Always treating his subject with humor and a bit of disrespect, Feldman tackles trivia and oddities found on the roadsides of Wisconsin. An excellent book to keep in the glove box when you're traveling around the state, or to keep in the house for fun reading any time.

Without a doubt, one of the finest guides to the most interesting attractions in Wisconsin.

A perfect book to enjoy whether you have an evening or just 15 minutes to take a mental vacation. Here are selections from 29 writers who explored fishing, hunting and roaming Wisconsin in all seasons. The book takes you through a year in the outdoors with short selections from some of the state's best-known journalists from the 1950s through the present. Best bets include Justin Isherwood's "They Wore Plaid," Tom Davis's "The Toothsome Pike-Perch," Bill Stokes, "To Shoot a Musky" and Dan Small's "The Day The Ice Went Out." Two classic man-and-his-dog stories in Jay Reed's "Thor" and Dion Henderson's "Brute's Christmas." A fine way to get a taste from the deep well of each of these author's works.

As an ex Badger and outdoor writer, I am a real sucker for these kinds of anthologies. This one was particularly attractive, because I knew many of the writers, having written for Chuck Petrie's Wisconsin Sportsman Magazine once upon a distant time and having worked at a Madison radio station with "Pappa Hambone," the radio stage name for the late George Vukelich. The book did not dissappoint. The stories were well chosen to cover the spectrum of activities and seasons in Wisconsin. I was especially touched by "Christmas at Bridge Pool," the contribution by Papa Hambone. That story alone is worth the price of the book. It provide new inspiration for me to continue as an outdoor writer, now living in far off (but much warmer) northern California. Wisconsin Seasons is well worth the time.

Most maps are very useful. There are a couple muskie waters that, while included, do not contain depths, indication of bottom, etc. Individual articles are written by seasoned professionals and are sure to be appreciated by the beginning or experienced angler.

i believe that this book covered almost all of the main muskie lakes in wisconsin. Of those lakes it gave great advice on how to fish the lake for a beginner. I am not a beggining muskie hunter but i use the book as my first reference when i'm going to a new lake that i have not fished yet. This book tells me what kind of structure that the lakes muskie key in on at certain times of the year. It also tells fisherman what baits seem to work better on the lakes and what is the muskies main forage. this will then allow the fisherman to try and match their lure colors to the forage fish. I have read the book many times and have been able to match up a strategy from a lake that i have not even fished to the lake that i am going to fish. This book has allowed me to catch a good number of muskie that i don't think i would have caught. Thanks!

matt

Susan Allen Toth first appeared on my radar screen with her three volumes of travel essays on England (MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH ENGLAND, ENGLAND FOR ALL SEASONS, ENGLAND AS YOU LIKE IT). She's a soul mate. In BLOOMING, penned in the late 70s, Ms. Toth shares coming-of-age memories as delightful as those from another of my favorite authors, Laura Shaine Cunningham (SLEEPING ARRANGEMENTS, A PLACE IN THE COUNTRY).

Susan was born in 1940, and BLOOMING is her account of life in Ames, Iowa until she went East to college in 1957. The ability to relate will increase to the degree that the reader's background shares commonality with the following: maturing in the late 40s and 50s, living in a Midwest plains state, being female. I can only claim identity with the first, but that limited coincidence didn't affect my ability to thoroughly enjoy this volume.

Toth's remarkable memory of her childhood and teenage years could serve as the source for Norman Rockwell paintings as she remembers swimming pools, boyfriends, girlfriends, science classes, the public library, parties, summer jobs, the traditional holidays, and yearly trips to the Minnesota lake where relatives owned a cabin. She was unusually reticent about her immediate family. We learn only that her father died when she was in the third grade, and she and her sister were raised by their mother, a teacher. This absence of familial information is somewhat disappointing as it's perhaps a gold mine of stories not told. For instance, Susan writes about her sister, one year older:

"My sister and I, who fought most of the time, declared an unspoken truce on Christmas morning and hugged awkwardly as we exchanged gifts. For those brief moments, we really wanted to please each other." So, what did they fight over? Boys? Clothes? Maternal attention?

The realist might point out that most of the world's children, and many in America didn't live formative years as idyllic as depicted in BLOOMING. True enough. But I lived the male version in Southern California, and Toth's was sufficiently similar in rhythm to remind me of those Good Ol' Days when I didn't know how good I had it. Thank you, Susan.

Once I began reading this great book, it was hard to take a break for even mealtimes. When I was growing up here in Ohio during the 1950s, it was quite a bit like in the author's story. Not perfect, but a very good life!

