questions. I call the Republicans' philosophy the 'New Isolationism.' Not as in foreign affairs, but in human affairs. It is a 'Buddy, your're on your own' philosophy. If you are losing your family farm, if you can't afford prescription drugs, if you have no health insurance, if you are working forty hours a week but are still poor and unable to support your children, if you are a homeless Vietnam veteran struggling with mental problems, you're on your own. Whatever happened to 'There but for the grace if God go I'? Or 'Love they neighbor as thyself'? We need to replace isolationism with fellowship. We need to talk about community, about justice, about the goodness of America. People are ready for a politics that inspires them to be their best'.

Thus this book is rich with common sense honesty that I want more Democrats to read and follow, rather than the disoriented, weak kneed, stand for NOTHING nonsense the Democrats are giving us now. This book should be a must read for anyone who dislikes with a passion the special interest, elitist administration, congress and senate we now have.

This novel is a great addition to the three previous 'Monkeewrench' novels featuring Leo Magozzi and Grace MacBride. The beginning of the novel features two young women with a dead body: "Kill a man, bury him -- that was all all that was on their list today." (3) The scene abruptly shifts to Minneapolis in the middle of a snowstorm, with the discovery by Magozzi and his partner, Gino, of two dead men encased in snowmen. How these two events are connected makes a great mystery, and also raises some provocative questions on the nature of justice versus the law. Most of the 'regulars' from previous novels make an appearance (although the major flaw in the novel is not enough of the Monkeewrench crew), and a new character (worth revisiting), brand new Sheriff Iris Rikker (former English teacher with no real crime experience), who discovers a third snowman victim and leads Leo and Gino to connect the dots on what's really going on. As with the previous works in this series, a great mix of humor, suspense, and hints of romance (though not enough this time around!). Definitely worth reading.

This has to be one of the best mystery books I have ever read. The twist and turns will keep you turning the pages late into the night. This mother/daughter team knows how to keep you reading. I couldn't read the book fast enough. And when you think you figured it out, you haven't.

My mothers husband's name is used in the book, Kurt Weinbeck. He is a huge fan of P.J. Tracy and she likes to use her fan's names.

PJ Tracy is the pseudonym of a mother-daughter writing duo P.J. and Traci Lambrecht, (I am not too sure how this works?). Their first three novels, Monkeewrench, Live Bait and Dead Run, have become national and international bestsellers. They have also become best selling author's in the UK.

The book certainly has an unusual twist to it and I found it entertaining reading. It is the kind of book that does not make you have to think too much if you know what I mean and sometimes that is a good thing. You can just sit and relax and enjoy the book without any distractions.

Begins in Minneapolis during a hard spell of winter, residents often joke that it is the season that lasts for eleven months of the year. Someone has the bright idea of brightening up the dreary season by sponsoring a snowman building contest and in a matter of hours the local park is ringing with the laughter of children building their creations.

It is not until a while later that a macabre secret is unveiled. The bodies of two Minneapolis police officers are found within two of the snowmen. This puts the Minneapolis police department on red alert. The following day yet another officer is found dead. This encourages the Monkeewrench team of crack computer buffs to become involved in trawling the net for clues and eventually a terrifying link emerges connecting the dead cops . . .

I have used the words "brave and radical"in my title for this review and there is a reason for this.Most crime novels provide their readers with a sense of closure by setting up a situation in which a crime is perpetrated ,investigated and solved .The culprits are identified and brough to justive and order is restored to the moral universe of the book .Crime novels are thus deeply Conservative ,at least for the most part.
Here there is no such sense of closure or the restoration of order.We are never wholly sure who the killers are -we are left to make our own minds up -and justice is not meted out to the potential perpetrators.This is a book of moral ambiguity and even handedness

