Subjects:  1. 1934-    2. Apps, Jerold W.,    3. Biography    4. Biography / Autobiography    5. Chain O' Lakes Region    6. Chain O' Lakes Region (Wis.)    7. Childhood and youth    8. Farm life    9. Farmers & Ranchers    10. Fiction    11. Parental Memoirs    12. Regional Subjects - Midwest    13. Short Stories (single author)    14. Social life and customs    15. Wisconsin    16. Apps, Jerold W   

Reviews (1)

Fascinating subject, not too good a book
The story of Floyd Olson's career is fascianting, but I think he could have had a better researcher and biographer than this book evidences. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. 1891-1936    2. Biography    3. Biography / Autobiography    4. Governors    5. Minnesota    6. Olson, Floyd Bjornstjerne,    7. Olson, Floyd Bjèornstjerne,    8. Political    9. Politics and government    10. Regional Subjects - Midwest    11. U.S. State Government - Missouri River Valley States    12. Olson, Floyd Björnstjerne   

Reviews (2)

WOW!!What a wonderful read!!!
This book is fantastic!I love how it is written in short stories/memories.It makes for an easy read leaving you with anticipation for the next memory.I borrowed it from the library (Cicero, Indiana).I loved it as I stated before but am going to buy a copy for my Father-in-Law who also grew up during the depression on a small farm in northern Indiana.I'm sure he will enjoy it much, much more than I and will recall fond memories for him as well.He is in his 80's and is still living in the house where he was born and farming the farm.The author is brilliant is his writing!

Great
Hi Uncle Bill. I loved the book. I had it read it within 3 days. I could not put it down after I started it. I can not wait for the next book to come out that you write.Love, Lori LaFollette (Rensberger) ... Read more

Subjects:  1. 1926-    2. 1929    3. Biography    4. Biography / Autobiography    5. Childhood and youth    6. Depressions    7. Farm life    8. Fiction    9. Indiana    10. Personal narratives    11. Regional Subjects - Midwest    12. Shrout, Bill,    13. United States    14. Shrout, Bill   

Reviews (2)

Remember No Electricity
This book is a wonderful record of the way things were accomplished in everyday living when electricity and cars were beginning to make their way into homes.I found it enlightening, entertaining, and educating.I recommend it to anyone who is interested in rural life, history, and short story telling.It is a wonderful book to read to kids and to elderly people.

Remember - No Electricity
It's a same with all the great books published today, that occasionally a book slide through that should have never made it to the press. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. 1932-    2. Biography    3. Biography / Autobiography    4. Farmers    5. Faust, Maurice,    6. History    7. History: American    8. Literary    9. Minnesota    10. Parental Memoirs    11. Pierz Region    12. Regional Subjects - Midwest    13. United States - General   

Reviews (1)

Fact Is More Unexpected Than Fiction
Sometimes the events in one's life seem to go beyond our plans and expectations and exceed beyond the best fiction of anyone's imagination. So it is with "My Blue Heaven" as the life and times of one lonely soul confronts reality in his pilgrim's journey to never stop learning. Read more

Subjects:  1. Biography & Autobiography    2. Biography / Autobiography    3. Biography/Autobiography    4. General    5. Personal Memoirs    6. Regional Subjects - Midwest    7. North Central & Mid-West states   

Subjects:  1. Biography & Autobiography    2. Biography / Autobiography    3. Biography/Autobiography    4. Historical - U.S.    5. People of Color    6. Regional Subjects - Midwest   

Editorial Review

First-time author Norton strikes a fine balance between memoir and nature essay in writing of her homecoming to the wellspring of her childhood memories, the Cedar River of Nebraska. She had come home to nurse the grief of having been raped and of trying to drown the memory of that horrible event in alcohol. "For long years I felt afloat without mooring, without anchor," she writes, until she finally returned to that lean and austere place of childhood pleasures. Her account of finding a psychic center among family and friends is affecting without being sentimental, and Norton writes warmly of the plants and animals that inhabit this place--cranes, curlews, sand roses, and other denizens of the High Plains--and of the people who work the land. ... Read more

Reviews (4)

Paradise lost . . .
Part memoir, part travelogue, Norton's book centers around her family's cabin on a small lake on the edge of the Nebraska Sandhills. The story is told in three parts: her childhood at the lake in the 1950s and 60s, a sojourn there in 1984 where she sets out to write a thesis and settles instead into a job at a small-town bar and becomes romantically involved with a man she meets there, and a return visit several years later as she crisscrosses the Sandhills gathering material for a book.
A collection of banalities
Norton's assertions about her own history, soul, and mental states might as well have been taken out of a feminist literary criticism textbook - they are absolutely predictable and femisitically-correct, and thus come off as rehearsed conformities rather than genuine discoveries of self. This affection to stereotype marks every single page of the book, every chapter - Norton doesn't care to see beyond Stetson hats, cowboys and bars, really. The Notebook chapters are a series of well-crafted nature observation, but they only intersperse the main narrative, and the short relief they provide is not enough to dispell the numbing effect of the general tone of the book.

