143 books match the query 'Midwest' and 9 start with b

cover of Backpacking in Michigan

Backpacking in Michigan

Jim DuFresne

University of Michigan Press, 2007

With 65 photographs and 77 detailed maps, this indispensable guide to the state's hiking trails gives beginners to advanced hikers all the information they need to plan their next Michigan overnight or weekend backpacking trip. Featuring 50 trails---27 in the Lower Peninsula---ranging from one-hour to multiple-day treks in both the Upper and Lower Peninsulas, Backpacking in Michigan has something for every hiker.

Information on hike length and difficulty, elevation gain, the amount of time needed to complete the hike, camping facilities, and nearby towns accompanies each of the trail listings. The author also provides extensive reference maps along with a description of scenic highlights. In addition to backcountry explorations of remote trails, Backpacking in Michigan includes classic Michigan adventures such as the Lakeshore Trail in Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, the Greenstone Ridge Trail in Isle Royale National Park, North Manitou Island in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, and Jordan River Pathway in the Mackinaw State Forest.

While Backpacking in Michigan focuses primarily on the trails themselves, it also makes planning your Michigan adventure as easy as possible by providing important information on routes to and from the trailhead, as well as park fees and reservation information for shelters, walk-in cabins, rental yurts, and overnight camping.

Jim DuFresne is a Michigan native and author of more than a dozen wilderness, travel, and hiking guidebooks. He is author of Isle Royale National Park: Foot Trails and Water Routes; 50 Hikes in Michigan: The Best Walks, Hikes, and Backpacks in the Lower Peninsula; Best Hikes with Children: Michigan; Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park: A Backcountry Guide for Hikers, Campers, Backpackers, and Skiers; as well as The Complete Guide to Michigan Sand Dunes, copublished by the University of Michigan Press and Petoskey Publishing.

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cover of Barns of the Midwest

Barns of the Midwest

Allen G. Noble

Ohio University Press, 2018

Originally published in 1995, Barns of the Midwest is a masterful example of material cultural history. It arrived at a critical moment for the agricultural landscape. The 1980s were marked by farm foreclosures, rural bank failures, the continued rise of industrialized agriculture, and severe floods and droughts. These waves of disaster hastened the erosion of the idea of a pastoral Heartland knit together with small farms and rural values. And it wasn’t just an idea that was eroded; material artifacts such as the iconic Midwestern barn were also rapidly wearing away.

It was against this background that editors Noble and Wilhelm gathered noted experts in history and architecture to write on the nature and meaning of Midwestern barns, explaining why certain barns were built as they were, what types of barns appeared where, and what their functions were. Featuring a new introduction by Timothy G. Anderson, Barns of the Midwest is the definitive work on this ubiquitous but little studied architectural symbol of a region and its history.

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cover of Beer, Brats, and Cheese: A Wisconsin Road Trip

Beer, Brats, and Cheese

A Wisconsin Road Trip

Heather Kerrigan

University of Wisconsin Press, 2025

Although Wisconsin foodways contain much more than beer, brats, and cheese, these remain at the pinnacle of the state’s fame—and rightly so. If you live in Wisconsin—or have simply visited—you know it’s hard to imagine tailgating, graduating, or celebrating without the Big Three.

To thoroughly research this book, Heather Kerrigan undertook a twenty-six-hundred-mile road trip crisscrossing the Badger State, seeking the hidden gems that locals frequent. She visited Wisconsin’s best restaurants, creameries, breweries, butcher shops, and cheesemongers. In Beer, Brats, and Cheese, Kerrigan highlights the innovative flavors and unexpected delights found in these spots. Great beer isn’t made only in Milwaukee, Sheboygan doesn’t have a lock on the best bratwurst, and excellent cheeses don’t just come from Monroe County. In fact, there are towns large and small, from the far north to the Illinois border, from Door County to the Mississippi River, that contribute to the state’s amazing culinary experiences. 

Whether you’re planning a bite-by-bite day trip or simply looking for a great place to eat or drink near home, this guide has you covered.
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cover of Birdscaping in the Midwest: A Guide to Gardening with Native Plants to Attract Birds

Birdscaping in the Midwest

A Guide to Gardening with Native Plants to Attract Birds

Mariette Nowak; Foreword by Peter H. Raven

University of Wisconsin Press, 2012

Go beyond bird feeders! Learn how to create outstanding bird habitats in your own yard with native plants that offer food, cover, and nesting sites for birds. This guide is packed with color photographs, sage advice, detailed instructions, and garden plans. It features nine different habitat gardens for hummingbirds, bluebirds, wintering birds, migrant birds, and birds that frequent prairies, wetlands, lakes, shrublands, and woodlands, along with advice about maintaining your plantings and augmenting them with nest boxes, birdbaths, misters, and perches. The information on recommended plant species includes their native ranges in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, and Wisconsin; the birds they attract; their visual characteristics; and their cultivation. Mariette Nowak also describes how gardeners featured in this book have gone beyond their own garden gates to work for the protection and restoration of bird habitat in their neighborhoods and communities. Birdscaping in the Midwest provides many sources of further information, including publications, websites, organizations, and native plant nurseries.
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cover of Black Visual Cultures of the Midwest

Black Visual Cultures of the Midwest

Freda L. Fair

University of Minnesota Press, 2027

Recentering black creativity and resistance in the history of the Midwest

African American creators have unsettled and upended racism in the Midwest region since as far back as 1787, and Black Visual Cultures of the Midwest examines the work of many such innovators, presenting an unruly, transgressive, and defiant vision of queer blackness that complicates fundamental American ideals of liberty, progress, life, and property.

