Home

New Releases

Agriculture

Architecture

Art

Biography

Fiction

Gardening

Holiday Books

Minnesota
History

Mystery

Native
American

Secure
Shopping

MINNESOTA'S CAPITOL: 
A Centennial Story

Minnesota’s Capitol is an educational and entertaining look at the house that Minnesota built. Replicated in butter sculpture and picture postcards by creative and enterprising citizens, the Capitol building in St. Paul was the pride of the state and the envy of the nation when it opened in 1905.

For one hundred years the Capitol has been the hub of government and an enduring  symbol for an ever-changing Minnesota. Through lively historical narratives, plentiful pictures, and creative activities, learn how the Capitol came to represent the North Star state and how Minnesota made itself at home in a gleaming marble structure on the hill.

"In 1895 a commission was appointed and some money appropriated to build a [new] capitol. Instead of carrying it down to the minimum, instead of doing what they thought they could afford, they had a vision of what the state of Minnesota was going to be, and that it should have a capitol worthy of the state that was to be. They built this magnificent Capitol building, complete with a wonderful dome and gold horses and Italian marble all over the place. What a vision!  What a challenge! What an inspiration!"
—Elmer L Andersen Governor of Minnesota (1961-1963)

Publication date May 2005

PRIDE OF THE INLAND SEAS: 
An Illustrated History of the Port of Duluth–Superior

Before there were cities, states or a nation, there was the port!

French-Canadian Voyageurs began striking inland from the Head of the Lakes in the 17th century, searching for pelts to transport back down the Lakes to Montreal.  Today, more than 300 years later, Duluth-Superior remains one of North America’s most important ports, handling millions of tons of commodities during the ten months the Great Lakes are ice-free each year.

Set against a backdrop of the key industries that helped build North America: iron and steel, forest products, grain, and coal, Pride of the Inland Seas tells the fascinating tale of the development of the Twin Ports during three centuries of economic, technological, political, and social change. This is the story of the people at the Head of the Lakes who built, loaded, and sailed the ships that have made Duluth-Superior synonymous with Great Lakes maritime commerce.

In the early 1900s the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers undertook a fifteen-year harbor improvement program that solidified Duluth-Superior’s leading role in maritime commerce.

  Authors Bill Beck and C. Patrick Labadie bring lifetimes of Great Lakes experience
 to the labor of love that is Pride of the Inland Seas.

Published in collaboration with the Duluth Seaway Port Authority

MISSISSIPPI ESCAPADE
Reliving the Grand Excursion of 1854

 A celebration of the life and times of the Mississippi River 
illustrated throughout with glorious color and b/w photos!  

The Grand Excursion of 1854 brought 1200 people to the edge of the world. Of course, they knew the actual world went far beyond the  Mississippi River. But they were city folk. To them a world without large cities, thriving businesses, and factories belching clouds of black smoke was still "savage." The small settlements between Davenport and St. Anthony hardly made an impression, and Indians were regarded as exotic and fearsome creatures.

When the excursionists debarked in St. Paul, continuing their quest, they immediately jumped onto stages and wagons bound for the Falls of St. Anthony. What they wanted all along was a taste of nature in the raw. What they saw as participants during their seven-day "Grand Excursion" more than answered their expectations in beauty and rugged spectacle.

Retracing the route of the Grand Excursion is an exhilarating experience. The grand vistas, picturesque islands, and awe- inspiring bluffs are still there. Eagles still soar overhead, and waterfowl continue to nest in the sloughs and backwaters. But today's skyline along the shore is as much shaped by steeples and smokestacks as by willow and cottonwood trees. In the space of 150 years, the river has spawned the flourishing cities that today line its banks and pay tribute to its nurturing presence.

ORDER today MISSISSIPPI ESCAPADE will ship APRIL 15th.

GRAND EXCURSION
Antebellum America Discovers The Upper Mississippi

The Most Magnificent Excursion of the Age!

To celebrate the completion of the first railroad to reach the Mississippi River, the owners of the Chicago & Rock Island invited a distinguished group of Eastern notables and investors to travel by rail to Rock Island, Illinois, and from there by steamboat to St. Anthony Falls in fledgling Minnesota Territory, all at the railroad's expense.

Nearly a thousand invited guests gathered in Chicago on the morning of June 5, 1854, to board two long trains that pulled out of the La Salle Street Station, bound for Rock Island on newly completed track. Arriving in Rock Island that same evening, the trains were greeted by spectacular fireworks, which saw the steamboats and their passengers off on their seven-day trip upriver.

This "Grand Excursion" occurred a week after President Franklin Pierce signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act revoking the Missouri Compromise (1820), which had prohibited slavery in Kansas and Nebraska. Historians agree that this act was the decisive event setting the nation on a collision course to civil war.   A microcosm of antebellum society, the excursionists debated national policy and happily viewed the spectacular Upper Mississippi scenery, while their country was careening headlong into disaster.

To narrate the story of the seven-day Grand Excursion of 1854, author Steven Keillor makes excellent use of editors' accounts, journals, and letters.