It's a refreshing Step Back In Time reading. Difficult to believe such an era ever existed. Today's readers will learn a lot about how to live a simpler, equally enjoyable life.

'Sudden Death, Overtime' was one of the most inspirational books I have ever had the pleasure of reading. It was colorfully written and so attaching that I read for hours just to realize I had finished the book in one sitting.
It not only depicts the life of Dennis Courneya, which is so intriguing and inspirational that it deserves its own story, but the book also incorporates a tragedy.
Anyone that read this book who knew of the TRUE 'Sudden Death, Overtime' and believed justice was served, and still believes that justice was served, has as horrible a moral character as some of the characters you will read about, but they also depict what is wrong in our society today. I challenge those who believed it to be a justice and have not read the book, to read the book, and walk away from it with a clean conscious.
I was not only honored to be among some of the first readers to read this book, but I was also thankful that I did. A must read!

My wife and I both just finished Sudden Death, Overtime. Despite quite a few typographical errors, it is the most compelling and best book I have read in years. Why? My bias may show, but 1. I am a teacher; 2. I know Dennis Courneya; 3. I lived in the town of Hancock for 3 years and could picture almost all the people he wrote about; and 4. my wife's father was the superintendent of schools in Hancock at the time Dennis was hired. I found this book to be straight forward (although, at times the trial transcripts were a bit confusing--the girls, like, really, like should like get rid of, like, too many "likes" in their vocabulary) and not an over glorification of the author. After reading the book I really felt like I was smacked in the face because, unfortunately, this could happen to any of us. I was appalled at the lack of action and concern by the teacher's union (yes, I am a member!), as well as the judge, the jury, and everyone else that was involved in this travesty. I also lost a lot of respect that I had for superintendent Larson and the school counselor, Carol Johnson. I applaud Dennis and his fortitude in surviving the trial, the prison, and everything else he has been subjected to. I'm not sure I would have survived it. I would LOVE to see this as a TV movie!

I just finished reading the best book I have read in a long time: Sudden Death, Overtime! It is poignant and straightforward. Does this town really exist? I have always believed that the justice system needs an "overhaul" - this book just makes me more adamant in my belief. Hurray for Coach Courneya... stand tall. This book is a wonderful tribute to home, family, and those who try to teach our youth - an awesome responsibility. I am humbled by what Courneya had to endure.
This is a must-read for everyone. Put it on your Christmas list.

All winter long I had promised my kids that I would build them a treehouse in the spring. So, when the flowers started popping up, and they hadn't forgotten, I had to do something. I had once seen a treehouse web page that mentioned David Stiles other out of print book, "Tree House Book". I couldn't track that down, so I bought this one instead.

This book only had one treehouse design, but it was just right for my situation. (A reasonably straight tree, with the fort built around it). What's very nice about the book is that David goes into detail on _ALL_ the tools and materials you will need, including a detailed shopping list. As I'm a woodworking novice, this helped tremendously. I was able to go to my local lumberyard with the book, and I got everything I needed in one trip.

The treehouse went up just as the book stated, with only a few minor customizations.

If you'ld like to see the finished product, I've put together a web page:
http://www.gusick.com/Treehouse

- Robert Gusic

Stiles' book is a wonderful compendium of playhouse/play structure projects. It includes "plans" for everything from a 20 minute cardboard house to a 20+ hour gingerbread playhouse. I put plans in quotes because if you are looking for truly detailed plans and a step-by-step how to guide this book is not it. It has basic architectural type drawings, some with details, some not. Nonetheless it is still an excellent guide to planning, designing and building children's play areas. The general construction tips and wood/fastener introductory chapters will be worth the price of the book for novices. All in all, this book will help you take a great step towards your project.

Someone gave this book to my daughter for her birthday and we decided to build the traditional playhouse that is on the cover. Although it took almost a month of weekends, it was well worth the time! She and her friends spend all their play dates in it and we always know where they are. This looks like the most advanced project in the book and I am a weekend carpenter, but didn't have any trouble following the plans. We are working on the "Spook House" for Halloween and the whole family is having fun adding their imput! Highly recommend this book for anyone with any building experience.

Cather published her second novel, O Pioneers, in 1913 at the age of 40. Together with My Antonia it is the novel for which she is best known. Years after writing the book, Cather wrote of it " Since I wrote this book for myself, I ignored all the situations and accents that were then thought to be necessary."

The book takes place on the plains of Nebraska in the late 19th Century as the Prairie is settled be Swedish, Bohemian, and French immigrants trying to eke out a living from what appears to be a harsh, inhospitable land. The heroine of the book is Alexandra Bergson who inherits her father's farm as a young woman, raises his three sons and stays with the farm through the harsh times to become a successful landowner and farmer.

