Bøger i Borealis Books serien

New introduction by Russell W. Fridley An extraordinary political leader who forged Minnesota's successful Farmer-Labor coalition during the 1920s and 1930s, Governor Olson was a powerful, charismatic, and complex person. In this fascinating biography, Mayer describes the man and his turbulent times.

A charming history of a small, isolated community that once lay on the west bank of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis.

This valuable study of twentieth-century reservation life, first published in 1939, portrays 150 families at White Earth, Minnesota in a period of loss of traditional ways.

Archer B. Gilfillan was an anomaly. An Ivy League scholar with a broad knowledge of classical literature and a talent for writing, he nonetheless chose to herd sheep from 1916 to 1934 in a lonely, isolated part of the West. Out of this strange juxtaposition of expertise and experience, Gilfillan produced the classic narrative of American sheepherding.First published in 1929, Sheep: Life on the South Dakota Range provides a personal, informative, and entertaining account of the western sheepherder. From blizzards to predatory wolves, from grass-crazed sheep in the springtime to penny-pinching bosses, Gilfillan misses nothing. He also volunteers his trenchant opinions on modern women, cowboys, and homesteaders-many of whom were his neighbors.In his introduction, Richard W. Etulain, director of the Center for the American West at the University of New Mexico, describes Gilfillan's life and discusses the appeal of the wide-open West to an urban-industrial nation.

Maud Hart Lovelace-internationally famed author of the Betsy-Tacy children's books-joined literary forces with her husband, Delos, to produce Gentlemen from England, first published in 1937. It's the fictionalized story of a real nineteenth-century English colony near Fairmont, Minnesota, located not far from Maud Lovelace's hometown of Mankato.Tales of the immigrant British men and women, striving to recreate English country estates on the Minnesota prairie, intrigued the Lovelaces. The authors' thorough research became the basis for this vivid novel of colorful fox hunts, festive balls, and English family life set on the huge bean farms bought from a land speculator.A new introduction by Borealis Books editor Sarah P. Rubinstein sketches the history of the English colony and tells how the Lovelaces worked together to bring it alive in this delightful book.

Captures the essential details of Chippewa child life and provides a comprehensive overview of a fascinating culture.

James J. Hill (1838-1916), the Empire Builder, created a vast railroad network across the northwestern United States. In this splendid biography, Martin, the first researcher to have access to Hill's voluminous correspondence, richly portrays a man of many parts: an entrepreneur, a family man, a collector of notable French paintings, a promoter of scientific agriculture, and a booster for the Northwest.

Bojer's novel of Norwegian emigration in the 1880s tells of young villagers who leave the Old World to seek a better life. Their trek takes them to homesteads in North Dakota, where they find that breaking the sod and surviving blizzards are easier than feeling at home in this new land.

A volume of reminiscences that portrays Dakota life as observed by a non-Indian teacher who lived among them.

In this largely autobiographical story, the lively and nonstop dialogue portrays the excitement, humor, and independence of a hard-working steamboat crew on the upper Mississippi.

First published in 1954, this Mississippi River classic is filled with a rare blend of excitement and pathos.

Wanda Gag rose from poverty in small-town Minnesota to international fame in the 1920s as the author of the children's classic Millions of Cats. Her early diaries are the touching, often humorous record of her youth and her struggles to develop her talent.

First published in 1965, her childhood recollections of living in North Dakota are what Lois Phillips Hudson used to spin these unusual, moving stories of simple, joyful days and of continuing battles with the hostile elements on the Great Plains during the 1930s. Lois Hudson is recognized as a major chronicler of America's agricultural heartland during the grim years of the Great Depression.Lois Phillips Hudson is recognized as a major chronicler of America's agricultural heartland during the grim years of the Great Depression. Reapers of the Dust, now reprinted for a new generation of readers, vividly evokes that difficult time. From Hudson's childhood in North Dakota spring these unusual, moving stories of simple, joyful days, of continuing battles with hostile elements, and of a family's new life as migrant workers on the West Coast.

A remarkable collection of transcribed oral histories of members of Dakota, Lakota, Winnebago, and other communities.

Descendants of fur traders and Indians, the Métis mounted insurrections against the Canadian government in 1869-70 and 1885 led by the messianic Louis Riel.With passion and verve, Joseph Kinsey Howard, author of the bestselling Montana: High, Wide, and Handsome, narrates the tragic story of Riel, the Métis people, and their struggle for a homeland on the plains of the US-Canada border.

Mary Dodge Woodward, a fifty-six-year-old widow, moved from Wisconsin with her two grown sons and a daughter to a 1,500-acre bonanza wheat farm in Dakota Territory's Red River valley in 1882. For five years she recorded the yearly farm cycle of plowing and harvesting as well as the frustrations of gardening and raising chickens, the phenomenon of mirages on the plains, the awesome blizzard of 1888, her reliance on her family, and her close relationship with her daughter. She noted "blots, mistakes, joys, and sorrows" in her "olf friend." This Borealis edition brings back to print a valuable record of a frontier woman's life."Mary Dodge Woodward's personal record of her life on a Dakota Territory 'bonanza farm' adds new detail and texture to the histories of both women and the West. . . . [She] wrote about what she saw: The epic procession of reapers and threshing crews, the wildflowers and birds, the stupendous mirages that could make the wintry prairie an optical wonderland." -Elizabeth Jameson, from the Introduction

This vivid memoir for young readers, first published in 1914, offers a unique look at the Hidatsa people's early reservation years. In simple and appealing prose, Goodbird describes growing up and learning about traditional skills, religious beliefs, and history during a time of tumultuous change.

A powerful and absorbing novel about the struggles of a proud North Dakota wheat-farming family during the Great Depression.

In the early years of the twentieth century, as the spirit of Progressivism swept the country, thousands of Americans turned their energies to creating a more just and equitable society. Liberal and left-wing organizations fought for and won a host of labor, political, and social reforms. Marian Wharton and Arthur Le Sueur stood in the thick of those battles.

Old Rail Fence Corners is the story of Minnesota's early settlers in their own words-hardship and happiness on the frontier.

Missouri guerrilla, Confederate officer, bank robber, notorious outlaw, Wild West showman--Cole Younger's life was the stuff of myth and legend. In The Story of Cole Younger, long out-of-print, he tells his story in his own words after his parole from prison at the age of 59.