It seens the return of the Minneapolis cops familiar to readers of earlier P J Tracy books ,Rizzoli and Rolseth .The crew of the computer company Monkeewrench ,while present as before,take a back seat this time out and the result is a book more like a police proceduraal than are earlier works .Events are set in motion with the discovery ,in a frozen Minneaplois park of two bodies ,hidden in snowmen .They are the remains of two local cops ,Tommy Deaton and Toby Myerson
Soon thereafter another body hidden inside a snowman turns up ,this time in upstate Minnesota .There is no mystery here about the killer ,the body being that of a parole officer ,and he has ben killed by a parolee ,a vicious killer named Weinbeck who is seeking the whereabouts of his wife ,who he abused repeatedly when free .
This case is dumped in the lap of a newly elected female sheriiff of the county ,Rikker ,a woman who feels out of her depth -mainly becuase she is .
Events turn on Bitterroot , a community of women ,in the wilds of the state ,that was established a haven for abused women ,a community whose founders ,we learn ,had killed in the past .It turns out that one of the murdered cops was also a spousal abuser and his ex-cop father in law is a suspect in the case .
The crimes may be the work of the father in law;they may have been carried out by women from Bitterrrot ,some of whom beleieve the world should be ourged of abusers by any means possible
The lack of clear resolution will frustrate and annoy many readers but for me it adds to the appeal of a well written and even handed book that raises real issues in an adult ,responsible and mature way .It may lavk the sheer tension of earlier wirks by this writing team but it is a more mature and ambiguous work ,with a very good line in desriptive writing of climate and terrain

Interesting story; good description of Swedish society in the era, but the story downright plods during the ship passage to America. Would have been better if Moberg had made that relatively boring passage shorter and moved on past the landing in this part of the series. He spends a lot of pages describing the hopes and fears of each of the emigrants in the group; too much, in my opinion. This 1st novel in the series did not inspire me to get the rest and continue reading the entire story.

This is an epic work by its Swedish author. Translated from Swedish into English, this beautifully written book of historical fiction was first published in the early nineteen fifties and met with rave reviews at the time. It is part of a four part opus, the first of which is "The Emigrants". It is followed by three additional books, "Unto a Good Land", "The Settlers", and "Last Letter From Home".

In this, the first volume, the author lays the ground work for the emigration of a Swedish family, grounding it in the reasons for the exodus of so many Swedes from their mother country in the middle of the 19th century. The focus of the book is on the family, relatives, and friends of Karl Oscar Nilsson, a peasant farmer who unceasingly worked his farm, only to find that, no matter what he did, he could not progress and would continue to live on the cusp of total poverty. Gathering up his family and friends of the family, he decides to take the monumental step of making a fresh start by emigrating to the new world, specifically the United States of America.

The book focuses on the set backs the Nilsson family encounters in Sweden, as it is their travails that act as the catalyst for such journey. The book grounds the reader in the Swedish social and religious mores of the time, and the impact that such would have on this particular group of people. The author enables the reader to understand why some would risk all to begin life anew in an unknown part of the world.

This book is the story of the first leg of their journey, which takes the reader through the nature of their lives in Sweden, the decision to make such a journey, and their sea voyage to the new world. I enjoyed the first volume so much that I look forward to continuing that journey with them by reading the remaining three volumes.

I received this book as a gift from our Swedish exchange student's parents. It was wonderful! Finished it in a day and am now after the other three.

While it may or may not totally accurately portray Sweden, it is historical FICTION and most of it tracks with what I know of European history in general. Of course I cannot read it in the original Swedish, but the translated version does flow well.

Now I can't wait to find out what happens to Karl Oskar and his family!

This book describes the Swedish emmigration to the US in the mid 1800's when one quarter of the Swedish population left for the US. One quarter! This book will give you insight into the myriad of reasons and the myriad of personality types that made the arduous and life threatening journey. If you've ever thought of the Swedish as all being the same, don't. If you've ever thought that sweet little Sweden couldn't have social problems, don't.

This book is appropriate to the current spirited discussion of illegal Mexican immigration into the US. It is a good way to understand a big event in Swedish history as well as something about the causes of human migrations. On top of that the book is sad -- a Grapes of Wrath sort of sad.....


BTW, I gave this book 4 stars but in general I give fewer stars that the average reviewer.....I'm a harhser critic.

I was born in Sweden and grew up in France (Swedish mom, French dad). I now live in the US and finally decided to read this book. I am currently starting the 3rd one and can not get my hand of it.

The Emigrants is an amazing piece of art, a book with so many themes, characters and information! The book is at times very grim, but also shows some strong optimism regarding condition improvement.

I would recommend this book to everybody with a Swedish background, but also anybody whose ancestors immigrated to America during the 19th century, and more generally anybody interested in the subject and looking for a great read. You'll get so attached to the Nilsson family you won't be able to stop reading.

The words are beautiful but be prepared for your heart to stop! If you are a woman who has loved another woman and it comes as a surprise and it unravels you before you find your way, read this book. I just read the last page. The ending is good, although it takes you to the gate but does not walk you through it (you must imagine what it would be beyond the gate). I would have preferred Mary Sharratt to keep imagining for me. It is to much to go through for such an ending. I can't trust my heart to Mary Sharratt again, just yet, anyway.

