BOOKS

25 books that form a portrait of Wisconsin, a beautiful and changing state

Jim Higgins

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The natural beauty of Wisconsin is reflected in many classic books about the state. This is a view of Chequamegon
Lake in Chequamegon National Forest.

No single book, no shelf of books could completely capture the complexity and variety of Wisconsin.

But anyone who reads through the basket of books I'm suggesting in this article would have a good handle on the culture of this state and how its past has led to its present.

As part of our Be Wisconsin initiative, an ongoing collection of stories about state culture and traditions, I've compiled a list of 20 books that, taken collectively, form a portrait of a state renowned for its natural beauty and strongly held traditions, but also undergoing significant changes in the 21st century.

I've also added five personal choices of recent books that combine literary merit with a strong focus on an aspect of Wisconsin life.

Some of Wisconsin's greatest writers — Thornton Wilder, for instance — rarely wrote about the state, so they're not included here. Also, my list is simply one person's selection. A different reader could easily suggest 25 other books.

Thanks to Milwaukee Public Library's Erin Elliott and her colleagues for the bountiful list of suggestions they offered me for this article. The Central Library's Wisconsin Writers Wall of Fame is always my starting point for thinking about the great heritage of Wisconsin writers.

My choices are arranged in alphabetical order by title.

"Collected Works" (2002), by Lorine Niedecker. Worth reading not only for the bracing power of the Fort Atkinson poet's observations of nature and humanity, but also for the portrait it creates of an intelligent woman of limited income making a life in rural Wisconsin before the Internet era.

The Driftless Reader. Edited by Curt Meine and Keefe Keeley. University of Wisconsin Press. 392 pages. $26.95.

"The Driftless Reader" (2017), edited by Curt Meine and Keefe Keeley. Dozens of excerpts of scientific, literary and journalistic writing that create a composite portrait of the southwestern Wisconsin region, including both expected writers (Laura Ingalls Wilder, Hamlin Garland) and surprising ones (Frank Lloyd Wright, sci-fi great Clifford D. Simak), plus a stunning letter from a group of Old Order Amish Churches. Meine and Keeley's anthology also pays attention to the Native American experience of this region.

"Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City" (2016), by Matthew Desmond. For nearly a decade, sociologist Desmond studied the relationship between eviction and poverty in Milwaukee. This Pulitzer Prize-winning book humanizes his research by telling the stories of eight Milwaukee families, black and white, and two landlords involved with them.

The Flavor of Wisconsin: An Informal History of Food and Eating in the Badger State. By Harva Hachten and Terese Allen.

"The Flavor of Wisconsin: An Informal History of Food and Eating in the Badger State" (2009), by Harva Hachten and Terese Allen. A revised and expanded edition of Hachten's 1981 book, both a cultural history of state food traditions and a cookbook.

"Indian Nations of Wisconsin: Histories of Endurance and Renewal" (2013, 2nd edition), by Patty Loew. Succinct histories of Wisconsin's native peoples, including the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, Oneida and Menominee nations, that draw on oral traditions, interviews and tribal sources.

"The Land Remembers: The Story of a Farm and Its People" (1975), by Ben Logan. A richly detailed and widely praised reminiscence of growing up on a family farm near Gays Mills in the 1930s.

"Little House in the Big Woods" (1932), by Laura Ingalls Wilder. The description of Wisconsin in this children's novel as a place of endless trees and wild animals may still be what many people see in their minds as the essence of this state.

Milwaukee: A City Built on Water. By John Gurda. Wisconsin Historical Society Press.

"Milwaukee: A City Built on Water" (2018), by John Gurda. As historian John Gurda describes it, the relationship between southeastern Wisconsin and the rivers and lake that nourish it has been both opportunity and crisis from the beginning. This book has a pleasing dynamic balance between humans and geology, the lives of regular people and the doings of muckety-mucks.

"More Than They Bargained For: Scott Walker, Unions and the Fight for Wisconsin" (2013), by Jason Stein and Patrick Marley. An evenhanded account of the divisive 16 months in 2011-'12 when Gov. Scott Walker led a successful effort to repeal most public employees' collective bargaining rights and survived a recall election, by the Journal Sentinel reporters who covered the drama in Madison. The conflicts of those months continue to reverberate here.

"Place Names of Wisconsin" (2016), by Edward Callary. Linguist Callary has researched the origin of more than 2,000 city, town, village, lake and river names in our state, adding a pronunciation guide where necessary. To paraphrase Inigo Montoya, sometimes that name does not mean what you think it means.

Michael Perry brings a rural Wisconsin flavor to his writings.