The books speaks of being wedded to the land and to place. In this sense it is an instance of the American dream of a home. It also speaks of a strong woman, not in cliched, late 20th Century terms but with a sense of ambiguity, difficulty and loss.

This is a story as well of thwarted love, of the difficult nature of sexualtiy, and of human passion. There is also the beginning of what in Cather's works will become an increased sense of religion, Catholicism in particular, as a haven and a solace for the sorrow she finds at the heart of human endeavor. Above all it is a picuure of stark life in the midwest.

There is almost as much blood-letting in this short book as in an Elizabethan tragedy. Cather's picture of American life on the plains, even in her earliest books, is not an easy or simple one. Some readers may quarrel with the seemingly happy ending of the book. I don't think any will deny that Alexandra's happiness is dearly bought or that it is bittersweet.

I tendend to shy away from this book in favor of Cather's later novels. I feared that it would be conventional and trite. The stereotyping was mine,however. This is a thoughtful, well written story of immigrant life on the plains and of the sorrow pain, and strength of the American experience.

In "O Pioneers!", her classic novel first published in 1913, Willa Cather wrote, "The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman." By revealing to us the hearts of those pioneer immigrants in this book, Cather offers a moving meditation on United States culture and history.

"O Pioneers!" tells the story of a community in Nebraska farm country. Her main character, Alexandra Bergson, is a Swedish immigrant. Cather creates a marvelous portrait of the community and its rich mix of European ethnic groups: Norwegian, Swedish, French, etc. It is especially fascinating to see the multicultural, multiethnic world they created in the United States. Cather also depicts the cultural and linguistic "shift" that takes place along generational lines.

Cather's story deals with issues of economics, gender roles, and sexuality. In addition to the formidable Alexandra, she creates a cast of compelling characters. And her luminous prose style evokes all of the sensations of Alexandra's world: the smell of ripe wheat, the chirping of insects in the long grass, the golden play of light in an apple orchard.

But this is Alexandra's book. She is a great American heroine who reminds me of such beloved characters as Zora Neale Hurston's Janie (from "Their Eyes Were Watching God") or Alice Walker's Celie (from "The Color Purple"). Like those great characters, Alexandra will break your heart, deeply touch your soul, and ultimately leave you feeling richer for having known her.

Finally, as an interesting companion text to "O Pioneers!" try "Anna Christie," the 1922 play by U.S. writer Eugene O'Neill. O'Neill's life and career were contemporary with Cather's, and "Anna Christie," like "O Pioneers!", deals with a Swedish immigrant woman in the United States.

Before I review the novel, I want to point out that most of the reviews that have given it one star seem to be coming from, perhaps, immature audiences..."it was totally uncoool!" Now, this book is not the best thing you'll ever read, but it IS very worthy of reading. Don't be discouraged by the title, as I once was. Basically, the story talks about Alexandra, a Swedish woman who has to take care of the family once her father dies at the beginning of the book. I didn't really admire her character or was interested too much in it, but that's okay because a lot of the plot involves her brother Emil and her neighbor Marie and their clandestine type of love...it's a heartwarming novel and a very entertaining read. I read the book in one night. The setting was very well depicted and had a sense of magic, evethough there's nothing of a supernatural nature in the book. The characters were very lively and realistic. I wasn't really too satisfied with the ending, but I enjoyed it greatly nonetheless. It is an excellent work ; I recommend it.

I could not identify with Raban's depiction of people. He is simply too smug and cynical, pointing out the pessimistic and gloomy side of people and places. I did not sense any credibility. Instead reading Old Glory was more like hearing the bloated stuff you expect to hear from someone after one too many pints.

The glory in Old Glory is only Raban's. There are times when you might think he's passing Cape Horn in a washtub. (How daring!) Or perhaps journeying into a Lost Land inhabited by a tribe of pathetically humble simpletons. (Oh, what a pain!) You don't have to be a careful reader to see through this unless, of course, you've lived apart from interesting human contact most of your life and never saw a river bigger than an ankle-deep stream ... wait a minute!...that is, unless you've lived in England most of your life, I suppose! So beware. This is a book of nice little stories and adventures, but resist the temptation to want to shoot the messenger this time. The Englishman might not know any better.