The very title of this work, SUMMIT AVENUE, makes one think of tree shaded streets, in prim mid-western towns at the turn of the century -- American's so-called "Golden Age". Yet Mary Sharratt weaves a tale that is as timeless and as far reaching as any being written today. Perhaps even more.

The intimate level of detail -- my favorite scene is Kathrin's first day at the mill -- belies a smoothly written storyline, a depth of character rarely found in first novels. This is the sort of book that will speak to you, no matter what your own bounderies may be. Read this book. You will not be disappointed.

This is one of the most moving love stories I've read in years. I think the characters, regardless of the historical setting, are universal and the story moves you regardless of how you define yourself in terms of sexuality. The book reaches beyond cliches. It made me cry. I hope there will be a sequel.

This poetic novel is not only moving, but is intelligent and measured. The author is attuned to the pressures compelling her characters and to the sources of their longing. Sharratt has written a beautiful tale of the power of language to create stories that inhabit and transfigure our lives. There is much to be admired in this book. I recommend this book to anyone who reads in order to approach a deeper understanding of the conflicting experiences that enrich and complicate our lives. The book shimmers with a subtle clarity rare even to the realm of literature. A miracle of a book. Her weaving of the fairy tales into her narrative was magical and seamless.

From the first striking page ("How can you weave a life from fairy tales?") to the very last ("And you, like Persephone, will return") Mary Sharratt has created a book that is at once a work of art and an unexpected story of love and loss. You can read this book for the beauty of the words alone, but it offers much more -- real characters who reached out to grab me and a plot that pulled me forward almost against my will. I had no time to read the day I picked up Mary Sharratt's book. I planned to just read the first chapter. But once started, I found I couldn't put it down until I came to the end. Here's a piece of it: "Some people say your soul can leave your body, and not just when you die, but during life. Some people have special powers. They lie in bed perfectly still, their eyes closed, and you think they are sleeping. But they are flying. They can fly like witches in fairy tales. They can fly like wild geese. It's their souls that are flying. At that moment, part of me flew away, leaving that miserable girl behind, that creature bent double over the porch rail, weeping as if she had just lost her mother, that girl throwing up, polluting the fresh snow. I cut myself off from her. I was flying free. A dove bursting through a glass pane. Bursting through pain. The shattering, the shards and splinters. I flew through it all. Flew up through the dark snowy air to a warmer place. Full of light."

This strongly sensuous tale is full of striking images, and I look forward to Sharratt's next one.

A fun, easy-to-read look at life in Minnesota and how to get along when visiting or moving there. It does leave one questioning the accuracy of all the author has written as most of seems more "tongue in cheek" than real. So, if you are looking for some chuckles reading about the idiosyncrasies of living, traveling, visiting, and dining in Minnesota, this is a good start; but, don't consider it a genuine travel guide.

This will make most people laugh at least a little at some of the ridiculous truths about folks from Minnisota.
Being from the north and somewhat west (Rochester NY) I know people just like the ones this audio describes and can relate to how they act and how they interact with one another. Like the advice one guy gives to another vs. the advice one guy gives to a gal. Check out the "If a guy..." sketch its hilarious. Or the description of "A little lunch" neither little nor at lunch. Usually served with a "hot dish" which typically requires mixing in a can of mushroom soup.
After hearing this I'm ready to venture into the wilds of Minnisota.

I literally laughed out loud, constantly. I have relatives in Minnesota and Wisconsin, whom I visit often, which probably helps. I could just picture and hear the descriptions and dialogue. This book is perfect for the coffee table in our cabin "Up Nort".

This book is a classic! My husband is from a rural midwestern town and the section on waving etiquette is so true.

Hot dishes, walleyes, how to wave, pancake feeds, and appropriate Minnesotan grammar, it's all there even though my relatives in Minnesota would beg to differ. "So, what gave you the idea that we talk like that then." How to Talk Minnesotan is one of those type deals you can pick up, open to any page and have a good laugh while feeling as though you're right there in Bemidji. Yeah, good deal. You could do worse.

The research and flow of the book is good, but there's too much quotation from the primary sources. It's great to see the perspective of the regiment's men, but the use is excessive. This has a tendency to make the book a bit tedious at times. More analysis from the author would have been helpful. Nontheless, a noble effort to tell an important story.

