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2 books match the query 'Wisconsin Watershed'
The Bark River Chronicles
Stories from a Wisconsin WatershedMilton J. Bates
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2012
The Bark River valley in southeastern Wisconsin is a microcosm of the state's - indeed, of the Great Lakes region's - natural and human history. "The Bark River Chronicles" reports one couple's journey by canoe from the river's headwaters to its confluence with the Rock River and several miles farther downstream to Lake Koshkonong. Along the way, it tells the stories of Ice Age glaciation, the effigy mound builders, the Black Hawk War, early settlement and the development of waterpower sites, and recent efforts to remove old dams and mitigate the damage done by water pollution and invasive species.
Along with these big stories, the book recounts dozens of little stories associated with sites along the river. The winter ice harvest, grain milling technology, a key supreme court decision regarding toxic waste disposal, a small-town circus, a scheme to link the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River by canal, the murder of a Chicago mobster, controversies over race and social class in Waukesha County's lake country, community efforts to clean up the river and restore a marsh, visits to places associated with the work of important Wisconsin writers - these and many other stories belong to the Bark River chronicles.
For the two voyageurs who paddle the length of the Bark, it is a journey of rediscovery and exploration. As they glide through marshes, woods, farmland, and cities, they acquire not only historical and environmental knowledge but also a renewed sense of the place in which they live. Maps and historical photographs help the reader share their experience.
Wisconsin Watershed
Tony Earl and the New Politics of the Democratic PartyDave Cieslewicz
Michigan State University Press, 2027
In 1982, Tony Earl stormed into the Wisconsin governorship with a sweeping victory, rallying blue-collar Democrats around a progressive political platform. Four years later, observers were stunned when he was soundly defeated by conservative Republican Tommy Thompson—not because of any failure as governor, but because, as Dave Cieslewicz notes, the Democratic Party and American politics had undergone a dramatic transformation.
Wisconsin Watershed traces Earl’s journey from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and the U.S. Navy, through his years in Wisconsin politics and his single, controversial term as Wisconsin’s governor. Earl tackled acid rain, comparable worth, AIDS policy, and tax reform with equal force; he kept American Motors in the state and pulled Wisconsin from a fiscal crisis. Yet voters could not connect his name with his accomplishments. The progressivism that energized new constituencies also alienated the working-class Catholics who had formed the Democratic Party’s backbone. “It’s not the taxes,” one legislator explained. “It’s the desks”—the name for Earl’s symbolic offices to advocate for Native Americans, African Americans, and women.
Earl refused negative campaigning, and he believed that good policy would ultimately prove good politics. His defeat marked the beginning of the end of an era of civility. Through Earl’s story, we witness the Democratic Party’s evolution from New Deal coalition to the emergence of a modern campaign culture that values image and anger over good governance.