 Jingo Fever
Stephanie Golightly Lowden
Middle Readers
Crickhollow Books
Paperback, 128 pages
$13.95
This captivating and important novel for middle readers is the story of young Adele Klein, a German-American girl who has come with her mother from Milwaukee to live in the small town of Ashland, Wisconsin for the summer of 1918. This is the story of Adelle's struggles to cope with local patriotic fervor in support of American troops abroad, spilling over into hatred of all things German. The summer's events teach Adelle about the importance of standing up for what's right. Coincidentally, this week at our community theatre, StageNorth, the cast is delivering a profoundly touching production of The Diary of Anne Frank, the story of another little girl and her family who experienced the horrible consequences of jingoistic hatred directed against an entire ethnic group. It's so important to tell our children these stories in recognition of the well-known cautionary adage, "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," and so that they can fully appreciate that such ignorance can be directed at anyone given the right confluence of circumstances.
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 Steve Jobs
Walter Isaacson
People & Profiles
Simon & Schuster
Hardcover, 656 pages
$35.00
Steve Jobs died just last October 5th and yet his definitive biography is already in our hands! Walter Isaacson, whose previous biographies have included Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin, has done a masterful job of not only bringing us Mr. Jobs's life, but bringing to life the whole trajectory of the tech revolution from the 80's until now. It is beyond dispute that Jobs will be seen as the protean genius of his generation of technology innovators - Bill Gates notwithstanding. Hardware, software, marketing, merchandising, music, movies - whatever, he got it just right. Isaacson had Jobs's imprimatur for the book and had access to both the subject and his family, friends and colleagues even at the difficult time as death neared. Jobs, to his enormous credit, gave Isaacson free rein to present him warts and all - and many warts there were! But, this was a great man and Isaacson does him considerable, well-deserved justice.
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 Blood, Bones & Butter
Gabrielle Hamilton
Food/Cooking
Random House
Paperback, 320 pages
$16.00
The first thing I wanted to do when I started reading this book was cook - something rich, warming and comforting. I wanted to cook something to share with those I love. Hamilton has a magical ability to make her readers smell and taste the foods she describes. While this is an autobiography of a sometimes troubled soul, it is so much more. Hamilton finds comfort in food. She finds beauty in the relationships formed in a kitchen. She is also honest - brutally honest. There is no hiding the fact that not everything happens as you would like it to in life. This is, of course, illustrated through cooking as well. New York Times reviewer Frank Bruni says it perfectly, "Her timing is perfect, her metaphor clear and her point indisputable. Sometimes pasta and people don't make good on all the hope you have invested in them." If you love food - either cooking it or eating it - you will be drawn in by this book. (Review by Kristen)
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 Wingshooters
Nina Revoyr
General Fiction
Akashic Books
Paperback, 230 pages
$15.95
Nine-year-old Michelle, an Asian-American biracial child, is left with her paternal grandparents in Deerhorn, a small, ingrown, out-of-the-way town in north central Wisconsin. Her grandfather, Charlie, despite his own cultural bigotry, bonds with her and becomes her constant companion despite the antipathy of the town. Then a Black nurse is hired at the local clinic and her husband becomes a substitute teacher at the elementary school. Now the townsfolk must "do something" and come to Charlie as one of the elders. What unfolds is tough to take, but it is written with grace and fluidity. The ostensible point-of-view is that of the forty-year-old Michelle looking back on her childhood from L.A., but the resonant viewpoint remains that of the nine-year-old child.
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 The View From the Creek
Howard Paap
Local Interest
North Star Press
Paperback, 256 pages
$14.95
Howard, who lives here in Bayfield and Red Cliff, brought by a boxful of his new book the other day. We had been eagerly waiting for it to wend its way through the publishing wilderness and, at last, here it was! We sat down immediately to read it and it "set us to thinking". How does this erudite, ex-academic manage to tell us the same story of our life and people here over and over again each time in a magically fresh and compelling way? The answer is that he lives and breathes the Northwoods and has become one with it. In over one hundred brief essays, Paap catches exactly the several interwoven currents that make up our local culture - the town and reservation alike. His views from the creek "set him to thinking" and his observations "set us to thinking," too.
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 Superior Run
Tom Wells
Local Interest/Mystery
Create Space
Paperback, 330 pages
$12.95
The author, an engineer, longtime sailor and contributing editor and boat reviewer for Good Old Boat Magazine, has written this very entertaining thriller with a full-on life-and-death pursuit on the dangerous and fickle waters of Lake Superior, starting in Bayfield, Cornucopia and the Apostle Islands and extending across to Isle Royal. This exciting ride will keep you braced against the heeling of your boat!
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 Pity the Billionaire
Thomas Frank
General Non-Fiction
Metropolitan Books
Hardcover, 240 pages
$25.00
In Frank's previous book, What's the Matter with Kansas?, he wondered why in the world working people seemed so little interested in pursuing their own self-interest and, instead, bought into a politics that so apparently worked against them - tax cuts for the rich, deregulation, privatization, austerity, and a host of social issues. Policies that built and protected the middle class - unionization; antitrust laws; regulation; and, spending on education, infrastructure and public health - came to be seen as left-wing or worse. In his new book, Thomas looks with continuing amazement at the response of the working and middle classes to the economic collapse of 2008 and the emergence of the Tea Party and an even deeper shift to the virulent right wing. Billionaires have become the new underclass! Talk about "class warfare"!
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Apostle Islanders: The People and Culture
By Robert Nelson
Local/Regional Authors
Blue Box Press
Paperback - 320 Pages
$25.00
Bob Nelson spent his entire childhood summer days on Rocky Island as the third-generation son of a Norwegian fishing family. His images – both narrative and photography – evoke that intimate connection with the Apostle Islands throughout a lifetime on the big lake. Today the Islands have a sense of unexplored wilderness, but once the archipelago was dotted with fish camps, a few farms, quarries and other centers of human activity.