Devotion to history isn't as strong in the Upper Midwest as in the Old South. Perhaps oblivion is nobler and less risky than living out a myth, but there are few if any "re-enactors" among my Swedish kinfolk in the Land of Lakes. Of course, the earliest settlers in my clan came to Minnesota in 1872. The Minnesota First Volunteer Regiment, nevertheless, has a good claim on being the most heroic single regiment on either side in the whole war, and Mr Moe documents the history of their heroism most eloquently.
Another review complains that Moe use too many quotes, to much primary source material. I totally disagree. The use of letters, journals, and bits from local newspapers is the strength of this book, the part that carries both conviction and immediacy. Comparison to the Ken Burns TV documentary is apt, and I feel that this book, The Last Full Measure, is stronger both in impact and in scholarship.
We're modest, diffident people, we Minnesotans. You won't find many statues of soldiers in our town squares. Truth is, we don't have so many town squares to show them off in. Kids plow through elementary school in Minnesota thinking of the Civil War as a faraway conflict hardly more intimate to us than the Boer War. I remember being surprised, in college, to learn that there'd been a Souix War in my birth-county, in the 1860s. History was what happened in other places. I wonder... Is our blissful ignorance a handicap or the source of our comparatively lawful and peaceful community? Our grudges stay at home.
Anyhow, as we say in Freeborn County, this here tale of young men fighting for what they care about makes pretty good reading.

For Minnesota's Sesquicentennial on March 11, 2008, the Minnesota History Center created the acclaimed MN150 exhibit of 150 people, places and things that shaped Minnesota, chosen from over 2,700 citizen nominations received over several months. They put much time and money into developing the exhibit. It opened at the History Center in October of 2007 and will be open for probably five years. (Check out the MN150 website for more interesting reading.)

I nominated the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment with a brief essay I wrote, inspired by reading the Pulitzer Prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States) by James McPherson and my own casual research as a history buff. (I did not yet know about this excellent book.) My nomination won, and the First Minnesota is included in the exhibit of 150 most important people, places and things in Minnesota history. Their story is amazing.

A brief essay cannot do justice to the First Minnesota, because their accomplishments span several years, but here is my winning essay:

The First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment was the first in the nation to answer President Abraham Lincoln's call for troops in 1861, and they courageously served with great distinction. The 262 men of the First Minnesota played a heroic but tragic role at the Battle of Gettysburg. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, James McPherson wrote, "The 20th Maine and the 1st Minnesota achieved lasting fame by throwing back Confederate attacks that came dangerously close to breakthroughs. . . . The Minnesotans did the job, but only 47 of them came back."

The day was July 2, 1863. More than 160,000 Union (North against slavery) and Confederate (South favoring slavery) soldiers converged at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Confederate forces had achieved a series of victories and may have advanced to Washington, D.C., if they won this battle.

The men of the First Minnesota were positioned near Union artillery batteries on Cemetery Ridge. "We began to hear musketry which soon became one continuous roar. . . . Then shells fell uncomfortably near us," wrote Sergeant Alfred Carpenter in a letter on file with the Minnesota Historical Society. Then disaster struck.

Confederate Rebels infiltrated the Union line. "The Rebs came in two splendid lines, firing as they advanced, capturing one of our batteries, which they turned against us, and gained the cover of the ravine," Carpenter wrote. "The plain was strewed with dead and dying men."

Union general Winfield Scott Hancock desperately ordered the 262 men of the First Minnesota to charge the 1,600 advancing Alabama Rebels. Carpenter recalled, "We advanced down the slope. . . . Comrade after comrade dropped from the ranks; but the line went. No one took a second look at his fallen companion. We had no time to weep."

The next day, 15,000 Confederates charged Cemetery Ridge--the legendary Pickett's Charge--but were repelled by a devastating artillery barrage. Because the Minnesotans had saved the artillery the day before, the Rebels were repelled--but at a great sacrifice. 82 percent of the First Minnesota men were killed or wounded at Gettysburg--the highest casualty rate of the war.

On July 4, Lieutenant William Lochren wrote a letter to his hometown Winona Republican newspaper. "We are in the midst of a terrible battle," he wrote. "Two thirds of the regiment are killed or wounded. We got the better of the enemy in the fight, and our regiment captured one stand of colors."

The Union and Confederacy suffered 45,000 casualties at Gettysburg. Over 620,000 soldiers died in the Civil War. On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln honored the great sacrifices made and gave meaning to the war in his Gettysburg Address:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. . . . From these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. . . ."

And so we did. Some historians call the Civil War "the Second American Revolution." Following the Union victory, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments were ratified, transforming the Constitution and America.

