A GREEN BAY HISTORICAL TRUE CRIME STORY

At the turn of the 20th century, cities around the world were rife with syphilis, yet no blood test could prove it. Two women in Green Bay, Wisconsin found their lives destroyed by that simple fact. Mary, an illiterate maid, and Mollie, a college-educated socialite, fell victim to the physical violence and mental abuse of celebrated surgeon Dr. John R. Minahan. To silence them, he claimed they had that shameful and dreaded disease. But as medical science advanced and suffragettes marched for their rights, Mary and Mollie found the courage to stand up for theirs.

This is the only full account written about Dr. John R. Minahan, whose family dominated Green Bay's professional, business, and political arenas from 1892 to 1954. Dr. Minahan's wealth built a college stadium, science hall, and six-story office building-all named for him-while history lost, or perhaps erased, Mary's and Mollie's heroic stories. Until now.

Disturbingly, these women's intimate narratives embody the same battles dominating headlines today: men's entitlement versus women's liberty, wealth versus poverty, and false information versus scientific fact. This is a story of power, abuse, and seeking justice. It is the story of Dr. Minahan versus the maid and the socialite.

A woman turning 65 ends up with one of her hiking boots in the grave as she embarks on a Quest to complete five miles in all 50 Wisconsin State Parks in one year.

Richard (Dick) and his wife, Kim, co-own the Cates Family Farm LLC in Wyoming Township, Iowa County, with their son Eric and his wife, Kiley, and their daughter Shannon and her husband, Dan. Dick is a life-long farmer who grew up working on his family's beef cow-calf farm, a neighbor's dairy farm, Montana ranches, and in large-scale dairy forage and grain crop production overseas.

Dick pursued professional studies in soil science and agronomy and earned an MS (1979) in soils from Montana State University and a PhD (1983) in soils and plant health from the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Agricultural and Life Sciences while serving a Leopold Fellowship. Dick began taking over the family farm management in 1987 and then, along with Kim, purchased a portion of the land to build their own farming business.

For the next eight years, Dick helped (part time) lead the development and oversight of the Wisconsin Sustainable Agriculture Program, an on-farm demonstration and research effort of the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection with the purpose of reducing agriculture's dependence on non-renewable petroleum-based inputs. In 1995 Dick was given the opportunity (part time) to develop and direct the Wisconsin School for Beginning Dairy and Livestock Farmers, a program at UW-Madison to train new would-be farmers in business planning and managed grazing. Dick retired from this work in 2018, but over those twenty-three years, he also developed and taught courses within the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences there.

Dick and his family are members of the Iowa County Uplands Farmer-Led Watershed Project and the Lowery Creek Watershed Initiative, where they share information about and demonstrate conservation practices with other landowners and the public.

Dick authored the book Voices from the Heart of the Land: Rural Stories That Inspire Community (University of Wisconsin Press, 2008) and a children's book, An Adventure on Sterna's Hill (2019).

Dick and Kim enjoy walking on the farm and in wild country anywhere, canoeing, skiing, and dancing together. They have four grandchildren who are the love and joy of their lives.

Few can do what Ray Glennon can. Many notice, hardly anyone understands. Ray has a secret. Three, actually. Sent away at birth, brought back nearly nine years later to a beleaguered country town called Faith. People stay in their lanes here, do as they're told, become what they're expected to be. Ray is different, not an easy thing to be in Faith, making the poor kid a foreigner at home, a target of torment at school. An elderly couple offers solace and the delights within a ceramic jar on their kitchen counter.

As years pass, hardship visits many in Faith, and the community is repeatedly upended by a series of confounding incidents. It escapes no one's attention that Ray figures in each. Notes written in a hand no one recognizes arrive from who knows where, curiously finding their way into Ray's possession. Riddling out the cryptic messages brings Ray to the rescue of Faith's most stricken and to terms with long-concealed truths and hard-to-grasp capabilities. Wonders ensue. A mother sacrifices body and soul. Secrets are revealed, as are faculties of the human spirit that only in the rarest instances get put to use.

A migrant worker is discovered buried in a local quarry with an antique gold coin in his pocket near La Crosse, Wisconsin. Lt. Jim Higgins begins to unravel a murder that will take him back into Wisconsin's early history. During the investigation, Higgins meets a local archaeological savant and treasure hunter who tells him a wild tale about a U.S. Army payroll that was stolen on the way to Fort Crawford in Prairie du Chien in 1866. The payroll has never been recovered. Is the coin on the dead man part of the stolen treasure?

Higgins hesitates to base his investigation on a wild tale, but he has nothing else to go on. As his team desperately attempts to make sense of the facts, the killer strikes again. The investigative team realizes the wild tale may be the only explanation for the two murders. In a race against time, Jim struggles to identify the killer-and find the elusive gold treasure.

