Earth Day creator Gaylord Nelson comes to vivid life in this addition to the Badger Biographies series for young readers. Accessibly written and richly illustrated with historic images, Gaylord Nelson: Champion for Our Earth includes a glossary of terms, sidebars on World War II, DDT, and several facets of the environmental movement, plus activities and discussion questions.

The Ice Age National Scenic Trail meanders across the state of Wisconsin through scenic glacial terrain dotted with lakes, steep hills, and long, narrow ridges. David M. Mickelson, Louis J. Maher Jr., and Susan L. Simpson bring this landscape to life and help readers understand what Ice Age Wisconsin was like. An overview of Wisconsin’s geology and key geological concepts helps readers understand geological processes, materials, and landforms. The authors detail geological features along each segment of the Ice Age Trail and at each of the nine National Ice Age Scientific Reserve sites.
    Readers can experience the Ice Age Trail through more than one hundred full-color photographs, scores of beautiful maps, and helpful diagrams. Science briefs explain glacial features such as eskers, drumlins, and moraines. Geology of the Ice Age National Scenic Trail also includes detailed trail descriptions that are cross referenced with the science briefs to make it easy to find the geological terms used in the trail descriptions. Whatever your level of experience with hiking or knowledge of glaciers, this book will provide lively, informative, and revealing descriptions for a new understanding of the shape of the land beneath our feet.

Between 1820 and 1910, nearly five and a half million German-speaking immigrants came to the United States in search of new homes, new opportunities, and freedom from European tyrannies. Most settled in the Midwest, and many came to Wisconsin, whose rich farmlands and rising cities attracted three major waves of immigrants. By 1900, German farmers, merchants, manufacturers, editors, and educators—to say nothing of German churches (both Catholic and Lutheran), cultural institutions, food, and folkways—had all set their mark upon Wisconsin. In the most recent census (1990), more than 53 percent of the state's residents considered themselves "German"—the highest of any state in the Union.

In this best-selling book, now with updated text and additional historical photographs, Richard H. Zeitlin describes the values and ideas the Germans brought with them from the Old Country; highlights their achievements on the farm, in the workplace, and in the academy over the course of 150 years; and explains why their impact has been so profound and pervasive.

As a writer, Glenway Wescott (1901–1987) left behind several novels, including The Grandmothers and The Pilgrim Hawk, noted for their remarkable lyricism. As a literary figure, Wescott also became a symbol of his times. Born on a Wisconsin farm in 1901, he associated as a young writer with Hemingway, Stein, and Fitzgerald in 1920s Paris and subsequently was a central figure in New York’s artistic and gay communities. Though he couldn’t finish a novel after the age of forty-five, he was just as famous as an arts impresario, as a diarist, and for the company he kept: W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Marianne Moore, Somerset Maugham, E. M. Forster, Joseph Campbell, and scores of other luminaries.
     In Glenway Wescott Personally, Jerry Rosco chronicles Wescott’s long and colorful life, his early fame and later struggles to write, the uniquely privileged and sometimes tortured world of artistic creation. Rosco sensitively and insightfully reveals Wescott’s private life, his long relationship with Museum of Modern Art curator Monroe Wheeler, his work with sex researcher Alfred Kinsey that led to breakthrough findings on homosexuality, and his kinship with such influential artists as Jean Cocteau, George Platt-Lynes, and Paul Cadmus.