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 Happiness: Essential Mindfulness Practices
Thich Nhat Hanh
Mind, Body, Spirit
Parallax Press
Paperback - 120 pages
$12.95
“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.” This quote by Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese-born Buddhist monk, teacher, author, and peace and social justice activist who helped originate the "Engaged Buddhism" movement, expresses the very essence of the author and his extensive writings and teachings. His lifelong efforts to generate peace and reconciliation moved Martin Luther King, Jr. to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967. In Happiness, he shares with readers simple practices to bring us into the present moment and develop a sense of peace and mindful awareness in our everyday lives. Throughout this beautiful book, his own enchanting smile, warmth and insight shine through. A great gift for anyone you love!
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 Loon
by Susan Vande Griek
Chilrens
Groundwood Books
Hardcover - 48 pages
$18.95
The haunting call of a loon piercing the stillness captivates anyone who has ever heard it. This gorgeously designed and illustrated book is the story of two loon chicks who hatch in June. We follow their life and antics until, finally as adults, they make their way north to a distant, deep, fishing lake, find a mate and start a new generation. One reviewer said it best, “[t]his is both a book about birds...the common loon whose plaintive call brings joy and peace to many who live on, or near, the lakes where they raise their young. It is also a book of art...beautifully rendered details in acrylic on canvas, lending depth and texture to the world of the loon. We see that world from the loon's perspective, from a distance, up close, and even into the watery depths. It is a celebration of all that we can see and learn when we take time to wonder about the mysteries of nature.” One of our favorite children’s books!
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 Boomerang
by Michael Lewis
Business/Economics
W. W. Norton & Company
Hardcover - 224 pages
$25.95
Do subjects like European sovereign debt, collateralized debt obligations, subprime mortgages and other financial mumbo-jumbo make your eyes glaze over and wish for a copy of Mad Magazine? Well, in the hands of Michael Lewis (Liar’s Poker; Moneyball; The Big Short; and, The Blind Side) these terms and their consequences around the new European 3rd World come alive and resonate as a part of real life human folly. Lewis visited Iceland, Ireland, Greece and Germany before whipping back – boomerang style – to where it all began on Wall Street where, as Lewis puts it, its people were “taking what they can, just because they can, without regard for the larger social consequences”. It’s a beautiful narrative – smooth and exciting – about a story like something out of, well, Mad Magazine!
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 The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse
by Eric Carle
Childrens
Philomel; First Edition
Hardcover - 32 pages
$17.99
Not only blue horses, but orange elephants, black polar bears and a polka-dotted donkey in the inimitable Eric Carle (The Very Hungry Caterpillar; Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See?; A Very Busy Spider; et al) style of vivid splashes of color. Those who love Carle will not be disappointed. Those who don’t know him (if that’s possible) will be hooked. The book is another paean to exuberant free expression as well as an opening to the world of art in an intellectual dimension appropriate to the child’s mind. It pays tribute in a closing note to German expressionist Franz Marc whose Blue Horse from 1911 was his signature piece. “I am an artist and I paint…”, says a boy in the opening lines of the book. “I am a good artist”, he concludes at the book’s close. So is Carle!
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 Warmth of Other Suns
by Isabel Wilkerson
History
Vintage; Reprint edition
Paperback - 640 pages
$16.95
At the outset of the Great War in Europe in the mid-teens of the last century a remarkable migration (“exodus” if you will) was taking place under the radar in the United States. Since 1915 and up through the 1970’s some 6 million African Americans had abandoned the South and made their way to the North. Wilkerson likens these black migrants to the hoard of Europeans who came ashore on the east coast in the decades before. Like them the goal was a better future for themselves and their families. Though derided as the dregs of society they, like most of the Europeans, typically had more stable families, better education and more skills than the people they left behind. Though massive at 622 pages, this book is immensely readable as it follows the journeys of three Southern blacks to three different Northern destinations in three different decades of the migration. The title pays homage to Richard Wright who left Mississippi in the 1920’s in search of other suns.
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 Halfway Man
by Wayland Drew
General Fiction
Oberon Press
Paperback - 219 pages
$19.95
“My name is Travis Niskigwan. I belong in the North – on the shore of Lake Superior and in the shield beyond. I belong where the lakes are still the eyes of the earth, and where the shadows of invisible beings move on the snow in the moonlight. I belong where there are spirits still.” Two recent books – The Long Shining Waters by Danielle Sosin and Safe from the Sea by Peter Geye (both recent featured selections in these notes) – set Lake Superior at the heart of the story. We asked an erudite friend recently what other books (there seemed so few!) had a similar Lake Superior core. He suggested Halfway Man by Wayland Drew. Bingo! What a great book! The narrator is a college-educated Ojibwe, Travis Nikigwun, who has returned to his bush village to live and work seasonal jobs. The land on which the village – Neyashing – is situated falls into the hands of developers who plan an upscale resort community. The People will have to leave their ancestral home. Travis undertakes an elegant strategy which turns the tide. The parallel love story with his college sweetheart, Jenny - a radical eco-activist – provides an important counterpoint to the central story line.
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 Sense of an Ending
by Julian Barnes
General Fiction
Knopf
Hardcover - 176 pages
$23.95
Well, “finally”, you might say. Certainly that is so for Julian Barnes who had three of his previous books short-listed for the Man Booker Prize in the UK. This time was a charm as The Sense of an Ending received the 2011 prize. We sat last night with the twelve men of our winter reading and discussion group most of whom are sixtyish or more. We had read Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton and the conversation evoked much of the sense of growing older, more reflective, more agonizingly poised on the cusps of hope and despair that lie at the heart of Barnes’ novel. It is this angst of time, memory and remorse that fuels The Sense of an Ending. However bleak this morality tale, the elegant, multi-layered prose provides a beautiful narrative and uplifting reading experience. Barnes has earned his $82,000 award and then some!
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 The Art of Eating
by Edward Behr
Cooking/Food
University of California Press
Hardcover - 296 pages
$39.95
Edward Behr has offered companionship and creativity to culinary enthusiasts, including some of America's most famous chefs. This book collects the best recipes of the magazine's past twenty-five years-from classic appetizer and vegetable side dishes to meat entrees and desserts. Each section or recipe is introduced with a note on its relevant cultural history or something particular about a technique it uses, revealing how French and Italian cultural influences have shaped American cuisine.