"Population: 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time" (2002), by Michael Perry. A volunteer firefighter and medic in rural New Auburn rediscovers his town and its people through emergency calls. A beautifully written book with many lighter moments bracketed by opening and closing accounts of the traffic-related deaths of young women.

"Rascal: A Memoir of a Better Era" (1963), by Sterling North. During a difficult year of his boyhood in Edgerton, a raccoon was North's closest companion and scampish co-star in small-town misadventures.

Aldo Leopold and his family spent summers at this shack on the Wisconsin River, restoring the land there. That restoration served as inspiration for his book "A Sand County Almanac."

"A Sand County Almanac" (1949), by Aldo Leopold. From a former chicken coop near Baraboo that he turned into a getaway dubbed the Shack, naturalist and public servant Leopold made close observations of plant, animal and human life that led to this prophetic ecological classic.

"The Selma of the North: Civil Rights Insurgency in Milwaukee" (2009), by Patrick D. Jones. A chronicle of the civil rights movement in Milwaukee from 1958-'70, highlighting the open housing marches of 1967 that lasted for more than 200 nights.

"Shotgun Lovesongs" (2014), by Nickolas Butler. In this acclaimed debut novel, several men return to the Wisconsin farm town where they were boyhood friends, including an indie singer and musician who has become an international star. Butler's fiction captures the ways that rural Wisconsin life is changing.

Studying Wisconsin: The Life of Increase Lapham, early chronicler of plants, rocks, rivers, mounds and all things Wisconsin. By Martha Bergland and Paul G. Hayes.

"Studying Wisconsin: The Life of Increase Lapham" (2014), by Martha Bergland and Paul G. Hayes. A biography of the pioneering, civic-minded scientist and communicator who, in the words of Bergland and Hayes, "imparted an immense amount of useful, accessible scientific knowledge to immigrants, farmers, miners, politicians, city officials, sailors, gardeners." Among his gazillion accomplishments, Lapham helped organize a storm warning system that grew into the National Weather Service and documented many of this state's American Indian burial mounds.

"The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration" (2010), by Isabel Wilkerson. It's impossible to understand contemporary America without understanding the epic migration of African-Americans from South to North. Wilkerson's prize-winning chronicle traces the journeys of three families, including one with a branch that settled in Milwaukee.

"When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi" (1999), by David Maraniss. A compelling biography of the coach who made the Green Bay Packers relevant again, and who is both more complex and more tragic a figure than his often-quoted (and -misquoted) adages would indicate.

"Wisconsin Death Trip" (1973), by Michael Lesy, photos by Charles Van Schaick. Drawing on late 19th-century photos of life around Black River Falls, Lesy takes readers on a dark, strange journey through crime, disease, death and madness. It's a book that continues to influence writers, musicians and creative artists today.

The view from Villa Terrace includes a spectacular Lake Michigan vista. "Wisconsin's Own: Twenty Remarkable Homes" profiles Villa Terrace and other remarkable state homes.

"Wisconsin's Own: Twenty Remarkable Homes" (2010), by M. Caren Connolly and Louis Wasserman, photos by Zane Williams. A richly detailed, generously illustrated study of historic, opulent Wisconsin homes, from Wingspread to Villa Louis, with histories of both the owners and the architects.

Personal favorites

"The Excellent Lombards" (2016), by Jane Hamilton. Many of Racine County writer Hamilton's novels have been set in Wisconsin. I'm particularly fond of this one about families who own an apple orchard, which blends coming-of-age comedy with a sober look at the forces that threaten family farms today.

"Mary Nohl: A Lifetime in Art" (2013), by Barbara Manger and Janine Smith. This illustrated children's biography is a friendly, excellent introduction to the life and work of Nohl, who transformed her Fox Point home and yard into a stunning art environment and a local legend. (If you want to go deeper, read the Manger-Smith biography for adults, "Mary Nohl: Inside & Outside.")

"One Came Home" (2013), by Amy Timberlake. In this novel for readers 9 and older that depicts frontier life in 1870s Wisconsin, Timberlake evokes a great natural event of 1871: the largest nesting of passenger pigeons ever recorded, which may have taken
up as many as 850 square miles in south-central Wisconsin.

"Orchard" (2003), by Larry Watson. Watson's novel about an obsessive painter and a farm wife who models for him reflects both the beauty of Door County and its tension between locals and vacationers.

"The Scraps Book: Notes From a Colorful Life" (2014), by Lois Ehlert. Ehlert applies the collage technique she used to make such picture books as "Color
Zoo" and "Eating the Alphabet" to her own life story about growing up in Wisconsin.

Jim Higgins is the author of "Wisconsin Literary Luminaries: From Laura Ingalls Wilder to Ayad Akhtar" (The History Press).