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The Scenic Route: Building Minnesota's North Shore
by Arnold R. Alanen
The Scenic Route is a field guide to the cultural landscape of the North Shore Scenic Drive and a journey deep into its evolution from ancient wilderness to All-American Road. Arnold R. Alanen explores the built environment-from cabins and resorts to parks, logging operations, lighthouses, and beyond-and shares stories from the people who shaped the cultural heritage along Minnesota's North Shore.
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Slow Train Coming: Bob Dylan's Girl from the North Country and Broadway's Rebirth : Bob Dylan's Girl from the North Country and Broadway's Rebirth
by Todd Almond
Despite historic, seemingly insurmountable setbacks of four openings, Bob Dylan and Conor McPherson's musical Girl from the North Country became a critical Broadway hit. Hailed as an experience "as close as mortals come to heaven on earth," by The New York Times, the musical weaves two dozen songs from the legendary catalogue of Bob Dylan into a story of Duluth during the Great Depression, to create a future American classic. Opening on Broadway in the middle of an unprecedented moment, Slow Train Coming is a book about pressing on in the face of extreme adversity. Todd Almond's behind-the-scenes oral history weaves his personal first-hand account of starring in the show with exclusive interviews and reflections from fellow cast members and the creative team.
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The Allure of Elsewhere: A Memoir of Going Solo
by Karen Babine
A memoir about camping alone in a Scamp camper and traveling to Nova Scotia to better understand her family's past. The self-appointed family historian travels from Minnesota to where her ancestors settled hundreds of years ago, accompanied only by cats Galway and Maeve and a ready sense of humor.
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Pushing the River: An Epic Battle, a Lost History, a Near Death and Other True Canoeing Stories
by Frank Bures
From the terror of two kayakers who barely escaped the 2011 Pagami Creek Fire in the Boundary Waters to two young campers who experienced a supernatural scare in Canada's Quetico Provincial Park in the 1970s to the author's own miraculous rescue, Bures shares varied takes on what happens when you push the river. The heart of the book is a telling of the lost history of the Paul Bunyan Canoe Derby, an annual 450- mile race run on the Upper Mississippi in the 1940s and 1950s that gave canoe-racing legend Gene Jensen his start-and which changed the course of modern canoeing. The tale includes the dominance of racers from the Leech Lake Indian Reservation, including many members of the Tibbets family, and the unacknowledged contributions of Ojibwe canoe builders Jim and Bernie Smith, whose design features are now part of the modern canoe-racing landscape.
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Face in the Mirror: A Surgeon, a Patient, and the Remarkable Story of the First Face Transplant at Mayo Clinic
by Jack El-Hai
In 2006, at the age of 21, Andy Sandness spent Christmas Eve drinking at a party and in a deep state of depression. At home, he shot himself in the face with a rifle kept in a closet. The resulting injury left his brain intact but grievously damaged his face. Airlifted to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, Andy spent months unable to eat and speak. As he gradually regained his bearings, his urge to live revived. Mayo physicians, including plastic surgeon Samir Mardini, reconstructed Andy's face which allowed him to return home to resume his working and social life. But Andy could barely accept his appearance, and people often stared at him. In 2016, after years of intense planning and rehearsals, Dr. Mardini and a team of some 60 surgeons, nurses, anesthesiologists, conducted a 56 hour successful surgery transplanting to Andy the face of another suicidal young man. Resting in his hospital bed, he still couldn't speak clearly, but scrawled four words in a spiral notebook: "Far exceeded my expectations." Andy spent months recovering and learning how to use his new face. The daring operation ultimately led Andy to a new life he never could have anticipated. Face in the Mirror is a sweeping and dramatic journalistic account of an extraordinary medical journey.
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Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin, and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairie
by Dave Hage
The North American prairie is an ecological marvel. The lush carpet of grasses feeds a huge population of grazing animals and is home to some of the nation's most iconic creatures--bison, elk, wolves, pronghorn, prairie dogs, and bald eagles. These creatures return the favor by spreading nitrogen and seeds across the prairie in their manure, and the grazers in turn feed prairie predators, and when they die, they return their store of organic matter to the living soil. Veteran journalists and Midwesterners Dave Hage and Josephine Marcotty follow the history of humanity's relationship with this incredible land, offering a deep, compassionate analysis of the difficult decisions as well as opportunities facing agricultural and Indigenous communities. Sea of Grass is a vivid portrait of one of the world's most miraculous and significant ecosystems, making clear why the future of this region is of essential concern far beyond the heartland.