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 Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever
by Jeff Kinney
Middle Readers
Harry N. Abrams
Hardcover - 224 pages
$13.95
Greg Heffley is in big trouble. School property has been damaged, and Greg is the prime suspect. But the crazy thing is, he's innocent. Or at least sort of.
The authorities are closing in, but when a surprise blizzard hits, the Heffley family is trapped indoors. Greg knows that when the snow melts he's going to have to face the music, but could any punishment be worse than being stuck inside with your family for the holidays?
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 Unbroken
by Laura Hillenbrand
History
Random House
Hardcover - 496 pages
$27.00
Janet Maslin in the New York Times wrote that the ideal way to read this book would be to have absolutely no idea of how her protagonist's - Louie Zamperini's - life unfolded. Taking that suggestion to heart, nothing more will be said about the book than that it is the story of an Olympic athlete who became an Air Force lieutenant in WW II and wound up as a Japanese prisoner of war. Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit would be a hard act to follow in any event, but this page-turner surely stands the test.
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 Matterhorn
by Karl Marlantes
General Fiction
Grove Press
Paperback - 640 pages
$15.95
According to David Masiel of the Washington Post, "The author, a highly decorated Marine Corps officer and veteran of Vietnam, wrote the novel over 30 years, while also raising a family and working full time as a business consultant. This feat of persistence pays off in a narrative born of perspective and memories that survive over time, a narrative of frustration, terror and the war-is-hell theme that lies at the heart of every war story since The Iliad."
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 The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie
by Wendy McClure
Memiors
Riverhead
Hardcover - 352 pages
$25.95
Wendy McClure is an unsentimental writer, but she loves the Little House On The Prairie books. No, she really loves them. She loves them so much that she bought a butter churn on eBay. And she churned butter - you know, just to see. She took off on a trip with her heroically game boyfriend (who's charming in part because he doesn't insist on making a point of how heroically game he is), and they visited historic places where Laura Ingalls Wilder lived, and museums and pageants and kitschy stores where she's still beloved. The Wilder Life is a book of stories about these adventures, and unlike a lot of similarly structured books in which writers appear to be doing unusual things just to write books about them, McClure essentially uses the opportunity to write a series of thoughtful essays about memory at different levels. There's the tiny, very specific theme of her particular childhood love of the Little House books, but as she immerses herself in those memories, it pulls back to become a book about the way all of us relate to stories we hear as children, and about the way nostalgia operates unpredictably and sometimes painfully, and ultimately even about our false cultural memories of a romantic pioneer past that only sort of happened.
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 A Storied Wilderness Rewilding the Apostle Islands
By James W. Feldman
Apostle Islands
University of Washington Press, 2011
Paperback - 320 pages
$35.00
“Rewilding” - as Feldman conceives it- is not about simply eradicating the traces of human presence and activity in the natural world, but rather recognizing the shared roles of people and nature in restoring and maintaining wild places. His laboratory is the marvelous landscape of the Apostle Islands – once a bustling hive of human community and commerce – which came to be the only area in the continental United States granted “wilderness” status during the presidency of George W. Bush. One of the key “stories” in the book is that of the Noring Farm - an abandoned homestead on Sand Island. In his forward, the eminent historian William Cronon describes his own experience of the fading remnants of the old farm and points out how Feldman drew upon it to demonstrate his insights into the intertwining of human and nonhuman nature. This is one of many of his stories of the Apostle Islands and as Cronon puts it, “[These] stories will remain legible on these pages in all their poignant ambiguity for a very long time to come.”
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 On Sand Island
by Jaqueline Briggs Martin
Childrens
Houghton Mifflin, 2003
Hardcover - 32 pages
$17.95
Speaking of Sand Island, one of the truly indigenous children’s books of the Apostle Islands is On Sand Island drawn from a true story of one of the fishing families that inhabited the island in the late 19th Century. Young Carl Dahl is tracked through the book as he seeks ways to build the case for his having a boat of his own so that he might become more like his fisherman father. The text is finely honed and evocative and the misty watercolor illustrations provide just the right tone for a somewhat sober, but compelling and pleasurable, children’s book. It brings to life the stories pursued by Feldman in A Storied Wilderness and provides a picture of what Noring Farm might have been like in its day.
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 State of Wonder
by Ann Patchett
General Fiction
Harper, 2011
Hardcover - 368 pages
$26.99
Patchett’s Bel Canto has always been a hard act to follow, but this book gives it a run for its money. State of Wonder is part a jungle thriller (with the emphasis on “jungle”) and part a pharmacological intrigue. The setting, in terms of the jungle flora and fauna itself as well as the grounds and village of a peculiar tribal culture, is exquisitely embroidered and its verisimilitude heightens the dramatic tension of the story itself. The science, however contrived it might be, is sufficiently persuasive to carry the story. The characters, from the Indian-American protagonist Marina Singh to Annick Swenson the research project leader to the elderly child-bearing villagers, are deeply and compellingly drawn. For Ann Patchett fans nothing less would be expected. For those who haven’t read her, give it a try!
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 Gathering: Memoir of a Seed Saver
by Diane Ott Whealy
Memoirs
Seed Savers Exchage, 2011
Harcover - 256 pages
$25.00
Diane Ott Whealy is co-founder of Seed Savers Exchange, a long-time leader in the heirloom seed movement and a fierce defender of the genetic integrity of our agricultural stock. This beautifully rendered volume intertwines the author’s own family roots and history with the roots of Heritage Farm and the Seed Saver’s Exchange and its hopeful ideology. She tells of the passion and perseverance of those with whom she has worked to bring her ideas and institutions to fruition. In a recent interview with Chelsea Green Publishing she related a bit of family lore regarding the “rooster step” – the slight, almost imperceptible increments of daylight as the Winter Solstice opens to the Summer Solstice – and how it is a metaphor for the growth of her movement. “The story of Seed Savers Exchange”, she says, “is analogous to rooster steps – small focused accomplishments over a lifetime, day after day, year after year, added together created the organization we have today.”
