Book Description

In a series of stories drawn from his own experience coming of age during the 1950s, Richard B. Schwartz revisits his boyhood in southern Ohio. His memories of adolescence bring back the birth of rock and roll, the rigors and absurdities of religion and parochial schools, trials of little league baseball, grueling summer construction work and caddying jobs, the thin pleasures of 3.2% beer, drag racing lore, and, of course, the youthful discovery of sex.

By turns hilarious and poignant, satiric and nostalgic, the book focuses on a period and place through a perspective somehow both engaged and withdrawn-engaged through its feeling of innocent immediacy, and distanced because of the awareness developed in the intervening decades. If the memoir expresses a sense of loss at the passing of good times, it also exhibits a sense of relief at the end of those awkward years.

Richard B. Schwartz has written a book that will appeal to many readers, whatever their age, but perhaps especially to those who remember the fifties as they were and as they might have been, when we grew up yearning for slow dances and fast cars, and every little town seemed like the biggest city in America. ... Read more

Reviews (13)

what memories
Although I grew up in northeastern Minnesota and was driven away by the cold, I am always drawn back to Duluth and Lake Superior. (Duluth is an incredibly beautiful place and for a city it's size has a thriving arts community.) Barton Sutter makes me want to move to Duluth. He describes the characters, the landscape, the lake, the weather...everything which makes Duluth so special...in his own unique style. In a few chapters he talks about the BWCA, but I didn't feel that this detracted from the main concept of the book. Mr. Sutter is to be congratulated for making this city come alive for me.

A Great Book to Read
Barton Sutter's book "Cold Comfort" is great. The book mainly focuses on Duluth including the Boundry Waters and Lake Superior. Sutter writes about Duluth like hes lived here thousands of years and he hasn't, thats what makes this book so interesting. The great detail he uses on describing the territory is great and constantly breath taking. I strongly recomend this book to you and everyone else who lives in Duluth.

Reader from Israel
An excellent book, and to think that if I had never lived in Duluth I would have missed out on such a great author. He reminded me of Bill Bryson in a way, another one of my favorites!

Review for Cold Comfort
Barton Sutter is an amazing writer. He uses his creativeness to express his feelings about the beautiful city of Duluth. Not only did I enjoy "Cold Comfort," but I enjoyed learning more about Barton Sutter. He seems to be a brilliant man with a lot of positive energy. The book highlights points of Duluth and Lake Superior that I've never heard of before or considered. I'm new to the city of Duluth; during my winter break, I'm going to take some time to visit the places that Sutter talked about in "Cold Comfort." He really inspired me about the city of Duluth and I look forward to getting to know the city better!

Great Book!
I was lucky enough to have Barton Sutter as an English Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Superior and he read some of this book in our freshman english compostion class. The book gives you a sense of the Duluth/Superior area. Sutter is a great author and he comes highly recommended for english classes in Superior. So if you are looking for a book at that area..get this book! ... Read more

Book Description

This is an engaging, richly detailed biography of a family of Norwegian immigrant homesteaders in eastern North Dakota in the late 1800s.Educator and world traveler Aagot Raaen wrote this reminiscence late in her life.Like Giants in the Earth and Old Jules, Grass of the Earth deals frankly with a darker side of pioneer life on the prairie. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

A WONDERFUL TRIP BACK HOME
My mother is in her eighties and her dictum has become (for gifts),
if I can't wear it, eat it or spend it, don't give it to me. I
broke the rule when I gave her this book for Christmas, and she
loved it so much it brought tears to her eyes.

Bob Artley came from a town not more than 50 miles from my home
town and his age is not that far from the mother's age, and since
my mother also grew up on a farm, going through the book was like
going back into her own very real time. Unlike Mr. Artley and
probably nearly all girls who live on farms today, my mother did
not do chores connected with the farm. That was a guy-thing.
Girls worked in the house. Period. But she certainly had
brothers a-plenty who did those very same things in very similar
ways as did Mr. Artley. The illustrations are wonderful,
so realistic you can almost smell the hay, and other things
not quite so fragrant connected with farms.