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No One Taught Me How to Be a Man
by Shannon T. L. Kearns
An exploration of manhood and what it takes to be a good man in a world of toxic masculinity, from trans author Shannon Kearns. No one ever taught Shannon Kearns how to be a man. As a trans man, Shannon was presumed female at birth and constructed his relationship with masculinity after his transition, using bits and pieces he gathered from the world around him: male behavior, pop culture portrayals, and cultural expectations for men that seemed to be in the air he breathed. Kearns's self-taught approach to masculinity connected him with other men in surprising ways. As he lived more and more in the world of men, he discovered that cis men's relationship to masculinity was similar to his. No one taught them how to be a man either. They worried they were doing it wrong. Without arguing that masculinity should be done away with, or that there is no real difference between men and women, he bravely points toward a form of manhood built for the well-being of the world, and for people of all genders"
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Only What's Necessary: Charles M. Schulz and the Art of Peanuts
by Chip Kidd
Reproducing the best of the Peanuts newspaper strip, all shot from the original art by award-winning photographer Geoff Spear, Only What’s Necessary also features exclusive, rare, and unpublished original art and developmental work—much of which has never been seen before.
Charles M. Schulz (1922–2000) believed that the key to cartooning was to take out the extraneous details and leave in only what’s necessary. For 50 years, from October 2, 1950, to February 13, 2000, Schulz wrote and illustrated Peanuts, the single most popular and influential comic strip in the world. In all, 17,897 strips were published, making it “arguably the longest story ever told by one human being,” according to Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University.
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Home Club: Up-and-comers and Comebacks at Acme Comedy Company
by Patrick Strait
Acme is the most iconic comedy venue in all of Minnesota, and one of the most respected in the country. It launched the careers of some of Minnesota's biggest comedians, including Mitch Hedberg, Maria Bamford, and Nick Swardson. But it also courted controversy by unapologetically booking comics who weren't always considered "safe." Home Club is the story of Acme and its owner, Louis Lee, who came from China to Minnesota as a teenager and worked his way from busboy to club owner--only to watch it all come crashing down. Acme Comedy Company was his chance to redeem himself, and he spent years hustling, negotiating, and sometimes cutting corners just to keep it afloat. Home Club is about failure and redemption, the tension between art and business, and the incredible story of how a soft-spoken Chinese immigrant and his 300-seat club in a Minneapolis basement became a home for a new generation of comics and fans.
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The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild
by Bryan Burrough
Examining the historical reality behind the myth of the Wild West, this account explores how post-Civil War Texas became a breeding ground for widespread violence, shaping the gunfighter culture that spread across the American frontier and later became enshrined in popular imagination.
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Legendary Ballparks: Moments and Memories from America's Most Storied Stadiums
by Eric Enders
Featuring nostalgic images from across the country and throughout baseball history, Legendary Ballparks is a colorful exploration of the places where baseball history happens. From Fenway to Dodger Stadium, North America’s legendary ballparks have been the scenes of some of the most unforgettable moments in sports. This definitive guide to Major League ballparks of the past, present, and future takes you inside the stadiums and gives you a front-row seat into baseball’s greatest games.
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Submersed : Wonder, Murder, and the Beguiling World of Amateur Submarines
by Matthew Gavin Frank
An exquisite, lyrical foray into the world of deep-sea divers, the obsession and madness that oceans inspire in us, and the story of submarine inventor Peter Madsen's murder of journalist Kim Wall-a captivating blend of literary prose, science writing, and true crime. Submersed begins with an investigation into the beguiling subculture of DIY submersible obsessives: men and women-but mostly men-who are so compelled to sink into the deep sea that they become amateur backyard submarine-builders. Should they succeed in fashioning a craft in their garage or driveway and set sail, they do so at great personal risk-as the 2023 fatal implosion of Stockton Rush's much more highly funded submarine, Titan, proved to the world. Matthew Gavin Frank explores the origins of the human compulsion to sink to depth, from the diving bells of Aristotle and Alexander the Great to the Confederate H. L. Hunley, which became the first submersible to sink an enemy warship before itself being sunk during the Civil War. The deeper the plunges, however, the more the obsession seems to dovetail with more threatening traits.
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Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers
by Caroline Fraser
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Prairie Fires comes a terrifying true-crime history of serial killers in the Pacific Northwest and beyond—a gripping investigation of how a new strain of psychopath emerged out of a toxic landscape of deadly industrial violence. Illustrations. Map(s).
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