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 A Fine Balance
by Rohinton Mistry
General Fiction
Vintage, 2001
Paperback - 624 pages
$17.00
This powerful novel was written in 1995 and set in a Mumbai-like city in 1975 at the time that Indira Gandhi had declared a state of emergency and suspended basic civil rights. Her goal was to distract attention from a growing political scandal. The human toll was immense. The “fine balance” compels us to find the line between selflessness and self-preservation in the face of unrelenting attack and cruelty. The story plays out in the lives of four disparate characters sharing a ramshackle flat in an urban slum. Although misery haunts every step, there are nonetheless counterbalancing moments of redeeming joy, laughter, love and dignity. The book’s 624 pages are packed with absolutely captivating writing which evokes precisely the sensual culture of post-Partition and pre-hi-tech India and the people who swirled around in its chaos. A Fine Balance took the Giller Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1996. You will find it hard to put this one down!
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 In the Garden of Beasts
by Erik Larson
History
Crown, 2011
Hardcover - 464 pages
$26.00
During Hitler’s first year in power, FDR appointed a new ambassador to Berlin. He was William E. Dodd an obscure Chicago academic who, with his wife and two twenty-something children, embarked for Europe on the eve of the most vicious and violent epoch in human history. The family settled into an old house on Berlin’s central park - the Tiergarten (The Garden of Beasts) – and found themselves transported into the crucible of the Third Reich. The professor tried to use reason and quiet persuasion to temper Hitler and his henchman. His daughter, Martha, fresh from a dead marriage to a New York banker, ventured into the incredible energy of 1933 Berlin with a string of liaisons involving, among others, top Nazi and SS functionaries and, ultimately a Soviet agent. By the end of their tenure, Dodd’s warnings about the acute dangers of Nazism were largely ignored and Martha’s infatuation with it had flamed out. The rest is history told this compelling and readable book.
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 A Fierce Green Fire
by Marybeth Lorbiecki
People & Profiles
Falcon Press, 2005
Paperback - 224 pages
$14.95
“A thing is right only when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the community and the community includes the soil, waters, fauna and flora, as well as people. [A thing] is wrong when it tends otherwise.” This is how Aldo Leopold defined an ecological standard of morality in his address, The Ecological Conscience. It is what has become known as his Land Ethic. Lorbiecki’s concise, highly-readable biography provided the basis for the new film of Leopold’s life – Green Fire – which will premier with our co-sponsorship at StageNorth in Washburn on Thursday, April 28th. The book is beautifully illustrated with a large collection of photographs interspersed throughout.
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 Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World
by William D. Cohan
General Non-Fiction
Doubleday, 2011
Hardcover - 672 pages
$30.50
There is no shortage of books chronicling the role of Wall Street in igniting the financial crisis of 2008. Less has been documented about how Wall Street has profited from its sins. Cohan sets out to do just that. He traces the rise of Goldman to the summit of world capitalism and then pierces the veil of secrecy and the most aggressive and sophisticated public relations machine in the financial industry to reveal a sordid underbelly of greed and avarice. As a former Lazard Freres & Co. investment banker, Cohan knows where to look for the bodies and as a former newspaper reporter he knows how to tell the story in crisp and captivating detail. It’s a thriller in corporate garb!
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 Death at La Fenice
by Donna Leon
Mystery
Harper, 2004
Paperback - 288 pages
$13.99
There is nothing quite so delightful as to discover not only a captivatingly good book, but a book which leads a series of equally captivatingly good books featuring the same core cast of characters and the same basic setting around which each new story unfolds. We have had this experience with William Kent Krueger’s and Steve Hamilton’s murder mysteries set here in the north woods. Donna Leon’s venue is the city of Venice and the cast of characters are Vice-Commissario of Police Guido Brunetti and his family and colleagues. At the heart of it all is Venice – the food, the smells, the fog, the light, the shadows and the idiosyncratic people. If that doesn’t get you, the stories will. Her latest, still in hardcover, is Drawing Conclusions. But, we’d recommend following the sequence. Start with Death at La Fenice and you'll be hooked!
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 Environmental Politics and the Creation of a Dream: Establishing the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore
by Harold C. Jordahl
Local Interest
University of Wisconsin Press, 2011
Paperback - 360 pages
$24.95
Anyone familiar with the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore (and now the Gaylord Nelson Wilderness area) knows the breathtaking beauty of this archipelago of twenty-two islands at the western end of Lake Superior off the Bayfield Peninsula. But, few are aware of the mighty struggle at the local, state and national levels that was mounted to ensure its creation. John F. Kennedy was there. Gaylord Nelson was there. And, Bud Jordahl was there and in this book he recounts chapter and verse the political and bureaucratic complexities which were overcome to preserve these islands as a national park.
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 The Long-Shining Waters
by Danielle Sosin
General Fiction
Milkweed, 2011
Hardcover - 320 pages
$24.00
Set in the North Country, Sosin’s debut novel gives us three stories whose characters are separated by centuries and circumstance, yet are connected across time by the shared geography of Lake Superior’s vast fresh-water expanse. The narratives of an Ojibwe woman in the 17th Century, a Norwegian fishing couple at the turn of the last century, and a hardscrabble 21st Century woman forced onto the road, unfold and overlap with the mesmerizing rhythms of the lake. The book – being released on May 17th - won the Milkweed National Fiction Prize and the author will be with us here in Bayfield for a reading and signing on July 16th.
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 A Visit from the Goon Squad
by Jennifer Egan
General Fiction
Anchor Press, 2011
Paperback - 352 pages
$14.95
If prizes are the measure of the literary quality of a work, then A Visit from the Goon Squad ranks right up there. Its receipt of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction last week was preceded by last year’s fiction prize from the National Book Critics Circle and its listing for the prestigious Orange Prize for Fiction in the UK. In fact, the book easily lives up to its score on the international literary competition circuit. It is not an “old-fashioned” book – it jumps around in time, has a quirky format (including a chapter set in PowerPoint style!), and features a variety of stylistic experiments with a motley crew of characters. The book is very urban – New York and Bay Area – and very post-modern. How do we change as that same old song keeps playing? Entertainment Weekly calls it “a frequently dazzling piece of layer-cake metafiction” (whatever that means!).
