Books published by University of Minnesota Press

Hy Berman (1925–2015) was one of the most popular professors at the University of Minnesota, where he taught in the history department from 1961 until 2004. He regularly appeared on Twin Cities Public Television’s Almanac, which solidified his role as the state’s leading public historian. A former colleague of Hubert Humphrey and advisor to Minnesota Governor Rudy Perpich, he was a learned, avuncular, and congenial pundit on all things historical and political. Jay Weiner is author of Stadium Games: Fifty Years of Big League Greed and Bush League Boondoggles and This Is Not Florida: How Al Franken Won the Minnesota Senate Recount, both published by the University of Minnesota Press.

A playful picture-book tour of the Swedish alphabet, in which curious characters explore the American Swedish Institute A is for “Akta dig! Look out!” And when you do, you’ll see the nyckelharpa, or keyed fiddle, that Axel’s father made—which followed Axel from Sweden to America. You’ll also find Axel, a snappy dresser, with his umbrella and bowler hat. He’s one of the inquisitive characters who will accompany you on these pages, guiding you through the twenty-nine letters of the Swedish alphabet. Each letter does something exciting. C is “Cirkulera! Go round and round!” And for D, “Dansa! Dance!”This fun introduction to the Swedish alphabet, a romp from A to Z (and then Å to Ä to Ö), is also a delightful tour of the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis, a cultural center alive with stories past and present. Artifacts from the museum’s collection are charmingly rendered in watercolor and decorated with whimsical pen-and-ink characters that draw readers from page to page. Tara Sweeney and Nate Christopherson, a mother and son collaborative team, create magical realism in A to Zåäö, their first picture book. Their irreverent curiosity delights and begs a timeless question—how can exploration and discovery help us grow?

The dread, the drama, and the hope of a break in one of the country’s oldest active missing-child investigations ┬áOn a cold November afternoon in 1951, three young boys went out to play in Farview Park in north Minneapolis. The Klein brothers—Kenneth Jr., 8; David, 6; and Danny, 4—never came home. When two caps turned up on the ice of the Mississippi River, investigators concluded that the boys had drowned and closed the case. The boys’ parents were unconvinced, hoping against hope that their sons would still be found. Sixty long years would pass before two sheriff’s deputies, with new information in hand and the FBI on board, could convince the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to reopen the case.This is the story of that decades-long ordeal, one of the oldest known active missing-child investigations, told by a writer whose own research for an article in 1998 sparked new interest in the boys’ disappearance. Beginning in 2012, when deputies Jessica Miller and Lance Salls took up the Kleins’ cause, author Jack El-Hai returns to the mountain of clues amassed through the years, then follows the trail traced over time by the boys’ indefatigable parents, right back to those critical moments in 1951. Told in brisk, longform journalism style, The Lost Brothers captures the Kleins’ initial terror and confusion but also the unstinting effort, with its underlying faith, that carried them from psychics to reporters to private investigators and TV producers—and ultimately produced results that cast doubt on the drowning verdict and even suggested possible suspects in the boys’ abduction. An intimate portrait of a parent’s worst nightmare and its terrible toll on a family, the book is also a genuine mystery, spinning out suspense at every missed turn or potential lead, along with its hope for resolution in the end.

Alan C. Love is professor of philosophy and director of the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Minnesota.¿William C. Wimsatt is Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of Chicago, and Winton Chair in the Liberal Arts and professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota. He is author of Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings: Piecewise Approximations to Reality.

Doug Hoverson is author of Land of Amber Waters: The History of Brewing in Minnesota (Minnesota, 2007). He has written about beer and brewing history for publications ranging from American Breweriana Journal to The Growler to The Onion. He has been a consultant on documentaries about beer or related businesses and is a popular speaker on the history of beer.¿

In 365 day-by-day sketches, Laura Erickson brings more than 250 birds right into your living room-from rare hawk owls to elusive sedge wrens to plastic lawn flamingos. Light-hearted, yet authoritative, For the Birds is brimming with fascinating birdlore.Did you know that you can mail three chickadees with a single stamp? That Black-billed Cuckoos flourish on a diet of army worms? That winter finches are especially attracted to feeders offering grit and eggshells?Enjoy Laura’s entertaining observations and record your own in For the Birds-an uncommon guide.

Elisabeth von Samsonow is an artist, writer, curator, and professor of philosophical and historical anthropology at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Two of her books have been translated into English: Transplants and Epidemic Subjects—Radical Ontology.¿Anita Fricek is an Australian artist based in Vienna.¿Stephen Zepke is an independent researcher and author of Sublime Art: Towards an Aesthetics of the Future.¿

In the fourth volume of a series set in Minneapolis in the 1960s, three friends navigate relationships and new questions about love and identityAfter three years of high school, Margaret still isn’t any closer to what she wants: to sing and dance on Broadway, to be a model like Twiggy, to be madly in love with someone other than Paul McCartney. It’s not much to ask, but with her friends Grace and Isabelle she’s willing to adjust her goals for the summer to a job, a car, and a boyfriend.When Grace gets a job downtown at the Emerald Cafe, where Teddy, a dreamy college kid, tends the meat buffet, it looks like she, at least, is almost halfway there—until Teddy asks for Margaret’s phone number. “Normal” might not be all it’s cracked up to be (high school graduation, marriage, and housewifery, really?), but as Teddy complicates the girls’ friendship, it slowly becomes apparent that “normal” might mean something different, and infinitely trickier, to him. As the old friends, with adulthood looming, navigate the newly confusing territory of love and sexuality and identity, everything they thought they knew is suddenly, frighteningly thrown into question—and they discover that between the dream of stardom and the certainty of housekeeping there’s a vast unsuspected world of peril and possibility.With all the tenderness, heartache, and humor of her earlier novels about Margaret, Grace, and Isabelle, in Whatever Normal Is Jane St. Anthony takes the friends, and her readers, to a place beyond normal—to a future as satisfying as it is promising.

Based on author's thesis (Ph. D., University of Victoria, 2010).

Beth Dooley is a James Beard Award–winning author and coauthor of several cookbooks, including Savoring the Seasons of the Northern Heartland, The Northern Heartland Kitchen, Minnesota’s Bounty, The Birchwood Cafe Cookbook, Savory Sweet, and The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen (Best American Cookbook, James Beard Award, 2018), all from Minnesota. In Winter’s Kitchen is her memoir about finding her place in the Midwestern food scene. She lives in Minneapolis.¿Mette Nielsen’s photographs have illustrated numerous books, newspapers, and magazines. A talented master gardener, she created the edible garden for the Birchwood Cafe in Minneapolis, collaborated on The Birchwood Cafe Cookbook and Minnesota’s Bounty, and coauthored Savory Sweet.

Revision of the author's thesis (doctoral--Boston University, 2014) under the title: The decorated tenement: working-class housing in Boston and New York, 1860-1910.