People are often surprised at the long history of forest fires in Wisconsin. Going all the way back to Peshtigo in 1871, lives have been lost, thousands of homes have burned, and millions of acres have been blackened. And because of that, there have been forest rangers here for a hundred years.

Blair Anderson was one such ranger for over 30 years in the 80s, 90s, and 00s. Here, he sets the story straight on what the life of a forest ranger really is like; working with fire departments, police, district attorneys, and lots and lots of regular folks. Along the way, there is no end to the stories that inevitably come from working with them, many of which he shares here.

During a raging spring blizzard, a tavern owner along the Mississippi River uncovers a body in a snowdrift in his parking lot. Things become complicated when the murder weapon, an ancient Native American war club, is discovered lying next to the body. Lt. Jim Higgins of the La Crosse Sheriff's Department and his team delve into the murder and uncover ties to a past Sauk hero named Blackhawk. In addition, protests by local environmental groups in the area who oppose an energy company's plans to construct huge high lines through the bucolic scenery create more mayhem. Murder, history, and passionate political stances make this book a rollicking good read.

A children's picture book about the remarkable lessons to be learned from a little girl named Tessa, who was born with Down syndrome. 47 Strings is a beautifully illustrated book for children of all ages.

The Lincoln Barnes story continues in the second installment of the Lake Superior Mystery Trilogy. Barnes has left the Minneapolis PD and begins a new chapter of her life in Lake County, Minnesota, as Sheriff Sam MacDonald's chief detective. The bizarre murder of a young man on the shores of Lake Superior sets off a series of seemingly unrelated crimes that challenge Barnes and MacDonald and include the kidnapping of a mining executive and the use of deadly chemical weapons. Despite the FBI's involvement, Barnes takes center stage with a lively cast of new characters who will keep the reader guessing and second guessing. And, of course, Barnes is still obsessed with Judge Robin Gildemeister. Is he a murderer, the man of her dreams, or both?

A children's picture book about the remarkable lessons to be learned from a little girl named Tessa, who was born with Down syndrome. 47 Strings is a beautifully illustrated book for children of all ages told from the perspective of a new mom introducing new baby to an older sibling.

The president of the Minneapolis city council is savagely murdered in a park a few hours before sunrise. Forensic evidence suggests she knew the killer. Detective Lincoln Barnes and her cerebral partner, Warren, lead an investigation that focuses on the charismatic mayor and the victim's chief aide. Barnes' romantic encounter with a judge turns into an obsession after she discovers startling facts about his past. As she and Warren close in on the killer, events occur that make her question her future as a Minneapolis cop and contemplate a new life with a man who's either the answer to her prayers or the personification of evil.

Protecting Paradise takes the reader through the saga of how the US Army Corps of Engineers removed 149 families from their property in southwest Wisconsin to construct a dam on the Kickapoo River-a dam that was ultimately never completed-and how this failed project evolved into a model for cross-cultural, multi-institutional, grassroots ecological protection and low-impact recreation, through an innovative agreement with the Ho-Chunk Nation. From the author's perspective over more than two decades as the founding Director, readers are taken through the journey of how this innovative, inspiring, and controversial place came to be: from the influence of the national environmental movement, scientific modeling of the proposed dam and lake, local-scale grassroots activism, and a unique Memorandum of Understanding between a State and Sovereign Nation.

Marcy West served as the Executive Director for the Kickapoo Reserve Management Board (KRMB) in the formative years of 1996-2021. In Protecting Paradise, she takes the reader on a tour of the 8,600 acres she came to know and love as it evolved through federal government ownership for a proposed dam and constructed lake to the unique arrangement with the State of Wisconsin and Ho-Chunk Nation to own and jointly manage the public property through the KRMB.

Detective Jim Higgins becomes suspicious when stolen Iraqi treasures from the National Museum in Baghdad show up in a La Crosse, Wisconsin, antique store. But that's just the beginning. A delivery truck is bombed, and the driver is killed. The discovery of its surprising cargo deepens the sinister mystery. Higgins and his team must untangle the source of the ancient stolen antiquities and find a murderer with a dark, evil secret.

With this book, John Burke shares his thoughts on the future of America. Burke makes the case that America's decline is due to a combination of poor leadership in the government and poor citizenship. Burke takes on 14 of America's biggest problems, ranging from a health-care system that is almost twice as expensive as any other country in the world and delivers results that rank 55th out of 57 Western nations to how to solve our nation's $34 trillion debt. For every major problem, Burke outlines nonpartisan solutions that are in the best long-term interest of the United States. The book brings our biggest problems to life with facts, graphs, stories and, most importantly, solutions. This book is a great read for anyone who cares about the future of the United States.