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 Where Men Win Glory
Jon Krakauer
Non Fiction
Doubleday, 2009
Paperback - 480 pages
$15.95
Immediately after 9/11, Pat Tillman took a pass on a $3.6 million deal to play pro football with the Arizona Cardinals. Instead he and his brother enlisted in the Army Rangers to fight in Iraq. After being redeployed to Afghanistan he was killed in an unusual “friendly fire” incident. Krakauer relates with precision and grace the story of how the government cynically attempted to recast the event in heroic terms rather than tell the truth of the matter. The book goes well beyond the tragic occurrence itself and goes deeply into the personal lives of Tillman himself as well as his family and fellow soldiers. Those who have enjoyed others of the Krakauer oeuvre – Into Thin Air, Under the Banner of Heaven, and Eiger Dreams – will find this book enormously satisfying.
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 Across the Great Divide
Roberta Price
Non Fiction
University of New Mexico Press, 2010
Hardcover - 160 pages
$34.95
In the late 1960’s and into the 1970’s a serious and significant segment of the counterculture went “back to the land” in the form of communes, collectives and other intentional communities. Roberta Price, at first an academic and observer, was among them. In 1969, under a grant from SUNY-Buffalo she traveled west to southern Colorado and northern New Mexico to study and photograph the emerging scene in and around the Sangre de Cristo mountains – Drop City, New Buffalo, the Reality Construction Company, Libre, the Red Rockers, Triple A, the Hog Farm, Lama Foundation, and others. Long story short – she “went native” living at Libre for seven years! She beautifully captures in image and word the essence of that special time and place (disclosure: I was there). The book is an honest and affectionate account of an often misunderstood, mischaracterized and marginalized phenomenon.
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 Decoded
Jay-Z
People & Profiles
Spiegel & Grau, 2010
Hardcover - 336 pages
$35.00
When one encounters the Andy Warhol Rorschach on the cover of this book, one is not disposed to think “Hip-Hop”! But, it turns out to be a first-hand account of Jay-Z’s artistry and the culture and community that so powerfully shaped him and his work. That experience informs his lyrics and the book brilliantly “decodes” them. Jay-Z attended to every detail of this beautiful book from the content to the presentation. Here it is in his own words: “When I first started working on this book, I told my editor that I wanted it to do three important things. The first was to make the case that hip-hop lyrics—not just my lyrics, but those of every great MC—are poetry if you look at them closely enough. The second was I wanted the book to tell a little bit of the story of my generation, to show the context for the choices we made at a violent and chaotic crossroads in recent history. And the third piece was that I wanted the book to show how hip-hop created a way to take a very specific and powerful experience and turn it into a story that everyone in the world could feel and relate to.”
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 Old Bear
Kevin Henkes
Childrens
Greenwillow Books, 2008
Hardcover - 32 pages
$17.99
Caldecott Medal winner Keven Henkes added Old Bear to his oeuvre several years ago (2008) and its resonance is still felt in the heart of deep winter here in the Northwoods. The elegant simplicity of the illustrations track perfectly with the story of Old Bear lying in deep hibernation and dreaming of the cycles of his many seasons – spring flowers, summer berries, fall colors and the winter stars. The rhythmic pace makes this an ideal read-aloud and gently rocks young listeners to sleep. We have featured Kevin Henkes before in these pages (My Garden- 2010) and it reminds us that fine new books have roots in the great work that has preceded them.
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 A Death in the Family
James Agee
General Fiction
Penguin Classics, 2009
Paperback - 320 pages
$16.00
Fifty years ago I picked up this book and read its prelude – Knoxville Summer of 1915. And then I read it again and again. No piece of writing had ever so fully satisfied my own personal literary taste. None! And so it has been lo those fifty long years. The novel which follows is one of the most poignant depictions of loss and grief ever written. While still in the thrall of Knoxville, the reader is stunned as the narrator’s father is killed in an automobile accident while returning home from an out-of-town errand. The young and happy family is torn apart. We enter the hearts and minds of each of the characters – his wife, his children, his parents, and his brother-in-law – as each tries to make sense of this tragic loss. All is rendered in powerful, lyrical prose made the more evocative by the fact of Agee’s father’s similar death when he was six. A grim, but deeply satisfying read.
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 The Ginger Tree
Oswald Wynd
General Fiction
Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2002
Paperback - 336 pages
$12.99
We recently featured Jim Fergus’ One Thousand White Women in these pages. The parallels with The Ginger Tree are almost too close for comfort! Both books are set roughly at the turn of the last century. Both open with young women setting out on long journeys to wed husbands from vastly different cultures from their own. Both are constructed from fragments of letters and diaries in which these two women describe the lives which follow. Oddly enough, both were written by men! In The Ginger Tree, a young Scotswoman sets sail for Asia to join her betrothed. An adulterous affair with a Japanese nobleman ends that project and leaves her abandoned and alone for forty tumultuous years in China and Japan. A story every bit as gripping as that of May Dodd in One Thousand White Women.
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 Cry, The Beloved Country
Alan Paton
General Fiction
Scriber, 2003
Paperback - 316 pages
$15.00
Our thirteen-year-old grandson leaves tomorrow for a three-week Christmas holiday in South Africa. It brought to mind this classic. In the opening paragraph Paton describes the area around Stephen Kumalo’s village as “lovely beyond any singing of it”. Similar haunting and rhythmic prose carries the reader through this hypnotic and tragic narrative. Kumalo is an Anglican priest and Zulu elder whose son and sister have left the village and disappeared into the bowels of Johannesburg. He scrapes together what little money he and his wife have saved over the years and sets off in search of his family. This thread weaves the fabric of a story of hope and despair, tribe and colonialism, racism and redemption, Christianity and Animism. It will stay with you for a long time!
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 Of Thee I Sing; A Letter to My Daughters
Barack Obama
Illustrated by Loren Long
Children's
Knopf Books, 2010
Hardcover - 40 pages
$17.99
Loren Long has been one of our favorite illustrators of children’s books beginning with his early Slugger series and through his recent Otis. It was a thrill to learn that he had collaborated with then Senator Barack Obama in a new children’s book. Released recently, neither the illustrations nor the text disappoint. On the contrary, they are splendid! Flowing from the opening question from the President to his daughters Sasha and Malia – “Have I told you?” – is a letter posing a series of questions each highlighting the life and contributions of a notable American. With each question more and more children join the girls to hear of the special gifts and talents of figures from George Washington to Georgia O’Keefe and from Helen Keller to Jackie Robinson. The evocative text merges precisely with the sensational illustrations. A treasure!