U-S-A , U-S-A is a familiar refrain heard in every Olympics, but truly it could be Wis-con-sin! Since pioneering hurdler Alvin Kraenzlein got his start here in the 1890s, the Badger State has nurtured, trained, or schooled more than 400 Olympic athletes in a vast array of sports. Wisconsin’s varied landscape and climate accommodate serious athletes whether they compete on ice, on snow, in the water, or on terra firma. We tend to bring a Midwestern work ethic to our endeavors, and our Olympians have often been hailed in the press and in public as being among the most humble and down-to-earth people around. Our state boasts a thriving youth sports culture where many homegrown athletes get their start; others are drawn here by our world-class universities, athletic facilities, and coaching talent. No matter how an athlete comes to Wisconsin, the state becomes part of his or her Olympic story. In Going for Wisconsin Gold, author Jessie Garcia provides insights into the lives of athletes who grew up or spent time in Wisconsin on their journey to the Olympic Games. She shares some of our competitors most captivating tales—from those that have become legend, like Dan Jansen’s heartbreaking falls and subsequent magical gold, to unlikely brushes with glory (do you know which Green Bay Packer was almost an Olympic high jumper?). Featuring the athletes’ personal stories, many of them told here in detail for the first time, plus pictures from their private collections, Going for Wisconsin Gold provides a new and deeper understanding of the sacrifices, joy, pain, heartbreak, and complete dedication it takes to reach the world’s grandest sporting competition.

". . . a smart, sprightly, sex-drenched, and neatly plotted novel . . ."
---Alan Cheuse, National Public Radio and the Chicago Tribune

"Spark is at her sly, funny, and cutting best in her third novel, a clever and affecting variation on the biblical story of Esther."
---Booklist

"Spark's prose is tight, funny, insightful and occasionally heartbreaking as it probes the current education system, the arts and society's ills."
---Publishers Weekly

Good for the Jews is a smart, funny, sexy novel set in Madison, Wisconsin, during the Bush administration. Part mystery and part stranger-comes-to town story, Good for the Jews is loosely based on the biblical book of Esther. Like Esther, Debra Spark's characters deal with anti-Semitism and the way that powerful men---and the women who love them---negotiate bureaucracies.

At the core of the story of right and wrong are young, attractive Ellen Hirschorn and her older cousin Mose, a high school teacher who thinks he knows, in fact, what is "good for the Jews"---and for Ellen, too. Their stories intertwine with those of the school superintendent, his ex-wife and son, and a new principal. Workplace treachery, the bonds of family, coming of age, and romantic relationships all take center stage as the characters negotiate the fallout from a puzzling fire.

Spark's evocative writing style and sharp, understanding treatment of her diverse characters draw the reader into this surprising page-turner, a finalist for the 2009 ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award.

Debra Spark is the author of two previous novels, The Ghost of Bridgetown and Coconuts for the Saint, as well as Curious Attractions: Essays on Fiction Writing. She's been a fellow at Radcliffe College's Bunting Institute and a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts award. Her short stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in publications including Food and Wine, Esquire, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Yankee. She is a professor at Colby College and teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She lives with her husband and son in North Yarmouth, Maine.

Glenway Wescott’s poignant story of nineteenth-century Wisconsin was first published in 1927 as the winner of the prestigious Harper Prize. Like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, Wescott left the Midwest behind to live as a writer in 1920s Paris. In this novel, based on Wescott’s own life and family, the young Alwyn Tower leaves Wisconsin to travel in Europe, but finds himself haunted by a family of long-dead spirits—his grandparents and great-uncles and aunts, a generation whose young adulthood was shattered by the Civil War. Their images were preserved in fading family albums of daguerreotypes and in his own fragmented memories of stories told to him by his strong and enduring grandmothers. To disinter and finally lay to rest the family secrets that lingered insistently in his mind, Wescott writes, Alwyn was “obliged to live in imagination many lives already at an end.”
    The Grandmothers is the chronicle of Alwyn’s ancestors:  the bitter Henry Tower, who returned from Civil War battlefields to find his beautiful wife Serena lost in a fatal fever; Rose Hamilton, robust and eager, who yearned to leave the cabin of her bearded, squirrel-hunting brothers for the company of courteous Leander Tower; the boy-soldier Hilary Tower, whose worship of his brother made him desperate; fastidious Nancy Tower, whose love for her husband Jesse Davis could not overcome her disgust with the dirt under his fingernails; Ursula Duff, proud and silent, maligned among her neighbors by her venal husband; Alwyn’s parents, Ralph Tower and Marianne Duff, whose happiness is brought about only by the intervention of a determined spinster.

