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Superior Reviews |
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Books, Music and
Video Reviews
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Books,
music and DVDs reviewed by Lake
Superior Magazine are not necessarily sold by LSM. Contact your local book seller
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Knife Island: Circling a Year in a
Herring Skiff
Stephen Dahl’s Knife
Island is, perhaps, what you’d expect of a journal from a Lake
Superior commercial fisherman. But the writing has poetry in its
economical style. Stephen’s keen sense of detail sculpts the portraits
of locals, weather, waves and wildlife. He relates day-to-day
irritations, fears for his profession and philosophies small and grand.
Stephen’s work and study in Norway and Denmark, literature and language
graduate study at the University of Minnesota and his fishing job in
Alaska prepared him for writing this well-packed, slender book.A March passage, one of my favorites, speaks to a fisherman’s view of winter: “When you want the wind to blow - it doesn’t. The ice is just sitting out there. It’s not heavy, not land fast, and it only stretches from Duluth to just past Knife Island, 18 miles. Two days of southwest would send it toward Canada, and then I could set a net.”
This book is a good catch.
- Konnie
LeMay
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Richard Bong: World War II Flying Ace
This story of a local hero and America’s top fighter pilot
in World War II is written for ages 7 to 12 in the Badger Biographies
series. Yet though it’s only 93 pages and is in simple language, it’s
full of details that create a portrait of the modest Poplar, Wisconsin,
farm boy who became the “Ace of Aces.”Descriptions of pilot training to flying maneuvers and comparisons of U.S. and Japanese fighter planes set the stage for Bong’s tours in New Guinea and the Philippines. Even adults who know something about this extraordinary man will learn things and enjoy the book.
Pete Barnes can be applauded for not sugarcoating the war or talking down to young readers. He tells about Bong’s close calls in combat, including battles when he lost one of two engines in his P-38 Lightning and made it back to his base. He and other P-38 pilots were often outnumbered by enemy planes.
Also helpful for the audience is a glossary of military terms often seen with short definitions at the bottom of the page, such as “air ace: a pilot with at least five planes shot down” or “kamikaze: Japanese pilot who kills himself in battle.”
The book contains photos of Bong and the Bong family and others that illustrate the war era. It’s easy to recommend this book for young readers of history.
– Bob Berg
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Anatomy ’59: The Making of a Classic
Motion Picture
In his day job, John Pepin reports for the Mining Journal in Marquette, and
with those skills he shines here as a documentary director-producer,
tracking down a history event of his home region and his childhood
passion for local author John Voelker, his book Anatomy of a Murder, and the movie
from it.The DVD features the one-hour documentary aired on public channels along with additional interview footages and some insights from John about his journey into this portion of his community’s past.
It covers the real crime that spawned the book. Interviews, done around the country by John, feature actors, historians and authors and locals who still remember the original murder, attorney-judge-author Voelker and the hoopla around the book and film.
This is a real treasure for those interested in a slice of Upper Peninsula history, in true crime or in movie-making.
- Konnie LeMay
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Michigan’s Columbus: the Life of
Douglass Houghton
Steve Lehto’s first book about the Calumet mining strike
and the tragic 1913 Italian Hall fire and deaths showed that this
attorney and author delivers good research and enjoyable writing. The
same is true as he turns his skills to a familiar Michigan name:
Houghton.At age 36, Douglass Houghton drowned in Lake Superior, but he already had lived a life filled with adventure, exploration, teaching (at the Univesity of Michigan in Ann Arbor) and politicking (mayor of Detroit).
Chapters on journeys around the Upper Peninsula give a good sense of U.P. shores in the mid-1800s while Houghton’s life itself is worth exploring.
- Konnie LeMay