I would recommend this book to anyone who has ever lived on a farm, lived near a farm, driven by a farm. It is a document of
a way of life that is swiftly leaving the scene, more's the
pity. It should also be in school libraries.
Even very young children can get a real sense of what it was like
to live on a farm through the marvelous illustrations

A book with heart
This is a beautiful book written by a writer and illustrator who grew up on an Iowa farm in the 1930's as the "age of the horse" was giving way to the "age of the tractor." The author, Bob Artley, illustrates with detailed sketches and color drawings of such things as walking through the spring mud from barn to barn carrying a bucket of feed, a birds eye view of the farmstead, one of father and son cleaning oat seed with a hand powered fanning mill, planting corn behind a team of horses, milking a cow the old fashioned way, the details of a cream separator, threshers at harvest time and much more. Mr. Artley writes a description of the work they did, what was hard, what was fun and a few of his personal memories of the feelings that he as a child had living this life. It is a touching book written with love and realism describing a lifestyle that has passed by. I especially loved his description of the barn chores where each cow had her chosen place where they were fed silage topped with ground oats and linseed oil, and where they would bed down in the straw with their heads in the stanchions feeding on clover hay. Mr. Artley is not overly sentimental in his memories. He also explains the distastefulness of cleaning out the gutters, working in the cold and the heat etc. He gives us a balanced look at farm life prior to telephones, electricity and indoor plumbing. This is a wonderful book for both those who also experienced farm life in the 1930's as well as younger people like myself who are simply interested in the lives of an older generation.

Boy, do the memories come back with this one!
This book is incredible. It's like a technical manual for those who wish to draw back upon fond memories of a rural life they either once had, or wish they had. I picked this book up and couldn't put it down, the thoughtful attention to detail that Artley puts into this thing just blew me away. On one side, as an artist and someone who appreciates clear, instructive visual art, I loved this book, and when you combine that with the fact that I also have specific visual memories of the farm, this book delivers on a number of levels. I immediately gave it to an elderly in-law who was also fascinated by it's images and stories; I'll get myself another copy right away. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

A Great Read
I found myself reading this book through in two sittings. If you like history, personal stories, diaries or the like, you will enjoy this book. I compare it to Jimmy Carter's An Hour Before Daylight in that it gives a picture of rural life in the early part of the century. It is human, candid, and lean in its verbage. It captures all of the emotions and leaves you with mental images that will last a lifetime. Try it.

A window into a world gone by
In an era of urban sprawl and corporate farming, this is a gentle reminder of a world of small towns and kind people. Jackie's experiences growing up on the dairy farm range from laugh-out-loud humorous to tears rolling. "The Round Barn" illustrates what family values truly were before the demogogues got hold of the term: integrity, caring and principles put before profit. The Dougans were--and are--intelligent, hard-working people who have a tremendous joy in living.

The stories are brief enough to read aloud---and deep enough to read again and again with pleasure. ... Read more

Book Description

The Man From Waukegan is a man born and raised in an industrial town halfway between Milwaukee and Chicago. Thirty years ago he graduated from its high school and left for foreign adventure. Twenty years ago he returned home to enlist in his childhood goal of the US Marines. He later left his twin homes of Waukegan and the Marines for a new life in Australia. Ten years ago both his parents died and he returned to Waukegan to bury them and sell their home. He had not returned until the Indian Summer of October 2003.

The Man From Waukegan spends a two-week trip meeting his old friends and walking in his old haunts that lead to self-discovery. He learns that not only do some things in the outwardly transformed Waukegan never change, but that the new inhabitants from different States and countries subconsciously adopt and preserve the traditions of the Waukegan he knew. ... Read more

Book Description

This tale of two sisters courageously homesteading on the prairie in 1907 provides a lively portrait of frontier life. ... Read more

Book Description

Here is the exciting story of Oklahoma University basketball coach Kelvin Sampson. During his 18-year career as a head coach, Sampson has been Coach of the Year in three different leagues and has taken the Oklahoma Sooners to seven straight NCAA Tournaments. Through personal interviews with the coach and some of his former players, author Steve Richardson weaves the story of one determined coach as he leads his team to the top. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

the ghost of Andy's Hotel
I thought that the story was fascinating. I grew up in the area and had always heard the story of "Coya" never knowing any of the characters. The book tells the story of the struggle of a hometown girl that was filled with passion and how she falls into politics and "tragically" falls out. The book shows just how corrupt the political scene can be, especially to a woman from a small midwestern town. ... Read more

Book Description

Recounting his sailing and land roving expeditions during the tumultuous 1960s, Patrick Livingston presents a series of tales centered on ships of the Great Lakes and the men who sail them. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Dreiser and Me
I read Sister Carrie when I was a teenager in China. The other day I listened to a Hoosier's holiday on Talking Books. He went back to his hometown after some thirty years. I went back to my hometown, Hangzhou, China and saw my old house now completely destroyed and replaced by a huge scaffolding. Somehow I felt my experience wasn't so different from Dreisers. I liked the book so much I'm going to order a copy to read certain parts again, although I have been in Indianapolis exactly once in my lifetime. Indianapolis and Hangzhou are world's apart. Dreiser and me are only 50 years apart but I feel I knew how he felt. Kai Lai Chung

