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Wine. The word calls to mind vineyards descending stark Spanish hills, vats lining Tuscan villages, fashionable singles crowding California tasting rooms. But anyone who hikes or bikes back roads in the Upper Midwest sees grapevines twining over fence posts and twisting up trees. Smooth, delicious wines are made from those grapes, and from the wild berries and cultivated fruits grown in the region.

Wineries of Wisconsin and Minnesota is a user-friendly guide to fifty-five wineries, ranging from small family-farm operations to the largest, best-known wine producers. The book's centerpiece is a series of thirteen "wine trails" that paints a picture of each winery's setting and unique flavor and includes detailed information and maps for visiting the wineries. Author and wine expert Patricia Monaghan explores the colorful history of Wisconsin and Minnesota wines, including the geology and climate of the region; the history of Upper Midwest grape growing; the heritage of country wines; and the major wine regions in the area. Delightful sidebars feature tidbits of wine information, from recommended pairings of food and wine to unusual local wine lore.

Praise for Wineries of Wisconsin and Minnesota:

"The brave souls who plant new vineyards and start new wineries are making a valuable contribution to renewing the Minnesota and Wisconsin countrysideand so does Patricia Monaghan's beautifully written, carefully researched guide. This book will enrich the experience of anyone who makes it their companion in exploring the back roads of the Upper Midwest."Jeremy Iggers, food journalist and award-winning author of Garden of Eating

"Wineries of Wisconsin and Minnesota invites you to savor a taste of the local landscape and celebrate the rural essence of these unique regional wines. As a practical guide it offers tips on how and where to enjoy northern wines; as a historical reference it explains the geological, botanical, and cultural challenges dedicated, local artisan producers faced when establishing their vineyards."Susan Streich-Boldt, Slow Food Madison

"As a longtime supporter and promoter of our local farmers, I can say with great relief that it is about time someone got around to taking notice of the burgeoning wine industry of the Upper Midwest. Patricia Monaghan's book is an informative history, a grand overview, and an in-depth visitor's guide, all in one." Lenny Russo, Chef/Proprietor, Heartland Contemporary Midwestern Restaurant & Wine Bar, St. Paul, Minnesota

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For centuries, people have celebrated every Midsummer's Eve at an ancient spring near a small Swedish village. On that special night, when unmarried men and women dance and some unusual activities are permitted, the Bridal Spring has special powers.

Vilhelm Moberg introduces four musicians on the last day that each one will ever know: a curmudgeonly fiddler from the 1930s, a sad and conscientious key-harp player from the plague era of 1711, a ne'er-do-well who plays the flute in 1545, and a goat-horn blower from prehistoric times who, like the others, only seeks happiness with a woman. Binding their stories together is the voice of the Bridal Spring itself, tart and grudgingly compassionateand slow to reveal its secret.

Each progression backward in time reflects Moberg's rich knowledge of folklore and shows the changes in everyday life in Sweden's past. First published in 1946, before the Emigrants novels, The Brides of Midsummer is a complex, compelling journey through the arc of human life.

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Clyde Bellecourt, co-founder of the American Indian Movement, provides an intimate narrative of his childhood on the White Earth Reservation, his long journey through the prison system, and the front lines of 1970s social activism, where he went to war against entrenched racism. He addresses his battles with addiction, the abuse he endured at the hands of a Catholic priest, and his relationship to the cases of Leonard Peltier and murdered AIM activist Anna Mae Aquash.  This gritty, as-told-to memoir uncovers the humanity behind Bellecourts militant image, revealing a sensitive spirit whose wounds motivated him to confront injustice, altering the course of Native and American history.??Bellecourt's Ojibwe name translates as "The Thunder before the Storm."

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The Plains Indian Wars of the nineteenth century garnered enduring fame for certain Indian leaders, their names echoing powerfully even today: Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Red Cloud. Just as significant but less often mentioned is Taoyateduta, known to whites as Little Crow, the reluctant leader of Dakota warriors during the U.S.Dakota War of 1862, the opening salvo of the U.S.Indian Wars.

