Government officials and missionaries wanted all Sioux men to become self-sufficient farmers, wear pants, and cut their hair. The Indians, confronted by a land-hungry white population and a loss of hunting grounds, sought to exchange title to their homeland for annuities of cash and food, schools and teachers, and farms and agricultural knowledge. By 1862 the Sioux realized that their extensive kinship network and religion were in jeopardy and that...

"A veteran Twin Cities journalist and raconteur summons the life of the city after reporting and recording its stories for more than thirty years"--

"Fix What You Can is an illuminating and frank account of caring for a person with a mental illness, told by a parent and advocate"-- In his early twenties, Mindy Greilings son, Jim, was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder after experiencing delusions that demanded he kill his mother. At the time, and for more than a decade after, Greiling was a Minnesota state legislator who struggled, along with her husband, to navigate and improve the states...

Autobiography of Minnesota state senator and activist Allan Spear, who recounts his life and achievements serving in the state legislature for over twenty years. Begins with his childhood, his activism in Vietnam antiwar movements in college, his awareness that he was gay and coming out while a state senator, one of the first men to do so, and his political accomplishments, including fighting for the establishment of the African American studies program...

Minnesotans are a tough lot, capable of pulling a house six miles by muscle alone or giving birth to a sixteen-pound boy. In 1921, young Phoebe Fairgrave set a parachute world record, stepping off the wing of a biplane 15,200 feet above the Twin Cities. In 1962, the last powerhouse Gophers football team brought home the Rose Bowl trophy. A year later, thirteen-year-old Jean Webb of Minneapolis risked arrest and refused to leave a segregated restaurant....