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 Badger Boneyards; The Eternal Rest of the Story
Dennis McCann
Wisconsin Interest
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2010
Paperback - 176 pages
$16.95
Longtime Milwaukee Journalist (and now Bayfield’s own) Dennis McCann roams Wisconsin in search of the curious, the funny, the tragic and the interesting that lie in the cemeteries of the state. This eclectic collection of tales includes everything from the Heisman Trophy to the poet Percival. Want to know about the world’s smallest man? The virgin with many husbands? The writing is warm and humorous where appropriate and thoughtful and sober where that fits. It’s a new angle on history – not that of Bayfield’s other resident historian William Cronin – but, thoroughly interesting, readable, and memorable.
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 Just Kids
Patti Smith
People & Profiles
Ecco, 2010
Paperback - 320 pages
$16.00
Just released in soft cover, Patti Smith’s memoir of her life and relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe was the winner of the 2010 National Book Award for non-fiction. Best known to most as the intense rocker of “Horses” and “Because the Night," Smith also has a deep reputation as a poet with influences ranging from Arthur Rimbaud to Bob Dylan (or the other way around as she would put it!). Her rhythms and phrasing emerge equally in her intensely personal prose drawn from years as a disciplined diarist. The synthesis of her ethereal style with her access to the hard contemporaneous facts from the diaries makes this a unique and compelling portrait of two often misunderstood artists.
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 Cleopatra, A Life
Stacy Schiff
People & Profiles
Little, Brown & Company, 2010
Hardcover - 384 pages
$29.99
So, forget about the devastatingly beautiful, one-dimensional seductress of popular history and myth and welcome one of the great leaders - man or woman – of all time. That is what Pulitzer Prize biographer Stacy Shiff does for Cleopatra with meticulous historiography and astonishingly luminous writing. Not only is Cleopatra herself recast as an enormously powerful and competent player in some the most titanic political events ever, but those in the supporting roles - including Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, King Herod and others - are revealed in a fresh and provocative way. This is an epic work destined to be a classic.
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 Tinkers
Paul Harding
General Fiction
Bellevue Literary Press, 2009
Paperback - 192 pages
$14.95
Another Pulitzer Prize, this time for fiction, went to Paul Harding for his quiet, contemplative novel on the life of a dying clockmaker in rural Maine. The character, George Washington Crosby, was the son of an old-time tinker who traveled around with his wagon of wares in rural Maine. He lies on his deathbed as time counts down on the dozens of clocks that fill the house. George thinks about the painful, impoverished lives of his parents. His father was a door-to-door salesman and acute epileptic. His mother contemplated suicide if only she could break through the frozen lake and drown. The characters and setting are rendered with exquisite and imaginative detail. Harding’s is a fresh new voice that we will hear more from as time goes by.
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The Hunger Games Trilogy
The Hunger Games
Paperback
ISBN: 978-0439023528
Price: $8.99
Catching Fire
Paperback
ISBN: 978-0439023535
Price: $8.99
Mockingjay
Hardcover
ISBN: 978-0439023511
Price: $17.99
Engrossing, perfectly paced and brilliantly plotted, the "Hunger Games" trilogy by Suzanne Collins is more than just another futuristic action series for the teenage reader. Collins' characters are realistic and sympathetic as they form alliances and friendships in the face of overwhelming odds. Big ideas, from the injustice of a few people living in comfort while the rest of the world goes hungry to the priority placed on entertainment in a society where many do without necessities, are explored amidst a thrilling adventure that will appeal to science fiction, survival and adventure readers.
The books raise and examine a host of philosophical and moral issues surrounding government control, warfare and senseless violence more commonly associated with more adult novels. However, Collins deals with them in a way that encourages young people to ponder the decisions made by others that affect their own lives. The books are generally considered suitable for readers 12 and up but it will depend on the particular 12 or 13-year old. For older children who like action-packed suspense, these books will keep them glued to the page long after bedtime! Even many adults (like me) couldn't put them down.
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 The Song of Hiawatha
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Native Americana
Godine Press
Hardcover - 304 pages
$19.95
The roots of Hiawatha, Longfellow’s epic poem, reach deep into Native American mythology and, especially, that of the Ojibwe of the upper Great Lakes. The original sources were researched and compiled by an Ojibwe woman, Bae-wa-wa-ge-zhik-a-quay, “The Woman of the Sound Which the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky,” who, when she married Henry Schoolcraft, took the more prosaic name of Jane Schoolcraft. Her work (co-authored with her mother) was published as Algic Researches and formed the base of her husband’s Myth of Hiawatha which, in turn, was reworked by Longfellow and published as the haunting poem we know so well. The compelling rhythm and measure of the work is drawn from a Finnish epic, the Kalevala, and has mesmerized family read-alouds for generations.
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 Llama Llama Holiday Drama
Anna Dewdney
Children's
Viking Juvenile, 2010
Hardcover - 40 pages
$16.99
Following up her earlier Llama Llama books author, Anna Dewdney, plunges headlong into the stresses and joys of the holiday season. How can a child possible wait? Yet there is so much fun in all the pre-Christmas activities that the wait becomes a joy in itself. Like Llama Llama Red Pajama, Llama Llama Mad at Mama, and Llama Llama Misses Mama the illustrations (also by the author) are rich and detailed and beautifully capture the spirit of the story line. While cute and fun, Llama Llama Holiday Drama also conveys a deeper message of love and generosity. It is a pleasure for both the reader and the wide-eyed listeners.