In this carefully researched biography of the Dakota leader, the first ever written for children, author Gwenyth Swain presents a compelling portrait of the leader, warrior, and politician at the center of the Dakota War of 1862.

Beginning with Taoyateduta's childhood along the Mississippi River near present-day St. Paul, this biography explores his life in the Big Woods, his wanderings west from the Mdewakanton Dakota's traditional home, his leadership of his people when they were forced to sign over their land to white settlers, and his role during the war of 1862. Hemmed in on a narrow reservation, frustrated by broken treaties, angered by dishonest agents and traders, and nearly starved because of crop failures and late annuity payments, Dakota Indians attacked white settlers living on the Indians' former homelands in southwestern Minnesota. Taoyateduta agreed to lead the battles, knowing that the U.S. government's response would be swift and terrible. In retribution for the thirty-eight-day war, thirty-eight Dakota men were hanged, thousands were imprisoned, and the Dakota people were expelled from the state.

Taoyateduta's story brings to life the painful experience of the Dakota as they lost their land and their livelihoodand as some chose to adopt white ways while others fought back, with disastrous consequences. Little Crow: Leader of the Dakota offers a clear and accessible account of both the man who led the Dakota into war and the causes behind that wrenching conflict.

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Minnesota has always been a land of immigrants. Successive waves have each made their own way, found their place, and made it their home. The Hmong are one of the most recent immigrant groups, and their remarkable and moving story is told in Hmong in Minnesota.

Chia Youyee Vang reveals the colorful, intricate history of Hmong Minnesotans, many of whom were forced to flee their homeland of Laos when the communists seized power during the Vietnam War. Having assisted U.S. troops in the "Secret War," Hmong soldiers and civilians were eligible to settle in the United States. Vang offers a unique window into the lives of the Minnesota Hmong through the stories of individuals who represent the experiences of many. One voice is that of Mao Heu Thao, one of the first refugees to come to Minnesota, sponsored by Catholic Charities in 1976. She tells of the unexpectedly cold weather, the strange food, and the kindness of her hosts.

By introducing readers to the immigrants themselves, Hmong in Minnesota conveys a population's struggle to adjust to new environments, build communities, maintain cultural practices, and make its mark on government policies and programs.

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"Writing in a style that reads like fiction, Griffith takes readers into heart-stopping action alongside caver John Ackerman, who found unexplored Goliath Cave in southeastern Minnesota." St. Paul Pioneer Press

Narrow passages, twisting upward or dropping precipitously. Huge vaults filled with fantastic shapes. Tunnels twined in tangled mazes. Over centuries, underground rivers can carve holes and rooms in solid rock; drips of water build walls of stone. Natural caves shape another world beneath our feet. Dangerous and beautiful, these places remain unknownuntil someone decides to investigate.

In 2004, businessman and caver John Ackerman drilled an entryway into Goliath Cave, a huge and unexplored complex in the karst region of southeastern Minnesota. Squeezing through tiny openings, scuba diving through silt-filled waters, scaling walls, and traversing crevasses, he and his fellow cavers painstakingly mapped ever-further reaches of the complex in an exploration that continues to this day.

But man-made caves that do not breathe can be even more dangerous than their natural cousins. In St. Paul, also in 2004, five teenagers entered an area where intermittent fires robbed the air of oxygen. Only two emerged alive.

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The Anatomy of a Flood and the Survival of an American City

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On April 19, 1997, in one of the most dramatic floods in U.S. history, more than 50,000 people abandoned their homes and businesses in Grand Forks, North Dakota. A nation watched as the heart of downtown, engulfed by a river, burst into flames above the water line. Like Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm, Red River Rising is a compelling true-life narrative about the confluence of natural forces and human error that shaped one of the greatest natural disasters in U.S. history.