It was if I was there - every chapter!
Anyone who grew up in Nebraska, either in the Sandhills or anywhere along the Platte River would identify with this book.She is a wonderful descriptive writer and takes you to the place she wants you to see.It also brings to mind long ago memories of times you may have experienced by the similarities associated with her writings.A friend gave me this book and as they say, "The best friend is one who gives you a new book as a gift".She was, of course, right.I loved it. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Biography    2. Biography / Autobiography    3. Description and travel    4. Natural history    5. Nature/Ecology    6. Nebraska    7. Regional Subjects - Midwest    8. Sandhills    9. Sandhills (Neb.)    10. Social life and customs    11. Women   

Subjects:  1. Biography & Autobiography    2. Biography / Autobiography    3. Biography/Autobiography    4. Childhood Memoir    5. Regional Subjects - Midwest    6. Women    7. North Central & Mid-West states    8. Women's studies   

Subjects:  1. Biography / Autobiography    2. Farmers & Ranchers    3. Fiction    4. Regional Subjects - Midwest    5. Westerns    6. Westerns - General    7. Biography & Autobiography    8. North Central & Mid-West states   

Subjects:  1. 1914-    2. Biography    3. Biography & Autobiography    4. Biography / Autobiography    5. Biography/Autobiography    6. Delaware Indians    7. Ethnic Cultures - Native Americans    8. Ethnic Studies - Native American Studies    9. Historical - U.S.    10. Native American    11. Native Americans - Plains    12. Oklahoma    13. Perry, Lynette,    14. Regional Subjects - Midwest    15. Social life and customs    16. Women    17. Biography: general    18. Ethnic studies    19. Toys, teddy bears & dolls    20. USA   

Reviews (1)

AN HONORABLE MAN - AN HONORABLE PROFESSION
The life of Charles Kamm personifies the lofty and ultimate goals to which every master teacher aspires.His dedication to the teaching profession as portrayed through Marcia S. Popp's THE MAN WHO BECAME A SCHOOL should serve as a measuring stick for aspiring teachers and administrators, as well as a rule book for practicing educators.Dr. Popp has epitoized Charles Kamm as Jesse Stuart's "good teacher that lives on and on through his students."Charles Kamm is the teacher who is immortal and role model for all educators. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Biography    2. Biography & Autobiography    3. Biography / Autobiography    4. Biography/Autobiography    5. Educators    6. Elementary    7. General    8. Illinois    9. Kamm, Charles    10. Regional Subjects - Midwest    11. School principals    12. Summerfield    13. Summerfield Grade School (Summ    14. Teachers    15. Biography: general    16. Education    17. Education / General   

Reviews (1)

One of the Rare Page-Turners about Farming
Nelson writes in an easy laid-back style about growing up on a Midwest farm. His short, readable chapters contain a wealth of information on a great many topics of everyday life.
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Subjects:  1. Biography / Autobiography    2. Personal Memoirs    3. Regional Subjects - Midwest   

Subjects:  1. Biography & Autobiography    2. Biography/Autobiography    3. Reference    4. Regional Subjects - Midwest    5. Yearbooks & Annuals   

Reviews (1)

Very interesting and informative book
This book covers a wide range of territory. The tangled love story, secret birth of a daughter at a maternity home in MO. Plus heart tugging stories of other women who gave up their babies because it would have shamed their family if they had kept them even though they were not married.
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Subjects:  1. Biography / Autobiography    2. Personal Memoirs    3. Regional Subjects - Midwest    4. Biography & Autobiography    5. North Central & Mid-West states   

Subjects:  1. Biography & Autobiography    2. Biography / Autobiography    3. Biography/Autobiography    4. Death, Grief, Bereavement    5. Regional Subjects - Midwest    6. Women    7. North Central & Mid-West states    8. Women's studies   

Subjects:  1. Biography / Autobiography    2. Biography/Autobiography    3. Regional Subjects - Midwest   

Subjects:  1. Biography & Autobiography    2. Biography / Autobiography    3. Biography/Autobiography    4. Childhood Memoir    5. Personal Memoirs    6. Regional Subjects - Midwest    7. North Central & Mid-West states   

Subjects:  1. Biography / Autobiography    2. Personal Memoirs    3. Regional Subjects - Midwest   

Subjects:  1. Biography & Autobiography    2. Biography / Autobiography    3. Biography/Autobiography    4. Personal Memoirs    5. Regional Subjects - Midwest    6. Biography: general   

Subjects:  1. Biography / Autobiography    2. General    3. Reference    4. Regional Subjects - Midwest    5. Trivia