Old Glory tells the tale of Raban's solo journey by boat down the Mississippi from Minneapolis to New Orleans. Along the way, he visits the great cities and backwater towns that dot this legendary American wonder. Raban demonstrates that the Mississippi is, in myriad ways, much more than a river. He records the life-altering relationships between people and place and brings us the history and experience of this ultimate American artery. I have crossed the Mississippi by bridge and plane countless times and, with a cursory glance, acknowledged it as a major American marker. Raban, however, brings a soul to the Mississippi that, at once, uncovers a latent reverence, inspires a profound understanding, and rekindles a vicarious sense of spirit and adventure in the American citizen for "our" river and it's lore. This is an excellent book that deserves, and will certainly earn, your attention.

I have traveled a fair amount through the small towns of the United States and have to concur with Mr. Raban's depiction of both the towns and the people who live in them. Other readers who have taken the time to write reviews of this book here seem to have remembered only about half of what Raban wrote about each of the towns that he visited.

His initial impressions were often filled with disappointment. He had approached this trip with a boyhood dream in his head and he was continually set back on his proverbial heels by the reality of these river towns in 1979. More often than not, however, further exploration of the town, conversations with some of its citizens and reflection on his part, caused Raban to revise his evaluation of many of the places that he visited.

Some reviewers may perhaps have forgotten that this book describes this region as it was after years during which the US economy struggled through an oil crisis, bouts of inflation, intervals of high unemployment and the tail end of the history of the "old economy". Should someone have the time and inclination to retrace Raban's steps nearly 25 years later, I would not be surprised if they found these towns and their people had changed quite a bit, probably for the better in social and economic terms. For instance, Raban devoted most of a chapter to the failed election campaign of Memphis's first black candidate for mayor. A quick Google (keywords: Memphis Tennesee government) will show you that the present mayor of Memphis (Willie W. Herenton) is African-American. I'm going to guess that he is not the first black mayor of Memphis.

I loved Raban's modus operandi for getting to the heart of a place. Tie up your boat, go to the nearest bar and strike up a conversation. This would seem to me to be the most reliable means to quickly get an unvarnished opinion about a place. Sure, someone on a bar stool is likely to have a slightly dimmer view of the place where he or she lives than the average citizen, but Raban was rarely, if ever, content with their views. He basically used the tavern-sitters as a 1979-era local flesh-and-blood Google; he found out the basics about a place like who are the local characters, what are the main industries, which are the burning local political issues etc. His fellow barflies were more important as sources of germane questions than as sources of definitive answers.

Raban's perspective on the St. Louis metropolitan area is one that I can vouch for personally, having visited there 10 years after he did. Furthermore Jonathan Franzen's novel The Twenty-seventh City is an elaborate description of the city-county socio-politico-economic tensions during the late 1980s. The continuum between Raban and Franzen's descriptions is pretty easy to imagine. Franzen grew up in the county and would have been a teen-ager when Raban was shacked up with his rich, wigged-out girlfriend out in Clayton.

I took one long journey through the US accompanied by a Danish friend. Upon learning that my traveling companion was a foreigner nearly every American that we encountered relaxed almost visibly and began to wax philosophical about the state of things. The radius of their sphere of interest varied, but everyone had an opinion about something. It was delightful to see that Mr. Raban experienced this same lowering of guard and move toward introspection as soon as he announced that he was an Englishman traveling in the US.

The parochial character and narrow-mindedness of many of the people he encountered matches up well with my own experiences in similar terrain four years after his journey. It is important to note though that Raban was treated to extraordinary amounts of generosity, both material and emotional, by the people that he met, however rhetorically bigoted they might have been. The author is at pains to acknowledge both the generosity and the puzzling disconnect that he sees between their rhetoric and their behavior.

Just one of the wonderful things that Jonathan Raban does in the course of Old Glory is show the reader the essence of American character. Their aggressive rhetoric is their shield against the unknown, but once you are brought in behind that shield, Americans are among the most outrageously generous and genuinely good people that you are likely to find.

This is a compelling memoir, I read it in two days. Woiwode is truly a master artist with language -- his sentences sing on the page, and you can nearly feel the atmosphere of his own brooding and composing as he puts the words down.Language is his real life's story, not the events he records -- if you're looking for "story" of a hip life in New York with DeNiro and publishers, it's not here. Prose and poetry is, though For me, the most emotionally driven parts of this book came toward the end, in Woiwode's recollections of the days that preceded his first novel -- the struggle to find a topic, to move from story to novel form, the mentoring love flowing to him from William Maxwell. The North Dakota sections felt more strained to me, as though written for language's sake more than for emotional commitment to the material. And this is the odd effect for me of the book -- Woiwode's words are deep, complex, subtle, gorgeous, yet I closed the book feeling he'd kept me on the surface of his felt life. There's a weird illusion of deeply felt experience conjured by words -- but Woiwode himself and his friends, family, colleagues, remained removed or hidden behind prose. Only Maxwell makes it through the veil,vibrant, living. I recommend this book for people who love the memoir form in all its variety, people who worship words, writers who can share with Woiwode the drive to compose and be heard. Not for "story" people or those out for exciting DeNiro peeks. All said, we need writers like Woiowde, who never compromise a sentence. He celebrates the salvation in words themselves.