The importance that Minnesotans attributed to the Civil War can be seen in the numerous great paintings of the Civil War at the Minnesota State Capitol, including Rufus F. Zogbaum's Battle of Gettysburg. The Civil War deeply shaped the new state of Minnesota, and the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment played a pivotal role.

While the gallant charge of the 1st Minnesota on July 2, which saved the Union cause was well known to me, the rest of the illustrious history of the first volunteer Union regiment, from First Manassas to The Wilderness, was not.
To read the homely accounts of these citizen soldiers helps you to understand how the Army of the Potomac, despite a succession of inept commanders, ultimately prevailed.
A must for serious Civil War buffs.

Few Union Civil War regiments did more for the Union cause then the First Minnesota. The case could even be made, on a man by man basis, that the sacrifices these men made, culminating in the enormous losses the regiment suffered at Gettysburg, exceeded that of any other unit on the Union side. Yet for many years this gallant regiment was relatively unknown, at least until this excellent regimental history was published. Minnesota native Richard Moe does justice to this great unit by portraying the men just as they were--brave, stalwart, yet human underneath it all. The tenacity these men showed in battle is evident from the first time they saw real combat against the Stonewall brigade at First Manasses, and is demonstrated over and over throughout Moe's work.

One of the great challenges in writing combat history lies in doing justice to the battle narrative without coming across as over-dramatic in the telling. Moe does an excellent job of relating the combat experiences of the First Minnesota, with his telling of the First's participation in the battle of Gettysburg being very moving and some of the best combat narrative I believe I've ever read. In those few pages alone Moe accomplishes his objective--to make the reader appreciate the part these great men played in the war--and even without the rest of the book I believe his point would be made.

This is a regimental history, of course, so the focus is on the First Minnesota rather than the actions of the Army of the Potomac in general. There are parts of the narrative, such as when the regiment is guarding Harper's Ferry, when relatively little happens, yet such is the nature of a unit history such as this one. I think a full appreciation of this book requires some knowledge of the first three years of the Civil War, but Moe provides enough detail that one could probably get a general idea of what was going on elsewhere in the war even without it.

This is the first book I've read from Jon Hassler. I 'stumbled' upon him quite accidentally, admit I had never heard of him, but plan to read more of his works. He keeps my interest, with nearly every line fascinating in itself. I truly enjoy his writing and I recommend him to others.

I was assigned this book in high school 15 years ago, and enjoy reading it every year. I grew up in a small Minnesota town much like Staggerford, which I feel does help the reader to identify with all the characters in the book. The main character is Miles Pruitt, a single man in his late 30's who rents a room from the spinster school teacher in town. Miles grew up in Staggerford and returned after college to teach English at the high school. The story takes place over one week in Miles's life. The charcters are intertaining and memorable. Jon Hasslers writing style is nice and easy with a repetitive edge to it which can help the reader with a somewhat seemingly boring story. The end is a real shocker that leaves me wanting it not to be true every time I read it. I really enjoy Mr. Hassler's story telling.

After reading Jon Hassler's Grand Opening, I decided to give another one of his novels a try. This time I chose his first novel, Staggerford. Despite preferring the 1940's setting of Grand Opening, I loved Staggerford much, much more. The novel centers around Miles Pruitt, a thirty-five year-old high school teacher in the small town of Staggerford, MN.
I absolutely fell in love with the character of Miles, which is why I was so distraught at the ending of the novel. Now that I've started A Green Journey, the sequel to Staggerford, I am preparing myself for more heartbreak towards the end of the book. The characters and events are so real in Jon Hassler's works that I have a hard time not becoming emotionally attached in some very odd sense. I have respected the work of many authors, but none have ever captivated me quite so much as Jon Hassler.

I started reading the book because a friend told me that I was similar to the character Miles in the book. This book had been assigned for a college English class. I found it difficult to put down the book once I started reading it.

The book is about the lives of people living in a small town in Minnesota. The main character of the book, Miles, is a teacher and also a person who seems to have wisdom. The story also seems to have an underlying theme about the hero's journey (as it relates to Joseph Campbell's hero myth.) Therefore, you can get a lot more out of this book if you look deeper.

I liked the book because the characters seem to live in me long after I had finished reading it. It is also inspiring because it gives me a fresh persepective about life.

I first read this novel some years ago and became a Hassler fan before finishing it. In many ways I think it's one of his strongest books. The characters are engaging and the town believeable. "Staggerford," "Grand Opening" (also by Hassler), and "Passing through Paradise" by Schreiber make a great trio of Minnesota novels.