The Wit, Wisdom, and Cynicism of Dreiser at its Very Best
Theodore Dreiser is one of America's great authors, but he is also an enigma wrapped inside a contradiction. Forever in awe of the "great social forces" lurching mankind forward, and inspired by the great financial titans and clever capitalist geniuses who attempted to reap the whirlwind, Dreiser nevertheless embraced communism late in his life as the antidote for the injustices plaguing mankind. He was a spirited social rebel, railing against orthodoxy and Puritan "Babbitts" who would foist their Midwestern morality down upon him, but at the same time, as he demonstrates in this book, his idealization of the small-town Hoosier philistines in Warsaw, Sullivan, and other whistle stop towns far removed from the Broadway footlights he had known intimately by the time this epic journey to the Heartland commences. Dreiser devoted hundreds, perhaps thousands of pages of prose to attacking the small-town "Babbitts" sharing the views of another world-weary cynic, Henry Louis Mencken. And yet, for all his caustic attitudes toward rigid conventions, Dreiser swoons in near reverie after catching first glimpse of the mundane streets, the old grammar school, feed store, and the simple folk he remembered from his youth. In other passages,examples of plain country living he encounters along the bumpy, dusty backroads of America circa 1914, are ridiculed and scorned as one would commonly expect of Theodore Dreiser and his war against society's religious and social conventions. Nevertheless, Dreiser's personal observations on life are often more engaging and inciteful than in some of his later novels. He is an American master; a pioneer of literary realism, and despite the contradictions, this is a fine and engaging volume exploring a vanished American landscape. Mr. Brinkley is to be commended for presenting it to the reading public again after all these years. ... Read more

Book Description

Together, using her journal and his sketches from a winter's journey on Gunflint Lake in northern Minnesota, the Jaqueses produced this delightful book, first published in 1944 and now reissued in its original format. ... Read more

Book Description

Growing up, Bill Holm knew what failure was: "to die in Minneota." But after returning to his hometown ("a very small dot on an ocean of grass") after 20 years' absence, he wasn't so sure. Finding pleasure in the customs and characters of small-town life, in The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth he writes with affection about the town elders, seen by those in the outside world as misfits and losers. "They taught me what to value, what to ignore, what to embrace, and what to resist." In his trek through the heartland, Holm covers a satisfyingly wide emotional terrain, from scandalous affairs in the 1950s to his aunt's touching attempts to transcend poverty with perfume and movie-star airs. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Through these pages, Holm's ancestors live again
Bill Holm writes very movingly about his parents, ancestors, and the people of the town of Minneota. It made me all the more interested in my own family's history. He writes with humor, understanding and compassion. He doesn't dwell too long on sentimentality; indeed, he warns us against it. He strives to show the character and (dare I say it?) soul of some of the notable people he knew in his youth. He has provided us with a wonderful book of essays.

This book about people in small places opened my heart.
Bill Holm has a gift with words and brings to life people long dead who had a strong impact on his life. As he opens up his past life, the reader's is also opened. Perhaps it was growing up in a small midwestern town that caused this book to strike a deep chord in me. However,I think it is his ability to bring out the gifts he was given by members of the community that helps all of us see similiar gifts in life.

Openings
Bill Holm again speaks softly, and humorously. As a sixteen year old whose first wish is to get out of rural Minnesota it is surprisingly nonthreatening. The only disappointing thing about this book is the omission of the author's poem, "Openings," ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Charming tales of the North Woods of Minnesota
I got this book because I too come from Minnesota and work in health care, but once started on Dr. MacDonald's A Country Doctor's Casebook Tales from the North Woods, I was hooked. The author was what we would now refer to as a family practitioner who worked in a small rural community near Duluth from 1947 to 1980. His charming collection of stories is a delight to read, and I literally read the book from cover to cover over about three hours without putting it down. The tales of the doctor and his patients pull the reader through the pages without tricks of style, just the author's natural talent for telling a simple story: the life and death struggles of members of his community, the happiness of new lives begun, the suddenness of unexpected death, incredible courage in the face of adversity, acceptance of the setbacks of life, amusing vignettes of simple people living life among their neighbors.