Let me just say that I'm biased about Larry Woiwode's work, since my wife and I know Larry and Carol. We attended the same church when we all lived in the Chicago area in the mid 70's. So it was a fascinating look at their lives, and how their children have grown. But besides all of that, I've always liked his novels, "Beyond the Bedroom Wall" and "Born Brothers." Larry Woiwode writes with a sense of depth that few writers do--he can be profoundly spiritual, yet honest about hard, heart issues. I found "What I think I Did" to be a fascinating look at a period of time before we actually met. I greatly appreciated his relationship with William Maxwell, and to consider some of the process of becoming a published author. To have Maxwell as a mentor was interesting to read about. Onetime, in Chicago, Larry encouraged me to continue writing; I wish he could have mentored me. My daughter(degree in philosophy) considers Woiwode's work to be among the best in modern America--I'm going to give her a copy of this memoir for her birthday. My only criticism of this memoir is that I was sometimes confused by the sudden transitions--were we in North Dakota in 1996, or in New York City in the 60's? But I loved the book and look forward to future musings. He made winter and furnaces interesting!

If Larry Woiwode lived in New York, would his books still be in print? Shame on Farrar Straus Giroux for not keeping classics BEYOND THE BEDROOM WALL and BORN BROTHERS, two great novels of the twentieth century, on their backlists. (The small press Greywolf now publishes BEYOND THE BEDROOM WALL in paperback.) In Woiwode's quiet memoir, a minor classic (though it doesn't compare with his fiction), Woiwode describes his life in North Dakota--which consists of feeding a cantankerous wood-burning stove, raising children (whom his wife homeschools), and struggling to balance work on the farm with writing. Parts of the memoir describe Woiwode's life in New York in the 1960s as a fledgling actor who appeared in a play with Robert DeNiro (his friend). At the same time, Woiwode's first stories apeared in THE NEW YORKER, edited by William Maxwell, a friend of one of Woiwode's professors at the University of Illinois Urbana. WHAT I THINK I DID, the first of a projected trilogy of memoirs, is worth owning--but all of us should lobby to get Woiwode's fiction and poetry back in print. He's a great American writer, a unique voice, not a quick read.

He is an excellent reader, by the way. Although he moved back to North Dakota in 1978, he still has an actor's stage presence. We had an opportunity to hear him recently, and were impressed with the integration of his recitation of poetry with sections of his memoir. He is also generous about answering the audience's questions--not a guy with his eye on his watch.

Reading the other reviews submitted about this book, one would think that it is either the best or the worst book ever written about the special requirements of canoe camping in the boundary waters. Well, it is neither. I take a 14-plus day trip to the Quetico every other summer, and have travelled many of the most challenging and remote routes of the park. The value of this book is that it offers one set of ideas as to the best way to go about one's business in the wilderness. These ideas are not definitive, and I flatly ignore many of them. That said, I have also adopted some of the ideas found in the book, or at least reconsidered my tried and true methods based on some of the author's recommendations. If you're looking for a book to stimulate you to think about different ways of doing things in the woods-- this is a good choice. If you're a beginner, this isn't a bad place to start, but it would be a bad place to stop. There are as many different ways to go about travelling in canoe country as there are lakes in the Quetico. Almost all have something to offer. None are perfect. This book is worth reading as part of the exploration and learning process.

Before setting out on our first trip to the BWCA five years ago, I bought Cliff's book. I read it cover to cover and found it packed with practical information that helped make my first trip (and all my subsequent trips) completely enjoyable. I've re-read the book every year since. I've followed Cliff's tips, and he's never let me down. Yes, put the groundcloth inside your tent, and you'll never have a wet sleeping bag. Use a tumpline when portaging .... it relieves a the stress of carrying a heavy pack. Don't hang your food in a tree, unless you want a bear to to find it! Follow Cliff's tips. I've heard him speak on the subject of canoe camping several times...and he brings many years of valuable experience. I highly recommend reading this book before taking your next canoe/camping trip!

An excellent book for anyone who is interested in canoeing, camping or the B.W.C.A. Timely information for the first timer in the BWCA or for those that have made many trips. Well written and illustrated. A must for the Boundary Water traveler!