Ashley Shelby tells the dramatic stories of the flood: the suspenseful, blizzard-filled spring; the difficulties scientists had in predicting the river's crest; the struggles of people who fought the rising waters and of those who marshalled the city's forces. Despite technological advances in meteorology, despite the brute force of hundreds of earth movers, despite the utter determination of thousands who built and walked the levees, the river won.

This book is a gripping story of the terrific cost of natural disasters and a fascinating portrait of how ordinary people rose to an extraordinary challenge. It is also a clear-eyed examination of the disastrous aftermath: the second-guessing and blame directed at the National Weather Service, at city and federal officials, and at the people of Grand Forks themselves as they struggled to rebuild. With empathy and penetrating intelligence, Shelby uncovers the conflicts, conspiracy theories, and recrimination that tore at the community after the waters fell. Through the powerful stories of memorable individuals Red River Rising gives us new perspective on disaster and community.

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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, feminist change, grassroots activism including Native American, music, and sports. Proposal submitted by two veteran MHS authors, Dave Kenney and Thomas Saylor.

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Husbands, Wives, and the American State in Dakota and Ojibwe Country

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The debate over the meaning of marriage in the United States and specifically in Minnesota is not a recent development. From 1820 to 1845, when the first significant numbers of Americans arrived in the region now called Minnesota, they carried the belief that good government and an orderly household went hand in hand. The territorial, state, and federal governments of the United States were built upon a particular vision of civic responsibility: that men, as heads of households, enter civic life on behalf of their dependentswives, children, servants, and slaves. These dependents were deemed unfit to make personal decisions or to involve themselves in business and governmentand they owed labor and obedience to their husbands, fathers, and masters.

These ideas clashed forcibly with the conceptions of kinship and social order that existed among the Upper Midwest's long-established Dakota, Ojibwe, and mixed-heritage communities. In resisting the new gender and familial roles advocated by military personnel, Indian agents, and missionaries, the region's inhabitants frustrated American attempts to transform Indian country into a state. Indeed, many Americans were forced to compromise their own beliefs so that they could put down roots.

Through the stories of marriedand divorcingmen and women in the region, Catherine J. Denial traces the uneven fortunes of American expansion in the early nineteenth century and the nation-shaping power of marital acts.

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The Art of Legislating in an Age of Gridlock

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Democracy has never been a quick or easy process by which to get things done. But many citizens are fed up with the current, extreme partisan gridlock at the national, state, and even local levels of government.

Dave Bishop spent most of his twenty years in the Minnesota House of Representatives as a member of the Republican minority, but that did not stop him from winning passage of legislation that benefited his district. In Finding Common Ground, he shares proven techniques and insightful examples of how minority members can gain the power to produce better laws and a healthier democracy.

Bishop reveals the inside stories of major Minnesota legislation through the 1980s and 1990sthe lottery, groundwater protection, the Living Will, the Northwest Airlines bailout, and much moreshowing how real work can be done through respectful, healthy confrontation and compromise.

This concise handbook is a gift not just for policymakers but also for their constituents who are interested in effective and ethical legislating. Finding Common Ground provides a deeper understanding of the legislative process as well as greater respect for the complex work of legislators and legislatures.

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"Lincoln and the Indians has stood the test of time and offers this generation of readers a valuable interpretation of the U.S. government's Indian policiesand sometimes the lack thereofduring the Civil War era. Providing a critical perspective on Lincoln's role, Nichols sets forth an especially incisive analysis of the trial of participants in the Dakota War of 1862 in Minnesota and Lincoln's role in sparing the lives of most of those who were convicted." James M. McPherson, Pulitzer Prizewinning author of Battle Cry of Freedom

"For the Dakota people, the Indian System started with the doctrine of discovery and continued through Abraham Lincoln's presidency and beyond. The United States was bound to protect the rights of Indian parties. But in the end, the guilty were glorified and the laws for humanity disgraced. This book tells that story, and it should be required reading at all educational institutions." Sheldon Wolfchild, independent filmmaker, artist, and actor

"Undoubtedly the best book published on Indian affairs in the years of Lincoln's presidency." American Historical Review

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You answer a call from a fourteen-year-old boy asking for someone to arrest his mother, who is smoking crack in their bathroom. You talk with him until the cops arrive, making sure there are no weapons around and learning that his favorite subject in school is lunch. Five minutes later, you have to deal with someone complaining about his neighbor's clarinet practice.