To those who attack this for not being philosophy, fair enough, it may not be philosophy. I quote now from Shelley's Defence of Poetry:

"In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet, because language itself is poetry; and to be a poet is to apprehend the true and the beautiful, in a word, the good which exists in the relation, subsisting, first between existence and perception, and secondly between perception and expression. Every original language near to its source is in itself the chaos of a cyclic poem: the copiousness of lexicography and the distinctions of grammar are the works of a later age, and are merely the catalogue and the form of the creations of poetry.
But poets, or those who imagine and express this indestructible order, are not only the authors of language and of music, of the dance, and architecture, and statuary, and painting: they are the institutors of laws, and the founders of civil society, and the inventors of the arts of life, and the teachers, who draw into a certain propinquity with the beautiful and the true that partial apprehension of the agencies of the invisible world which is called religion. Hence all original religions are allegorical, or susceptible of allegory, and, like Janus, have a double face of false and true. Poets, according to the circumstances of the age and nation in which they appeared, were called, in the earlier epochs of the world, legislators, or prophets: a poet essentially comprises and unites both these characters. For he not only beholds intensely the present as it is, and discovers those laws according to which present things ought to be ordered, but he beholds the future in the present, and his thoughts are the germs of the flower and the fruit of latest time. Not that I assert poets to be prophets in the gross sense of the word, or that they can foretell the form as surely as they foreknow the spirit of events: such is the pretence of superstition, which would make poetry an attribute of prophecy, rather than prophecy an attribute of poetry. A poet participates in the eternal, the infinite, and the one; as far as relates to his conceptions, time and place and number are not."

Yes, this book may be delusional in its conclusions at times, it may make unfounded claims, it may lack philosophical rigor as it were but that does not mean it is not instructive or inspiring or a most productive use of one's time. Say we stop calling it philosophy; would you read it if we called it a poem, and called Deleuze and Guattari poets?

There's so much to appreciate in this book, touching as it does on every subject you can think of. You won't be able to understand everything but for me at least, I don't feel a lot of pressure to try and understand everything, but I'm fine with just reading on and every page or so, something will click and open a new way of looking at things. I'm not an expert in Deleuze and Guattari, and this is my first book by any philospher in what people lump into the category of 'Postmodern'. So I can't compare it with others, but my sense is I've chosen the right book to read, or at least, place to start.

Why? Because your critical theory seminar was probably oversimplifying, and you're missing out on a radical piece of performance in book form. Thousand Plateaus is not 400 pages about rhizomes or nomads. That's just the vocabulary. And, I disagree with some of the other reviews here. It's not a torture to read; it's just not talking down to you. It's put together like a large circular sentence. You start somewhere in middle, or maybe at the beginning or end, not sure. You have to play catchup at first, but you will get the hang of it.
If it sounds like the structure of certain recent films (say, by David Lynch, Robert Altman, Paul Thomas Anderson) or works of fiction (like by Samuel Delaney, Haruki Murakami, or Thomas Pynchon) or minimal techno, or most museum biennials these days, then good, it should. Thousand Plateaus help to establish a framework for all of those things.
The book tries to establish a system of political, psychological and semiotic descriptions, always as a mode of resistance to all kinds of fascism, and D & G take the conflation of those levels as a given. Not just in the world of theory but also in how you think, and that's why it's written in such a particularly dense way. It tries very hard to be nonoppressive, and generous too, but for lots of people it can be a frustrating adjustment, accustomed as we are to writing that tries to be as flat and simple as possible. This book reads the way it thinks, and these two definitely prefer finesse to simplicity. Once you get into it, you may find that it's the best thing you've read for as long as you can remember. Or, at least that it makes you think in ways you don't while reading other books.
Being brainy continentals, these guys make reference to a store of intellectual history you won't be able to relate to. They namedrop like MCs, and use a highly layered prose that refers to about a dozen things at once. It probably helps if you've heard of Hjelmslev, Bergson, Liebniz and the rest of the counter-canon of Western thought, but don't let it stop you if you haven't.
If you tackle this thick, thorny thing, here's some advice: Don't read this as an assignment, but approach it like a weird painting. Go slowly and enjoy the twists and turns. Read each section twice before proceeding to the next. Enjoy the poetry that D & G employ. Take notes. When you get to the end, go back and reread the first (and maybe second) section.