The definitive study of grasses, whether native or non-native, growing in the wild in Wisconsin. Includes meticulous descriptions, techniques, maps, and illustrations for locating and identifying these grasses, expert analysis, and a detailed glossary and index.

Lakes Superior and Michigan have long played a vital role in shaping our state’s history, culture and economy. For forty years, the Wisconsin Coastal Management Program has collaborated with governments and nonprofit organizations to preserve and protect this crucial resource, and, since 2002, has promoted public awareness of issues affecting the lakes in its annual Wisconsin Great Lakes Chronicle. Great Lakes Chronicle: Essays on Coastal Wisconsin brings together more than one hundred articles by coastal management practitioners, providing a broad perspective on issues affecting Wisconsin’s Great Lakes shorelines, and advocating for the wise and balanced use of our coastal environment for the benefit of people now and in the future.

Reverend Peter Pernin was the parish priest for Peshtigo and nearby Marinette, whose churches burned to the ground. He published his account of the fire in 1874. The late William Converse Haygood served as editor of the Wisconsin Magazine of History from 1957 to 1975. He prepared this version of Father Pernin's account on the occasion of the Peshtigo Fire's centennial in 1971. Foreword writer Stephen J. Pyne is a professor at Arizona State University in Tempe and author of numerous books on wildland fire, including Fire in America.

On the night of October 8, 1871, a whirlwind of fire swept through northeastern Wisconsin, destroying the bustling frontier town of Peshtigo. Trees, buildings, and people burst into flames. Metal melted. Sand turned into glass. People thought the end of the world had come. When the “tornado of fire” was over, 2,500 people were dead, and Peshtigo was nothing but a smoking ruin. It was the deadliest wildfire in U.S. history.

The Great Peshtigo Fire: Stories and Science from America’s Deadliest Firestorm explores the history, science, and legacy of the 1871 Peshtigo Fire at a fourth-grade reading level. Readers will learn about the history of settlement, agriculture, and forestry in 19th-century Wisconsin. This illuminating text covers a diverse range of topics that will enrich the reader’s understanding of the Peshtigo Fire, including the building and land-use practices of the time that made the area ripe for such a fire, the weather patterns that fostered widespread fires throughout the upper Midwest in the summer and fall of 1871, and exciting first-person accounts that vividly bring the `victims’ stories to life. Connections made between the Peshtigo Fire and the history of fire prevention in the United States encourage critical thinking about issues that remain controversial to this day, such as planned burns and housing development restrictions near forested areas. The Great Peshtigo Fire: Stories and Science from America’s Deadliest Firestorm will inform and captivate its readers as it journeys through the horrifying history of the Peshtigo Fire.

When the Alstage Mining Company proposes a frac sand mine in the small Ames County village of Link Lake, events quickly escalate to a crisis. Business leader Marilyn Jones of the Link Lake Economic Development Council heads the pro-mine forces, citing needed jobs and income for the county. Octogenarian Emily Higgins and other Link Lake Historical Society members are aghast at the proposed mine location in the community park, where a huge and ancient bur oak—the historic Trail Marker Oak—has stood since it pointed the way along an old Menominee trail. Reluctantly caught in the middle of the fray is Ambrose Adler, a reclusive, retired farmer with a secret.
            Soon the fracas over frac sand attracts some national attention, including that of Stony Field, the pen name of a nationally syndicated columnist. Will the village board vote to solve their budget problems with a cut of the mining profits? Will the mine create real jobs for local folks? Will Stony Field come to the village to lead protests against the mine? And will defenders of the Trail Marker Oak literally draw a battle line in the sand?