What is it like to be on the receiving end of desperate calls for help . . . every day? Caroline Burau, a former newspaper reporter and nursing student who couldn't stand the sight of blood, takes a job as an emergency dispatcher because she likes helping people. But on-the-job training at the comm center proves to be more than she bargained for. As she adjusts to a daily life of catastrophe and comedy, domestics and drunks, cops and robbers, junk food and sarcasm, lost cats and suicides, she discovers that crisis can become routine, that coworkers can be meanthat she must continue to care and, at times, learn how to let go.

Praise for Answering 911

"The day may come when I have to dial 911. I hope to God that the person who answers is Caroline Burau or someone like her. Funny, honest, and elegantly simple, this book left me with a sense of grace and hope." Alison McGhee, author of Shadow Baby, Rainlight, Was It Beautiful? and Falling Boy

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In this paperback original, a stable of fresh stories by award-winning writer Will Weaver (Full Service and Barns of Minnesota, are complemented by a hand-picked selection of favorites from his original collection, A Gravestone Made of Wheat, to offer a fresh, vivid portrait of the changing midwestern landscape. New highlights include "Blaze of Glory," an enchanting tale of an RV road trip and a senior couple's "last time"; "The Trapper," the story of a hard split between an old trapper and a younger female environmentalist; and "The Last Farmer," the capstone story of this elegant collection that examines the discovery by a high-tech farmer of the history of the old houses on his land. Fourteen stories in all portray the bountiful and whimsical and cruel human spirit and the swirling transformation of America's heartland.

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John Gagliardi, who served as the head football coach at Saint John's University from 1953 to 2012, won more college football games than any coach from any school or any level of collegiate ball. His innovative and unconventional approach to coaching --- including not allowing tackling during practices --- not only helped the team win nearly 500 games and four national championships, but he served as an inspiring leader, mentor, and father figure to hundreds of student-athletes over his 60 years as head coach. Gagliardi continues this role as teacher and mentor through his "Theory of Coaching Football" class, which is one of the most popular classes on campus every year.??A Legacy Unrivaled explores the man, his football philosophy, his life lessons, and his connections to others through a very personal journey by author and former player Warren Bostrom.

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The Federal Writers' Project Guide to 1930s Minnesota

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In the 1930s, at the height of the Great Depression, the federal government put thousands of unemployed writers to work in the Federal Writers Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Out of their efforts came the American Guide series, the first comprehensive guidebooks to the people, resources, and traditions of each state in the union.

The WPA Guide to Minnesota is a lively and detailed introduction to the state and its people. Much has changed since the book's first publication in 1938 when, as the authors noted, some Minnesotans could "clearly recall . . . the sight of browsing buffalo herds, and the creaking of thong-tied Red River carts." But the book vividly recaptures the era when annual fishing licenses cost fifty cents, farmers ran barn dances for motoring townfolk, Duluth was the headquarters of the Hay Fever Club of America, and the nearly new Foshay Tower loomed on the Minneapolis skyline.

The guide has much more than nostalgia to offer today's readers. Twenty auto tours and six special city tours tell the stories of the state's people and places and offer a fascinating alternative to freeway travel. Essays on major themes such as native peoples, history, arts, transportation, and sports provide an authentic self-portrait of 1930s Minnesota in humorous, loving, and literary prose.

This time-travelers' guide to Minnesota is an evocative reminder of the state's past and a challenge to contemporary readers who seek to find how that past lives on today.

