ON WISCONSIN
Authors take a look at Capitol, Bucks star, other state issues
From one of Wisconsin’s greatest buildings to one of Milwaukee’s signature streets, recently published nonfiction books offer opportunities to get know our state and its largest city in more detail. ♦ Here’s a quick look at five new titles:
“The Wisconsin Capitol: Stories of a Monument and Its People” (Wisconsin Historical Society Press), by Michael Edmonds.
After an earlier Wisconsin Capitol building in Madison burned down in 1904, architect George B. Post won a contract to build a new, classically inspired capitol with a dome. Edmonds’ book celebrates the centennial of that building, finished in 1917.
“At a time when every social, political, and artistic convention was being challenged, (the designers) chose to create a building that was nostalgic, reassuring, and safe,” Edmonds writes. “Its architecture mimicked ancient Greece, its sculptures echoed the Renaissance, and its paintings catered to Victorian trends from decades earlier. The Capitol’s designers deliberately looked backward instead of forward. And they created a spectacular building that is still a stunning experience for thousands of visitors each year.”
The first half of Edmonds’ book leads up to the fire and construction of the current Capitol; the latter half explores the Capitol as a backdrop for Wisconsin history, including Gov. Scott Walker’s signing of Act 10 in 2010, and subsequent protests that filled the building with demonstrators. (“The Capitol began to smell like a gym due to the constant congestion,” Edmonds notes.)
More than 110 photos, many drawn from Wisconsin Historical Society archives, depict both key people and features of the impressive building.
“God and Starbucks: An NBA Superstar’s Journey Through Addiction and Recovery” (Amistad), by Vin Baker with Joe Layden.
Vin Baker was named an all-star three times during his years with the Milwaukee Bucks. But if you felt, like I did, that we weren’t always seeing his full potential, his memoir helps explain why. Shy and anxious, he came to depend first on marijuana, and later on alcohol, sabotaging his health and career. There were times in his Milwaukee years, Baker admits, that he played high. When he later played in Seattle, on his way to hitting rock bottom, Baker actually drank alcohol during some games.
Baker tussled verbally with coach Mike Dunleavy and physically once with player Jon Barry during his Bucks years. Baker also dishes about other players who liked to party.
His fifth stint in rehab was the one that took. His father, a minister, and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz were among the supporters who helped Baker find a new, saner way of life. Yes, the former NBA star took Starbucks management training and made skinny lattes for customers.
Baker’s tale of rise, fall and redemption has a familiar shape. But there can never be too many reminders that handing insecure young athletes millions of dollars can be toxic for them.
“Danger, Man Working: Writing From the Heart, the Gut, and the Poison Ivy Patch” (Wisconsin Historical Society Press), by Michael Perry.
To steal John Updike’s phrase, this is a collection of essay-humorist Perry’s “picked-up pieces”: freelance articles and essays for Men’s Health, Outside, Backpacker and other publications.
Like all of his prose, these pieces flow gracefully with amusing accents of selfdeprecation: “It quickly becomes obvious that I am a self-absorbed hypochondriac forever resolving to do better nutritionally and fitness-wise but my follow-through is laughable,” he writes in his introduction.
Perry can also play it straight with skill. In “Shock and Awe,” he chronicles the attempt of retired Army National Guard 1st Lt. Ed Salau, an amputee, to climb Mount Rainier, along the way revisiting the grenade incident that took Salau’s leg.
Perry is also a singer-songwriter, so it’s a pleasure to read his essays on music
here, including one on kindred spirit Greg Brown.
Perry will talk, read and sign books Sept. 22 during a fundraising event at the Pewaukee Public Library, 210 Main St., Pewaukee. Tickets are $50-$100. Visit pewaukeelibrary.org/an-evening-withthe-author.
“Danger, Man Working” also includes a short essay on French philosopher Michel de Montaigne, a key figure in Perry’s next book, “Montaigne in Barn Boots,” due out Nov. 7.
“A Crowded Hour: Milwaukee During the Great War 1917-1918” (America Through Time), by Kevin J. Abing.
Milwaukee’s substantial percentage of German-Americans and its Socialist politicians, notably Mayor Daniel Hoan and Victor Berger, made it a complicated place during World War I, with some folks quick to questions loyalties here. Abing, a Milwaukee County Historical Society archivist, chronicles those stormy years, which also included the growing power of the temperance movement, the Milwaukee police station bombing of 1917, and the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, which killed nearly 1,200 Milwaukeeans.
During this time period, Abing reminds, more than 400,000 people were crammed into a mere 26 square miles, bounded by Oklahoma Ave. on the south, Sherman Blvd./Washington Park to the west and Edgewood Ave. to the north, about a quarter of the city’s footprint today.
Hoan had to find a way to square his personal pacifism with pressure to make sure Milwaukee took part in patriotic preparedness efforts.
After war was declared, restrictions placed on “enemy aliens” by President Woodrow Wilson led to a small number of Milwaukeeans being placed in internment camps, but many more restricted from working in local factories. Conflict over German language classes in school heated up, too.
Milwaukeeans celebrated the end of the war, but conflicts and divisions at home did not automatically dissolve. “Hard feelings and intolerance lingered well after the signing of the armistice in November 1918,” Abing writes.
This detailed book would have benefited from having a descriptive table of contents and an index.
“Kinnickinnic Avenue: The Heart of Bay View, WI” (America Through Time), by Lisa Ann Jacobsen.
Jacobsen draws on a selection of maps and photos to represent the history of Bay View’s arterial street and its namesake river.
She cites the founding of the Milwaukee Iron Company rolling mill in 1868 as the event that catalyzed Bay View as the community we know today coming into being. She also reminds us of the Bay View Massacre of 1886 when, during a contentious labor strike, militia fired on a crowd, killing seven people.
I confess to liking best this visual book’s older black-and-white photographs of the developing neighborhood: the Schwarts blacksmith shop; elementary school children posed in a group photo outside St. Lucas Church; a street view of Gitzel’s Department Store (including a sidewalk clock, which can now be found downtown in front of the Milwaukee County Historical Society); a 1959 portrait of the massive ore ship Edmund Fitzgerald (the subject of Gordon Lightfoot’s song) visiting Milwaukee.
Jim Higgins is the author of “Wisconsin Literary Luminaries: From Laura Ingalls Wilder to Ayad Akhtar” (The History Press).