however, is philosophy not an art? perhaps this question is the most illuminating one with regard to this book. I described it to a friend as "shamanism meets psychoanalysis in a 19th century drawing room." Of course this description is inadequate but it made me laugh. The "rigor" of this book takes place in a different form, in a different plane, from analytic thought. Where one might oversimplify analytic philosophy and call it linear with its pretensions of precision; this sort of philosophy has depth and shading, it has contours; it seems as though the mind of God has gone fractal in this book. Of course it is not perfect, but all philosophy necessarily must fall short of the mark if we are so ambitious as to set the "mark" as "truth." Deleuze and Guattari understand the shortcomings of language as a conveyance of truth, of its inherent incomprehensibility; in reaction to this insight they have decided to have fun, to play within the field of reference and see what comes out. One of the more interesting treatises you will ever read, even if you don't finish. I suppose you could say it is the lunar to the solar pretensions of reason and logic.

For all its cleverness, the kind of dodgy, edgy, self-important prose that lures wannabe philosophers into its trap, this book is one incorrect premise after another, one humanocentric argument posing as "ecological" thought on top of another.

Deleuze and Guattari refer to "wolves" that are not wolves, "rhizomes" that have nothing to do with rhizomes. They favor the symbolic half of a metaphor over its physically realizable counterpart to the point at which a rhizome could be anything vaguely multiplicitous and knotty and branchy--at which point it ceases to be a rhizome and becomes what the quasi-philosopher loves: a product to be sold.

Ecology is a science, and not as soft a science as its made out to be by those who haven't lately picked up an ecology textbook or read the history of its development. There's far more fashion to "science studies" than rigor, and D & G fall right into the mode of conflating ecology with other disciplines and methods. Interdisciplinary is fine; undisiciplined isn't. Like Andrew Ross, D & G are dilettanti. They dabble and play and get clever and, in this case, use fundamental natural facts as exploitively as any lab tester, hunter, or junk scientist that science studies likes to indict.

In the chapter on Freud's Wolf-Man, D & G save us from one projected and hyperbolic interpretation of a dream to their own worse one. In correcting Freud for his misuse of both dreams and wolves, they essentialize the species, make assumptions about wolf behavior, and provide a vague replacement for Freud's symbolism of lesser value. Lesser because they fail both to recognize the fairy tale images behind Freud's analysis (the goat/wolf conflation, the tree symbol) and to cite source work backing their declarations about wolves, the real animals they invoke several times in the chapter. This is an abstraction of convenience, and while dabblers in environmentalism from the sidewalk-bound perspective of Theory and Cultural Studies might find it enticing, they should also find it about as corroborated as a high school research paper with a bibliography gleaned from a couple of hours on the internet.

Likewise the "rhizome" chapter, foundational to the book. D & G make ridiculous statements about rivers being "without beginning or ending" about the rhizome being "always intermezzo," and other hyperbolic claims that serve their purpose of using the nonhuman world to fulfill entirely humanocentric claims and spins. A river has a source and a mouth, and the concept of interconnectedness so cherished by those who would use ecology to justify any cobbled amalgam of thoughts they have can, as it does here a thousand times, turn to mere rationalization and exploitation.

An analytical philosopher would indeed find this book to be nonsense, but not because Deleuze and Guattari are pressing the philosophical envelope with new ideas. They cite themselves (!) several times--and not just in references to prior pages that follow a thread of the text. They employ transparently circular logic, arguments spun off of premises that are only premises because D & G repeat them. Fundamental logic and argumentation work--not because they're patriarchally dominating forms of rhetoric that keep us from seeing the world as it is, but because they come from the world as it is. The very structure of argumentation demands corroboration ultimately from the basic laws of nature.

My one star rating of this act of charlatanism isn't because the book is poorly written. It's because the book gives us all the tools we need for an irresponsible, rationalized, finally damaging environmental thought--one posing as some new map of the world, some new ecology. There is no new ecology. There is only the gathering, the accrual of fact, that ensues from our increased understanding of the raw material out of which we hammer our civilizations.

Deleuze and Guattari only know our civilizations, and those not as well as their tremendous egos would assert. They paint nature in their own image, start the cult of Deleuzians, and profer a tempting "philosophy" that ends in the bait and switch typical of current cultural studies. In the end, what has any wolf, any rhizome, any river, gotten out of the grand Deleuzians?

The only reason to read this book is to find out what's happened to the brains of an unfortunately sizeable number of academics. It saddens me to know where the interdisciplinary work of philosophy and ecology could go if it weren't dragging around this dead weight.