Special features include 20 road trips, 6 city tours, 15 boundary waters canoe trips, 12 maps, 22 drawings, an introduction by the renowned Midwestern writer Frederick Manfred, a chronology, and a revised bibliography.

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Federal Writers' Project, Frederick  Manfred

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Joseph A. Amato follows his own poor, obscure, and truly "mongrel" family through seven generations, revealing their place in the key events of America's past. Using powerful family traditions to clarify his personal connection to the larger stories of our nation, Amato advocates for the power of the history closest at hand in building personal identity and resisting mass culture.

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A group of America's celebrated literary women have come together to tackle a topic close to their hearts: Mom. These highly personal yet often universal stories offer windows into those influential mother-daughter moments that have forever shaped the lives and perspectives of the writers, powerful womenauthors, spokespeople, scholars, teachers, and some mothers themselves.

Jonis Agee's mother haunts her daughter's plumbing. Tai Coleman's mother struggled to raise five children on her own wits and a single pay check. Heid Erdrich's mother showed her daughter both the falsity and the truth in the cliche of the "Indian Princess." Sheila O'Connor's mother, who ran a road construction company, was not like other mothers. Ka Vang's mother dodged the hand grenades that her husband's first wife threw on her wedding day. Morgan Grayce Willow's mother drove home late at night after selling cosmetics to farm wives as her daughter rode shotgun.

In true tales of startling candor and rich insight, these and many other talented writers reflect on the women who raised them, revealing hard work and hardship, successes and failures, love and angermothers and daughters.

Contributors: Jonis Agee, Elizabeth Jarret Andrew, Sandra Benitez, Barrie Jean Borich, Taiyon Coleman, Heid Erdrich, Diane Glancy, Jan Zita Grover, Denise Low, Alison McGhee, Sheila O'Connor, Shannon Olson, Carrie Pomeroy, Susan Power, Sun Yung Shin, Faith Sullivan, Ann Ursu, Ka Vang, Wang Ping, Susan Steger Welsh, Morgan Grayce Willow.

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Two hundred years of Minnesota history spring to life in this lively and captivating collection of essays. The North Star State encompasses the wide range of Minnesota's unique pastfrom the Civil War to the World Wars, from frontier life to the age of technological innovation, from Dakota and Ojibwe history to the story of St. Paul's black sleeping-car porters, from lumber workers and truckers' strikes to the women's suffrage movement.

In addition to investigative articles by the state's top historians, editor Anne Aby has assembled captivating first-person accounts from key moments in Minnesota history, including George Nelson's reminiscences of his years in the early nineteenth-century fur trade; the diary of Emily Goodridge Grey, an early African American settler; and Jasper N. Searles's letters home from the Battle of First Bull Run.

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The Civilian Conservation Corps in Minnesota

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The Civilian Conservation Corpsborn out of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal at the height of the Great Depressionsupplied jobs to more than 77,000 Minnesotans in need. Their work left a lasting legacy, visible today in Minnesota's thriving forests, state park amenities, and soil conservation practices.

Hundreds of interviews complement oral historian Barbara Sommer's lively text with personal accounts that animate the history of the CCC in Minnesota as camps were created and projects tackled throughout the state. The "boys" look back - often fondly - at this program, which, for many, was their introduction to the workforce and to life away from home.

Accolades for Hard Work and a Good Deal:
Winner of the 2009 Minnesota Book Award in the Minnesota CategoryWinner of the 2009 Northeast Minnesota Book Award in the General Nonfiction CategoryWinner of the 2009 Award of Merit from the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH)

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Having fled his family's farm at eighteen with a promise never to return, Guy Pehrsson is drawn back into his past when he receives his grandfather's ominous letter, "Trouble here. Come home when you can." He returns to discover a place both wholly familiar and barely recognizable and is cast into the center of an interracial land dispute with the exigencies of war.

Widely acclaimed when first published in the eighties, the timeless novel Red Earth, White Earth showcases Will Weaver's rough ease with language and storytelling, frankly depicting life's uneven terrain and crooked paths.