Now it is our turn, it is the time for all good people to stand up and be heard, to do something for our country, and be worthy of the title, Citizen of the United States.

In the latest installment of the Driftless Mystery Series, Lt. Jim Higgins is stumped by a murder on the north side of La Crosse that seems to be tied to the unsolved abduction and disappearance of a babysitter that happened within the city limits forty years ago. Stymied by a locket and note left at the scene of the murder, Jim's team of investigators dig into the crime, but nothing comes easily. As they conduct their investigation, a personal assault on a member of Jim's family leaves him with few choices but to meet the assailant head-on. In a crescendo of unparalleled danger and risk, Jim confronts his adversary with every fiber of his being in an ending that surprises, shocks, and confirms the power of love and sacrifice

Shortly after the 2010 Wisconsin elections, which put Scott Walker in the governor's office and saw Republicans gain majorities in the state senate and assembly, the fiercely partisan politics that ensued drew national attention.

Former Wisconsin State Senate Majority Leader and Health and Social Services Secretary Tim Cullen wrote about Walker's dismantling of public employees' rights in his acclaimed first book, Ringside Seat.

Now Cullen shifts his focus to the legislature and state and federal courts where, in 2011, partisan gerrymandering-drawing legislative districts that nearly guarantee one party control-gave Wisconsin Republicans a death grip on the senate and assembly.

In Wisconsin Gerrymandering, Cullen traces the history of gerrymandering in the state and details the decade-long efforts to end the insidious practice. It's not a partisan issue, Cullen writes. It's an abuse of power issue.

Cullen was a leader in the successful-for now-fight to end gerrymandering in Wisconsin and has written a timely, cautionary, important book.

Mission to Oslo is a rollicking tale of the true adventures of President Bill Clinton's ambassador to the Kingdom of Norway: Tom Loftus, grandson of Norwegian immigrants and former Speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly.

Told with wit and wry humor, the memoir covers 1993 to 1998, the momentous years of the first Clinton administration. It was a time of historic change after the end of the Cold War, with policies adopted that are still debated today: the building of relations with a fledgling Russian democracy, the expansion of NATO to Eastern Europe and the Baltics. And, the Norwegian-brokered Oslo Accords that laid the groundwork for a path to peace in the Mideast.

Loftus is a gifted storyteller, and the job of an American ambassador comes to vibrant life. Everything from traveling with The King and The Queen to dodging tanks on a winter road in Russia. Food, wine, and entertaining in Oslo's spectacular Ambassador's Residence. It is all there.

Are you seeking places in Wisconsin to immerse yourself in nature? With the growing recognition of nature's extraordinary benefits, finding the right place to experience this is essential. Peruse this comprehensive guide, crafted by Hoffman, a seasoned nature expert, and the Stingleys who are passionate about introducing their children to the natural world. This essential guide is designed to help nature enthusiasts of all ages and interests. The guide first identifies prime vacation spots categorized by desired experiences, making it easy to plan your ideal getaway. The second section provides a breakdown, by county, of destinations perfect for weekend adventures. Finally, the book concludes with a selection of favorite places ideal for daily activities.

A huge bravo to Hoffman and the Stingleys on presenting a naturalist's master class on how and where to go by region and county to experience nature for a few hours, a half-day, or camping out over two or three days. There are even sections on lake swimming beaches, designated snowshoe trails, and nature immersion sites identified by GPS coordinates. Then there are also nearby out-of-state areas to explore in northern Michigan and within the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. And for those challenged by mobility restrictions, there's a welcome section titled Accessible Trails. This guide has it all!

-Sumner Matteson, author Afield: Portraits of Wisconsin Naturalists,

Empowering Leopold's Legacy

With this book, John Burke shares his thoughts on the future of America. Burke makes the case that America's decline is due to a combination of poor leadership in the government and poor citizenship. Burke takes on 14 of America's biggest problems, ranging from a health-care system that is almost twice as expensive as any other country in the world and delivers results that rank 55th out of 57 Western nations to how to solve our nation's $34 trillion debt. For every major problem, Burke outlines nonpartisan solutions that are in the best long-term interest of the United States. The book brings our biggest problems to life with facts, graphs, stories and, most importantly, solutions. This book is a great read for anyone who cares about the future of the United States.

Now it is our turn. It is the time for all good people to stand up and be heard, to do something for our country, and be worthy of the title Citizen of the United States.

I don't have a sister!

When an unidentified woman is found in a park in La Crosse with a four-year-old child, Jim Higgins, chief investigator for the La Crosse Sheriff's Department, uncovers some unpleasant family history. But before he can begin to process the family revelations, a double homicide at the local mortuary leads Jim and his team on a frantic chase in search of a killer with a history of predatory sexual misconduct. Can the killer be found before others find themselves in the crosshairs of a ruthless killer?