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 Pure Superior
Jeff Richter
Lake Superior Interest
Nature's Press, 2009
Hardcover - 228 pages
$38.95
The essence of this greatest of the Great Lakes has rarely, if ever, been revealed as dramatically and fully as in Jeff Richter’s Pure Superior. From dew drops to the powerful breakers, from the tiniest critters to the massive moose, from the Soo to Duluth-Superior, Richter’s photos capture Lake Superior in all of its detailed and nuanced grandeur. Accompanying the pictures (and enriching the portrait) are the moving, witty, thoughtful notes of Howard Paap, Sam Cook, John Bates and Justin Isherwood expressing their long and intimate association with the lake and its environs. This is a gift book that will be treasured for generations.
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 A River Runs Through It
Norman Maclean
Fiction, Short Stories
University of Chicago Press, 2001
Paperback - 239 pages
$12.00
In the summer of 1937, Norman MacLean and his younger brother Paul take one last fishing trip together in the mountains of Montana. Paul has once again descended into a pit of addiction and self-destruction. Norman attempts to help him get his life back on track. Fly fishing is the metaphor through which MacLean weaves the story of his father, a Presbyterian minister, his brother, and himself. The writing is rich and evocative and captures what wilderness means – the wilderness in us and us in the wilderness. This volume also includes Logging and Pimping and “YourPal, Jim” and USFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky.
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 A Cold Day in Paradise
Steve Hamilton
Mystery
Mintaur Books, 2000
Paperback - 320 pages
$7.99
Alex McKnight is a retired Detroit cop living in Paradise on the shore of Lake Superior on Michigan’s remote Upper Peninsula. He’s an on-again-off-again private detective living on disability with a bullet next to his heart. If he doesn’t find trouble, trouble finds him. A Cold Day in Paradise is the first in his series of Alex McKnight Northwoods/Ojibwe Country murder mysteries. The series is sequential so this is the place to start. The writing is fresh and the characters well-defined and original. Great reads for a winter’s night!
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 Nightshade
Andrea Cremer
Young Adult
Philomel, 2010
Hardcover - 528 pages
$17.99
While other teenage girls daydream about boys, Calla Tor imagines ripping out her enemies’ throats. And she wouldn’t have it any other way. Calla was born a warrior and on her eighteenth-birthday she’ll become the alpha female of the next generation of Guardian wolves. But Calla’s predestined path veers off course the moment she saves the life of a wayward hiker, a boy her own age. This human boy’s secret will turn the young pack's world upside down and forever alter the outcome of the centuries-old Witches' War that surrounds them all.
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 One Thousand White Women – The Journals of May Dodd
General Fiction
St. Martins Press, 1999
Paperback - 304 pages
$14.95
Premised upon a bizarre historical fact – a Cheyenne proposal during treaty negotiations in Washington, DC to trade one thousand horses for one thousand white women – Fergus uses further historical detail to spin out the story of May Dodd who might have been one of the one thousand if the idea had actually come to fruition. It follows her path from confinement in a Chicago mental institution (for alleged “promiscuity”) to her life among the Cheyenne on the Great Plains. It is a compelling story embroidered with the patterns of life in a Native American community and edged with the tensions of relations between the sexes, the races, the religions and, ultimately, between “civilization” and “savagery”.
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 Vermilion Drift
William Kent Krueger
Mystery
Atria Books, 2010
Hardcover, 304 pages
$25.00
Krueger’s series of superb Cork O’Connor murder mysteries have typically been set and played out in the forests, lakes, small towns and reservations of the North Woods and Ojibway Country. The ninth of the series, Heaven’s Keep, went further afield as the action occurred high in the Rocky Mountain west. The tenth, Vermillion Drift, goes deep rather than wide and finds O’Connor drilling down into the depths of the Iron Range mining legacy - both the physical ravages and the human corruption. As usual, the characters are unique and well-defined and the writing is both literary and accessible. One could begin Krueger’s oeuvre with Iron Lake, his first, or with Vermillion Drift and then start over at the beginning of the series.
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 Seasons of the North
Jeff Richter
Photo/Large Format
Manitowish Waters Press, 2003
Hardcover, 164 pages
$29.00
If one element could best define the character of the North Woods it would be the dramatic cycle of the seasons. Together with essays from John Bates, Terry Daulton, Justin Isherwood and Chad McGrath, Jeff Richter’s photographs beautifully capture this stunning turn of the annual wheel. Some reveal the soft emerging life of springtime, others the extreme landscapes of winter ice. The palette of autumn colors belies the dense, humid greens of the summer forest. This volume is an eye-opener for those whose visits have been limited to the seasons of sailboats and beaches, Leinenkugel’s and brats and those long, long summer days in the northern reaches.
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 Born to Run
Christopher McDougall
Sports Adventure
Random House, 2010
Hardcover, 287 pages
$24.95
Some, not many, have taken the classic rail trip between Chihuahua and Los Mochis, Mexico with its 8200 foot change in altitude, 86 tunnels, 39 bridges and some of the most dramatic landscape in North America. Fewer still have left the train at Creel and descended to Batopilas at the bottom of the Barancas del Cobre (Copper Canyons). Almost no one has ventured further. This is the home of the elusive Tarahumara Indians and its grandeur and challenge are every bit the equal of the Grand Canyon. It is with the Tarahumara - the world’s greatest distance runners - that McDougall’s story unfolds. From his opening question – Why does my foot hurt? – to the culmination of a fifty-mile race between Tarahumara runners and an eclectic group of Americans, this is a fascinating and awe inspiring book.
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 Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country
Louise Erdrich
Native Americana
Random House, 2006
Hardcover, 143 pages
$20.00
Louise Erdrich is one of the most prolific and celebrated writers of the so-called Native American Renaissance in literature. She is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of the Anishinaabe of which her grandfather was tribal chair. This small, but captivating, book is her account of a vision quest she made with her eighteen-month-old daughter into the lakes and islands of the Northwoods in search of the literature of her tribe. Along the way she paid homage to the spirits in the old ways with tobacco and ribbon shirts to ensure life’s blessings for herself and her family. Central to the story are the atisikan or painted images found on the rocky islands and the library of rare books on Ojibwe culture and language collected by Ernest Oberholtzer on Mallard Island in Rainy Lake.