This year our baseball team (comprised of 13-16 yr olds) decided end of year trophies would be a little juvenile for the boys. The coach let me know about this book and thought it would be a good idea to give each of the boys one for the end of the season gift. We did and it was very well received! An amazing book for anyone that aspires to do something more with their life!

Well written and very easy to read! I highly reccomend!

This book provides an excellent insight into the life of Lou Holtz and his motivational attitude on life. His dry humor will make you laugh, his thoughts inspiring, and make you think W.I.N. for those tough decisions in life.

Lou listed some great stories.

In fact that is one reason why this is a great book, because Lou is an AWESOME story teller.
Listen to the audio book as you read, Lou narrates this book very well.

Lou has lived an amazing life.
He just got it done, no matter what he does.
Anyone can pick up some great tips about being more successful from this book.

Paul

This is an excellent read! You won't want to put it down and it will make you do some self examination.

An inspiring memoir full of famous personalities from sports and politics. Lou's humble beginnings and deep-rooted faith in family and religion took him to the top of the college football world and into the circles of many of America's most famous leaders. This is quite a guy.

This book should be owned by anyone who has ever done any kind of art or disciplined activity. The effort to take one photograph per day for a season instead of the thoughtless reliance on technology teaches an important lesson, one that we all could benefit from. It shows what slowing down and really looking means. And the layout and design are impressive.

If you haven't seen the DVD (Public TV?) program of this project, you should-great insights into what Brandenburg was after as a photographer-the great and the struggles. WOnderful book and photos!

I'm a verbal type; I'd rather read a beautifully written description of a frozen lake than stare at a picture of it anytime. Even knowing that, my mother gave me this book several years ago, and I fell in love. I sat with it for hours, seeing, dreaming, and I still take it down often to do the same again. The photographer, Jim Brandenburg, set himself the challenge of taking only one photograph each day for three months, in the boreal forest where he makes his home. The result is a portrait of life as many of us can never experience it: not just "calendar shots," but pictures that show the cruelty of man, the certainty of death, the very simple beauty of a single bright leaf burning on the dark, still waters of an evening pond. Some photos are amazing in themselves and some seem ordinary in the extreme, but it is important to take them as a whole, and see what you learn from the journey.

It's a nice conceit. A great outdoor photographer sets for himself the task to taking one, but only one, photograph each and every day for an entire season.

One can see all kinds of implications. Once the photographer finds a subject he must get it right the first time because he isn't allowed a second chance. Exposure, focus, composition - everything must be right and as good as he can get it. Moreover he is continually in peril. Should he pass by a good shot in the morning in expectation of a better shot in the afternoon? And what happens when no better shot is in the camera as sunset approaches? We can easily believe Jim Brandenburg when he says that the exercise was a transforming experience.

But the question for viewers of this book is whether the pictures are a transforming experience for us. Unfortunately, they were not for me.

I understand that some of the pictures were bound to be underexposed or out of focus. Plants blow in the wind; animals move. But while I examined the photographs in this book, I also looked at other work by Brandenburg. These other collections were always quite impressive, providing new ways of looking at the world. Many of the pictures in "Chased by the Light" showed a keen sensibility for the light. The silhouettes of loons and a small island with trees against the backlight of a clouded dawn were breathtaking. The photograph of a raven's feather against a lichen background with a few beaded drops of water on the feather caught my eye.

But for every great photograph, there was one that was pedestrian and one that was discardable. I certainly didn't need to see an out-of-focus mink or trees in the forest with no true subject.

To be fair to Brandenburg, this project was apparently not undertaken for publication but rather as an exercise for his own development. It was his editor who wanted to publish after seeing the photographs. To the editor's eye, at least, the pictures were enlightening and well worth the effort.

The greatest value of this book was not in the photographs but in the speculation in which I engaged about why this book was not outstanding. Is photography a stochastic process with each photograph taken possibly leading to an even greater photograph? Did forcing himself to elect when to take his daily picture cause Brandenburg to sacrifice opportunities, or even limit his willingness to take risks. Does the order of presentation of photographs have synergistic effects, which were lost, because this book almost demanded only chronological order? Does forcing the viewer to look at pictures that would otherwise be discards detract from the impact of good pictures?

For me this book was conceptual art. I found the idea of the task transformed my view of photography. The pictures themselves did not.

I gave this book to my parents several years ago and still leaf slowly through its pages whenever visiting their home in northern Minnesota. For amateurs and professionals alike, his is a fascinating photographic concept: your own property? a favorite park? your family? or pet? a holiday?