Spanning the nineteenth century to the present, Freda L. Fair draws from a broad array of sources, including film, visual art, and even arrest records to examine concepts of freedom and resistance grounded in black cultural production in the Midwest. Through subjects such as Joshua Glover, who escaped slavery in Missouri and relocated to Wisconsin; sex workers in the Twin Cities; Ruth Ellis, a black lesbian elder in Detroit; and Nick Cave, who created Soundsuits in response to the police beating of Rodney King, Fair challenges monolithic formulations of blackness and black culture. Fair also queers Midwest history, engaging an LGBTQ lens to reexamine Wisconsin’s 1854 decision to declare the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 unconstitutional, the Springfield Race Riot of 1908, and other historic moments.

Revealing how black visual cultures in the Midwest both illuminate black gendered and sexual difference and actively resist antiblackness, Fair shows that the region is a site that can advance freedom and social change.

Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.

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cover of Borne of the Wind: Michigan Sand Dunes

Borne of the Wind

Michigan Sand Dunes

Dennis A. Albert

University of Michigan Press, 2006

Sand dunes are among the most rugged and beautiful natural wonders of Michigan's shorelines. These sandy edifices-at once substantial and ephemeral-are the most extensive freshwater dunes in the world, so immense they are visible from outer space. The coastal dunes are also extraordinarily fertile, supporting a multitude of plants and animals.

Borne of the Wind describes the environmental factors necessary for dune creation in an easy-to-understand format, introducing readers to the rich ecology of Michigan's dunes. Each of the distinct types of dunes encountered along the Great Lakes shoreline is explained and illustrated with color photographs and line drawings, while color photographs of the plants and animals found in duneland areas complement the story of these fragile, ever-changing landscapes.

For scholars and enthusiasts alike, Borne of the Wind provides a comprehensive and colorful introduction to one of our finest yet least-understood natural features.
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cover of Bottoms Up: A Toast to Wisconsin's Historic Bars and Breweries

Bottoms Up

A Toast to Wisconsin's Historic Bars and Breweries

Jim Draeger

Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2017

Bottoms Up celebrates Wisconsin’s taverns and the breweries that fueled them. Beginning with inns and saloons, the book explores the rise of taverns and breweries, the effects of temperance and Prohibition, and attitudes about gender, ethnicity, and morality. It traces the development of the megabreweries, dominance of the giants, and the emergence of microbreweries. Contemporary photographs of unusual and distinctive bars and breweries of all eras, historical photos, postcards, advertisements, and breweriana illustrate the story of how Wisconsin came to dominate brewing—and the place that bars and beer hold in our social and cultural history.
Seventy featured taverns and breweries represent diverse architectural styles, from the open-air Tom’s Burned Down Cafe on Madeline Island to the Art Moderne Casino in La Crosse, and from Club 10, a 1930s roadhouse in Stevens Point, to the well-known Wolski’s Tavern in Milwaukee. There are bars in barns and basements and brewpubs in former ice cream factories and railroad depots. Bottoms Up also includes a heady mix of such beer-related topics as ice harvesting, barrel making, bar games, Old-Fashioneds, bar fixtures, and the queen of the bootleggers. Now in paperback for the first time!

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cover of Breweries of Wisconsin

Breweries of Wisconsin

Jerry Apps

University of Wisconsin Press, 2005

The story of the Dairy State’s other major industry—beer!  From the immigrants who started brewing here during territorial days to the modern industrial giants, this is the history, the folklore, the architecture, the advertising, and the characters that made Wisconsin the nation’s brewing leader. Updated with the latest trends on the Wisconsin brewing scene.



 "Apps adeptly combines diligent scholarship with fascinating anecdotes, vividly portraying brewmasters, beer barons, saloonkeepers, and corporate raiders. All this plus color reproductions of popular beer labels and a detailed recipe for home brew."—Wisconsin Magazine of History


"In a highly readable style Apps links together ethnic influence, agriculture, geography, natural resources, meteorology, changing technology, and transportation to explore some of the mystique, romance and folklore associated with beer from antiquity to the present day in Wisconsin."—The Brewers Bulletin

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cover of Building Sustainable Worlds: Latinx Placemaking in the Midwest

Building Sustainable Worlds

Latinx Placemaking in the Midwest

Edited by Theresa Delgadillo, Ramon H. Rivera-Servera, Geraldo L. Cadava, and Claire F. Fox

University of Illinois Press, 2022

Latina/o/x places exist as both tangible physical phenomena and gatherings created and maintained by creative cultural practices. In this collection, an interdisciplinary group of contributors critically examines the many ways that varied Latina/o/x communities cohere through cultural expression. Authors consider how our embodied experiences of place, together with our histories and knowledge, inform our imagination and reimagination of our surroundings in acts of placemaking. This placemaking often considers environmental sustainability as it helps to sustain communities in the face of xenophobia and racism through cultural expression ranging from festivals to zines to sanctuary movements. It emerges not only in specific locations but as movement within and between sites; not only as part of a built environment, but also as an aesthetic practice; and not only because of efforts by cultural, political, and institutional leaders, but through mass media and countless human interactions.

A rare and crucial perspective on Latina/o/x people in the Midwest, Building Sustainable Worlds reveals how expressive culture contributes to, and sustains, a sense of place in an uncertain era.

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