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 Olivia Goes to Venice
Ian Falconer
Children's
Simon & Schuster, 2010
Reinforced
$17.99
One of the current favorites among children’s books is Ian Falconer’s “Olivia” series. This lovable and bossy pig has had a band, been queen of the trampoline and left no stone unturned to find a missing toy. Now she is off to Venice! She and her family explore the old city – the grand palazzos, the bridges, and the canals. They feed the pigeons, but most of all they feed themselves – gelato, gelato, gelato – until the gondola nearly sinks! Falconer intersperses lovely charcoal-and-gouache drawings with photos (often humorously PhotoShopped) of Venice. A new, somewhat more sophisticated take on the Olivia that children (and adults) have come to love.
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 Lake Superior: Story and Spirit
John and Ann Mahan
Nature/Photography
Sweetwater Visions
Large Format Hardcover - 288 Pages
$44.95
This is the absolute best of both worlds - incomparable photography coupled with an arresting narrative on the Lake Superior ecosystem! The deep, detailed text is illustrated by 140 stunning color photographs of what the Mahans call their "sacred place". The book takes us from the geological origins of the lake right up to the present threats to the ecological balance of the "Shining Big Sea Water".
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 The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
David Mitchell
Fiction
Random House
Hardcover - 479 Pages
$26.00
Want something entirely original in the historical fiction genre - and lyical to boot? The novel centers on a love story between a European man and Japanese woman at the turn of the 18th Century in Edo-era Japan. The relationship is something of a metaphor for the larger scope of the emerging encounter between an insular, feudal Japan and a Europe of Enlightenment ideas and commercial corruption. Jacob de Zoet is an uptight young Dutch bookkeeper; Miss Aibagawa is a beautiful, but scarred, Japanese midwife. The rest is history!
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 Listening Point
by Sigurd Olson
Nature
U. of Minn Press
Softcover, 243 Pages
$15.95
We dropped our 12-year-old grandson at Burntside Lake near Ely last Friday for a two-week adventure in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. This, of course, is the site of Sigurd Olson's Listening Point - one of the earliest and still compelling contribitions to conservation and environmental literature. "Why wilderness", asks Olson and he proceeds to address that question with poetic meditations from his cabin in the Quetico-Superior country of northern Minnesota.
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 Burn
Nevada Barr
Recent Release - Fiction
Minotaur Books
Hardcover, 378 Pages
$25.95
After the traumas of the past couple of wilderness-based Nevada Barr novels, National Park Service Ranger Anna Pigeon has gone to New Orleans to rest and recover. Not so fast! A gruesomely killed pigeon marked with runic symbols portends evil doings in the Big Easy. You'll love her new partner-in-crime-busting, Claire Sullivan, who shares top billing in this dark, fast-paced urban mystery.
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 Angle of Repose
Wallace Stegner
Fiction
Penguin Books
Softcover, 569 Pages
$16.00
The title describes the angle at which soil finally settles after, for example, being dumped from a mine as tailings. It similarly describes the Ward family's settling out from the hard life of mining and construction engineering in the American west as narrated by their grandson Lyman Ward. Stegner said of the book, "It's perfectly clear that if every writer is born to write one story, that's my story."
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 Ladybug Girl at the Beach
David Soman & Jacky Davis
Children
Dial Books
Hardcover
$16.99
Lulu (aka Ladybug Girl) is afraid to go into the water! She does fine with sand castles, kites and ice cream cones, but won't go near the rough and noisy surf! With Bingo at her side, Lulu (who as Ladybug Girl can do anything!) conquers her fear and has a great day at the beach. Beautifully illustrated!
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 The Four Hills of Life: Ojibwe Wisdom
by Thomas Peacock and Marlene Wisuri
Young reader/Teen
Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2009
Hardcover, 119 pgs
$24.00
Beautiful illustrations combined with wise and engaging text tell the story of the climb through the seasons of life from the Ojibwe perspective. A variety of activities lead young readers to and through the challenges and responsibilities of the path of life. Of interest for all ages.
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 My Garden
by Kevin Henkes
Children’s – Kindergarten, Age 5-6
Green Willow, 2010
Hardcover, 40 pgs
$17.99
It’s Springtime in the North Country and our minds turn from touring skis to the garden. This luminous gem sows the imagination of a little girl in a straw hat and harvests a cornucopia of chocolate rabbits, beachball tomatoes and invisible carrots. A visual delight to stimulate every child’s imagination and maybe even lead them into the garden!
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 Jewels on the Water: Lake Superior's Apostle Islands
Text by Jeff Rennicke, Photographs by Layne Kennedy
Photo/Large format
Friends of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore
Hardcover, 128 pgs
$35.00
Published by The Friends of the Apostle Islands, this book is the definitive introduction to the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore and the Gaylord A. Nelson National Wilderness Area. Superb photography and an excellent historical narrative make this an ideal accent for your coffee table, desk, waiting room or lobby.
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 Imperfect Birds
by Anne Lamott
Fiction
Riverhead , 2010
Hardcover, 278 pgs
$25.95
Rosie Ferguson moves into later adolescence and those of us who have raised daughters are on the edges of our seats. Mother Elizabeth and step-father James try to navigate these perilous shores seeking to understand and deal with this budding Ivy League physics whiz and the sex, drugs and rock n’ roll vortex that swirls around her.
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 Sacred Hunger
by Barry Unsworth
Historical Fiction
W.W. Norton, 1993
Paperpack, 629 pgs
$14.95
Winner of the 1992 Booker Prize, this is a riveting historical novel set in the Atlantic slave trade of the mid-18th Century. The action unfolds aboard the Liverpool Merchant as it plies its triangular route from England to West Africa to the New World. Notwithstanding that the central themes are greed and violence, Unsworth relates them with compelling beauty and grace.
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 Into the Story: A Writer's Journey through Life, Politics, Sports and Loss
by David Maraniss
Non-Fiction/Journalism/Personal Memoir
Simon & Schuster, 2010
Hardcover, 283 pgs
$26.00
Journalism par excellence presented as an anthology spanning the breadth of the Maraniss oeuvre from the intensely personal to the world of sports and from politics to biography. From his small-town Wisconsin roots he has ranged from the Rome Olympics to Vietnam and from Newt Gingrich to Vince Lombardi.
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