The Great War Comes to Wisconsin examines Wisconsin’s response to World War I, the first "total war" of the twentieth century, a war so large that it engaged virtually everyone.
Instead of a comprehensive history of the battlefield, this book captures the homefront experience: the political debates over war policy, the worry over loved ones fighting overseas, the countless everyday sacrifices, and the impact of a wartime hysteria that drove dissent underground. It also includes the voices of soldiers from Wisconsin’s famed 32nd Division, through extensively quoted letters and newspaper accounts. Immerse yourself in the Wisconsin experience during World War I—a conflict that demonstrated America’s great capacity for sacrifice and generosity, but also for prejudice, intolerance, and injustice.

Green Travel Guide to Northern Wisconsin showcases the best green restaurants, lodgings, shops, and activities in Wisconsin’s Northland. Learn about exploring the cliffs and caves of the Niagara Escarpment while biking the Door Peninsula. Carpool to the Midwest Renewable Energy Fair in Custer where you can stay at a nearby solar-powered inn. Take an all day eco-geo-history tour of the north woods near Hayward, explore the Chequamegon-Nicolet Forest, kayak the Mississippi River backwaters, and much more.

Green Travel Guide to Southern Wisconsin surveys the best green restaurants, lodgings, shops, and activities southern Wisconsin has to offer. Dine at independent, locally owned eateries that serve up delicious fare grown and raised by farmers right down the road. Overnight at peaceful inns that sponsor workshops on topics ranging from cheesemaking to sustainability. Scour markets that sell locally foraged mushrooms, berries, and syrups as well as arts and crafts created by local artisans. Bicycle through southern Wisconsin, stopping at small-scale farms where travelers are not only welcome but encouraged to visit.

 
Honorable Mention, Foreword Magazine’s Travel Guidebook of the Year

Like that earlier grouse hunter Aldo Leopold, Mark Parman takes to the woods when the aspens are smoky gold. Here, in an evocative almanac that chronicles the early season of the grouse hunt through its end in the snows of January, Parman follows his dog through the changing trees and foliage, thrills to the sudden flush of beating wings, and holds a bird in hand, thankful for the meal it will provide. Distilling twenty seasons of grouse hunting into these essays, he writes of old dogs and gun lust, cover and clear cutting, climate change, companions male and female, wildlife art, and stumps. A Grouse Hunter's Almanac delves into the mind of a hunter, exploring the Northwoods with an eye for more than just game.

"Notable and quotable. Parman stakes out original territory and provides a vivid snapshot of the Northwoods."—John Motoviloff, author of Wisconsin Wildfoods: 100 Recipes for Badger State Bounties

"Extremely rich and detailed. Parman puts forth original and genuine experiences."—Richard Yatzeck, author of Hunting the Edges

The youngest of a large Norwegian immigrant family, Gudrun Thue Sandvold was known for her beaming blue eyes and a reserve that gave way to laughter whenever she got together with her sisters. She took immeasurable pride in her children and grandchildren, kept an exquisite home, and turned the most mundane occasion into a party. And to all who knew her, Gudrun’s cooking was the stuff of legend.

Part cookbook, part immigrant story, and part family memoir, Gudrun's Kitchen features hundreds of Gudrun Sandvold’s recipes for comfort food from a time when families and friends gathered at the table and connected with one another every single day. But this book is much more than a guide to Norwegian culinary traditions; it is an important contribution to immigrant history and a vital documentation of our nation’s multicultural heritage.

In the mid-nineteenth century the Wisconsin Historical Society's first director, Lyman C. Draper, gathered outstanding materials such as the Daniel Boone papers, which include Draper's interviews with Boone's son, and the papers of Revolutionary War hero George Rogers Clark. These two collections alone are of vast significance to frontier history before 1830, but the full collection comprises nearly five hundred volumes of records, including military and government records, interviews, Draper's own research notes, and rare personal letters. For scholars, genealogists, and local historians, the Draper papers offer a wealth of information on the social, economic, and cultural conditions experienced by our frontier forebears. The 180-page index lists thousands of names and is an indispensable guide for all who wish to use the collection, which is available in libraries across the country on microfilm.