A History of the 1970s in Minnesota, looking closely at this transitional time, a ten-year evolution of the state from the anti-establishment tumult of the Sixties to the Reagan conservatism of the Eighties. Based on primary documents, oral histories, collection photographs, and close look at history, politics, and popular culture of the decade, including the state's prominence in national politics, environmentalism, immigration change, fem ...
A collection of Civil War–era letters written by Hans Christian Heg, who grew up in southeastern Norway, migrated to Wisconsin, and traveled to the gold fields of California and the mining camps of the West, only to return to the Badger State to lead a regiment of Scandinavian immigrants—the Fifteenth Wisconsin—in the Civil War. His achievements are well known among Norwegian-Americans but little known outside that circle. Ho ...
When Margaret Williamson left her family's rural Wisconsin farm to work in Minneapolis in 1923, her mother, Olava, wrote regularly with updates about daily activities: laundry, bread baking, plowing, planting, and harvesting the crops. Sometimes she enclosed a note from seven- year- old Helen, who reported on school and shenanigans and how she longed to see Margaret again.<br /><br />So begins decades of stories about a famil ...
During the American Civil War, James Madison Bowler and Elizabeth Caleff Bowler courted, married, became parents, and bought a farm. They attended dances, talked politics, and confided their deepest fears. Because of the war, however, they experienced all of these events separately, sharing them through hundreds of letters from 1861 to 1865 while Madison served in the third Minnesota Volunteer regiment and Lizzie stayed in Nininger, Minnesota. I ...
Between 1941 and 1945 more than 110,000 American marines, soldiers, airmen, and sailors were taken prisoner by German, Italian, and Japanese forces. Most who fought overseas during World War II weren't prepared for capture, or for the life-altering experiences of incarceration, torture, and camaraderie bred of hardship that followed. Their harrowing story—often overlooked in Greatest Generation narratives—is told here ...
They were brothers from Norway's "Red County." One was a guerrilla leader, the other a president of a singing association. One emigrated to America, the other stayed home to fight for Norwegian independence. Both had an impact on their nation's history. This is the story of the one who left.<br /><br />Olaf Martin Oleson was among the hundreds of thousands of Norwegians who emigrated to the United St ...
Through a myriad of characters both real and invented (and some whose names have been changed) journalist and author Bryan Woolley presents one of the best dissections of Dallas life in 1963 in his novel November 22. Covering the twenty-four hours surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Woolley accurately captures the essence of the day’s atmosphere, resulting in a rich cross section of a city more complex and diverse than ma ...
In the early colonies, this country was on the precipice of becoming an autocratic theocracy. The battle for democracy and equal rights was sparked by a few characters, who are now lost and forgotten pieces of history. Forefathers & Founding Fathers is an adventure, a love story, and a tale of great persistence, chronicling those who fought to create the template for America. It is a tale that every American should know and yet most do not.T ...