FOR THOSE WRITING PAPERS in English, creative writing, journaling, journalism, history, and sociology, this would make a nice format to follow or a good bibliography entry. The author has used his own life experiences to create a history of his practice, community, and time.

A tale of love from Minnesota
Dr. MacDonald's book is a welcome remembrance to those who lived in Northern Minnesota in the 40's & 50's. His stories of survival (and sometimes not surviving) are very descriptive and detailed. When he tells of a trip through a swamp he carried his wife through to help a patient, you almost feel as though you are sloshing through the mud with him. His stories are NOT about heroics that he performed on helpless rural Minnesota residents, although he certainly could do that as well. They are about the heroics of those people he cared for. This story has it's humorous parts as well as parts that make you cry for the brave and futile attempts at life of his patients. I am grateful to Dr. MacDonald for this book, and I hope to see more from him in the future.

Sickness, compassion, feuds, dangers, births and deaths
A Country Doctor's Casebook: Tales From The North Woods is an anthology of autobiographical stories by Dr. Roger A. MacDonald, a physician who has served the people living in a remote region of northern Minnesota during the years after World War II. Vignettes of sickness, compassion, feuds, dangers, births and deaths make A Country Doctor's Casebook unforgettable and very highly recommended reading. ... Read more

Book Description

Archie's Way is an inspiring tale about a very special friendship and the redemptive powers of a shared passion. After a traumatic event in midlife leads Richard Probert and his family to northern Wisconsin, he meets Archie Raasch, and together they begin a remarkable voyage of self-discovery centered on the art of working with metal and wood. In Archie, he finds an eccentric and brilliant man who not only can take a piece of cherry or steel and turn it into something beautiful and useful, but a person who has developed over the years a deep understanding of craft, creativity, and the essentials of life. With wit, candor, and eloquence, Probert paints an illuminating and touching portrait of the bonds that develop, of the thrills and frustrations of craftsmanship, and of the special life lessons and insights that both men gain from this unique relationship. The result is an affecting and poignant tale that makes Archie's Way a book to be treasured. ... Read more

Reviews (4)

A Touching Memoir
This short memoir is a true love story. The author loves both shopwork and his friend Archie. It is hard to tell which this book is more about. You need not be a shop - either metalworking or woodworking - enthusiast to enjoy the book. Archie was a truly interesting guy and the author portrays him well. The memoir is appropriately brief. Mr. Probert does not waste time nor is there any hint of self-aggrandizement (always refreshing in a memoir). An enjoyable quick read.

A rewarding glimpse into the mind of an engaging character.
Some of us are lucky enough to find a true mentor in our lives, someone who opens our eyes to a special world, and in so doing, gives us a glimpse of ourselves. Such a person is Archie Raasch, the subject of Richard Probert's book Archie's Way. A man of few words and many talents, Archie is an unforgettable character whose down-to-earth wisdom is vanishing from our hurried world.

Archie's Way sparkles with the joy of discovery implicit in new relationships. Probert's mastery of visual, sound and textural detail gives the book sensory complexity without being overbearing. A few of the mechanical descriptions, though were a little too technical for one unfamiliar with the landscape of the workshop. But this was only a minor flaw and did not distract from my overall enjoyment of the book.

There is a line of tension throughout the book that is skillfully drawn so as to tantalize the reader to discover the true nature of Archie and to tap the wellspring of his enigmatic quirkiness. The later chapters move from the technica of the machine shop to the mysteries of the wood shop and the labyrinthian paths of Archie's woods. There amidst the fragrance and beauty of the natural world, the layers of Archie's character are respectfully revealed, the book takes on a warmth, much like the patina of well-worked wood.

Probert is an engaging storyteller with a wonderful sense of character. Archie's Way is a rewarding glimpse into a sadly disappearing way of life.

A delightful story of friendship and human dignity
Wonderfully crafted story depicting life in a small midwestern town. Reminded me of my own father's workshop. He and Dick Probert would have been great friends. Causes one to ponder what really is important and how values are formed. As an instructor in a technical college, I would like to have this book on the reading list for every student and faculty member.

A great book!
I was fortunate to read a bound galley of ARCHIE'S WAY. It reminds me more of TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE than JOE AND ME, but no matter what you compare it to, this is a book to share with friends. Funny, sad, sweet, and imbued with the scent of sawdust and cutting oil throughout, it's the kind of book that anyone who has ever done any kind of woodworking or metalworking should read. Through work (which may be art without your knowing it), the best kind of lasting friendships are built. ... Read more