Norway To America: A History of the Migration by Ingrid Semmingsen

Book Review

Norway To America: A History of the Migration by Ingrid Semmingsen

Historically documented, factually researched, and superbly edited, this book is a stand alone testimonial to America’s ethnic foundations. It is a memorable link to all emigrants that is hard to put down and tough to see finished.

An excerpt:

The old country honored its countrymen who had emigrated by sending representatives of the cabinet, the parliament, the church, the university and the colleges, and a number of organizations — from the Authors’ Society to the League of Farm Youth. Each brought greetings and homage. The high point in the festivities was reached on the day when Calvin Coolidge, president of the United States, appeared at the fairgrounds. He spoke to 80,000 listeners, and a new invention known as a loudspeaker carried his voice to all. He had handsome words for the work of Norwegians in America, emphasizing that they had been good citizens, loyal to their new country in peace and war, and he did not fail to make the connection with Leif Ericson and the discovery of Vinland.

These were days when it felt good to be a Norwegian-American. The pioneers of 1840 were long since gone, but some of the younger people from the wave of the 1860s and many of the later pioneers sat on the platform and listened. They might let their thoughts wander back in time and nod: Yes, it was true. They had worked hard. They had contributed something to the building of this country. They had seen vast changes since the time they tramped westward with a pair of oxen hitched to a covered wagon in the burning sun of the prairie looking for a piece of land they could till.

Cycling North: from the French Mediterranean to the fjords of Norway by bicycle (Eurovelo Series Book 5) by Steven Herrick

Cycling North: from the French Mediterranean to the fjords of Norway by bicycle (Eurovelo Series Book 5) by Steven Herrick
FIVE STARS

Steven Herrick is a talented writer with itchy feet and curiosity to explore people, places, culinary creations, and extraordinary destinations.

I loved this book that took me down a memory lane to places I have visited and idolized. Having cycled and explored Europe extensively over the years, Steven Herrick's books have given me a look back at a part of the world that is by far the very best for being people friendly. His insertion of historical tidbits coupled with personable experiences left me with a yearning to revisit.

The book deserves more than five stars

Excerpts; I never lost my wanderlust or the sense that a map spread across a table was a tableau of endless possibilities - so many roads, so many adventures.

“cycling is just an interlude between meals.”

We allow corporations to dictate how our food is grown and what we can eat. The market doesn’t care for health, only endless economic growth and increased production. Yet another reason to treasure the attitude of the French who eat seasonally and shop locally. The only market the everyday French country folk care about is the numerous cheese, fish and meat stalls open in the town square each Wednesday. The town market, not the market of bankers and financiers and faceless corporations.

The Life Of John Ericsson, Volumes I and II

The Life Of John Ericsson, Volumes I and II, by William Conant Church

John Erickson (1803-1899), the superman and mechanical engineer of the Industrial Revolution.

John Erickson seemed to be light years ahead of everybody both physically and mentally as he stepped into the developmental stages of steam power, military armaments and naval architecture. He was the right person at the right time and the right place in history. He helped humankind speed ahead powered by his cutting edge innovations.

He was a humanitarian who wanted to share his creative achievements for the betterment of all revealed his Swedish heritage.

The book spans an action packed long lifetime of monumental achievements.

Philosophical, political and personal insight into a transitory period in the coarse of human events from the speed of the horse and buggy to the speeding steam locomotive that Erickson stood at the forefront of.

John Erickson made his mark in world history as one of the superstars.

I truly loved the book and its powerful messages.

FIVE STARS

Unfortunately the digital addition I was able to obtain was poorly converted from the original.

More about John Ericsson from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ericsson

The Vikings: A New History by Neil Oliver

BOOK REVIEW
The Vikings: A New History by Neil Oliver

The most comprehensive and well researched book on this subject I have ever read.
I loved and was thrilled to find such a compendium of history chronicling the impact and far reaching consequences of the Vikings. 

Excerpts:
The men and women we call Vikings came not from one country but from three, namely Denmark, Norway and Sweden. To add to the confusion, they emerged into the wider world at a time before those countries had labels. Part of all that resulted, from the so-called ‘Viking Age’, was the very creation of those states — or at least the laying down of their foundation stones.



Viking Scandinavian
The truth of the matter of course is that most of the people who populated Scandinavia between the eighth and eleventh centuries spent no more time sailing, raiding and pillaging than anyone else in Europe. The vast majority of people in Denmark, Norway and Sweden were peaceable farmers, working only to provide for their families and to meet their obligations to those above them in a clearly defined hierarchical society. In general physical appearance the Viking Age population was little different to that in Scandinavia today.



Over-population in the Scandinavian homelands. The Vikings were well known to have an insatiable appetite for women after all, and it therefore made sense to imagine that too many couplings had fathered more offspring than could usefully be absorbed at home. All those illegitimate sons and daughters had had to go elsewhere in search of living space and land to farm. Added to over-breeding has been the idea that naked, barbaric aggression by peoples ignorant of Christianity simply inspired the pagans to put to sea in their thousands in search of Godly people to terrorize.

The Vikings and Their Enemies: Warfare in Northern Europe by Philip Line

BOOK REVIEW-FIVE STARS
The Vikings and Their Enemies: Warfare in Northern Europe by Philip Line

A look at European history and driving forces that altered its courses to this day.
I loved this books approach to a complex subject that answers many questions overlooked by historians. It is definitely a five star good read.

Excerpts:
Viking ship explained:
It is no secret that Scandinavians were great seafarers in the Viking Era. Boats had always been of vital importance in Scandinavia. Waterways offered better communication routes than inland paths over mountains or through forest and marshland, and the vast majority of settlements had access to the sea via fjords.. Boats similar to this were still built in northern Russia up to the 1950s...In the Viking Era slavery was endemic and an integral part of the early medieval European economy...
There are many contemporary accounts of attacks on communities in which the adult men were slaughtered and women and children taken as captives.
Anyone taken as a slave could find themselves at the other end of Europe. This was not just a result of transport by sea to slave emporia in distant lands by Vikings, but movement of “goods,” in this case people, across mainland Europe…

The Idea Factory Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation by Jon Gertner

FIVE STARS
The Idea Factory Bell Lbs and the Great Age of American Innovation by Jon Gertner

Nearly one hundred and fifty years after the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, in 1947, at Bell Laboratories, the transistor was invented and humankind would never be the same. As this technological revolution unfolded innovative advances progressed at exponential speed. Now micro-miniaturization coupled with ingenious applications have become expected.

I loved the book’s delivery of this ongoing revolutionary story taking place in our lifetimes. I was born before the transistor and the days of television when radio tubes powered our communications. Today's applied innovations are miraculous!

Excerpts from The Idea Factory

“Inventions are a valuable part, but invention is not to be scheduled nor coerced.” The point of this kind of experimentation was to provide a free environment for “The operation of genius.” His point was that genius would undoubtedly improve the company’s operations just as ordinary engineering could. But genius was not predictable. You had to give it room to assert itself.

An industrial lab, he said, “is merely an organization of intelligent men, presumably of creative capacity, specially trained in a knowledge of the things and methods of science, and provided with the facilities and wherewithal to study and develop the particular industry with which they are associated.”

The design for the switching station had taken two thousand “man-years” of work to create and used tens of thousands of transistors. Its complexity dwarfed that of other previous Bell Labs undertakings such as the transatlantic undersea cable.

The “switching art,” as it was known at Bell Labs, was suitably captured by a specialized technical jargon describing relays, registers, translators, markers, and so forth and a bevy of convoluted, mind-twisting flow charts. Those who had mastered the switching art were members of a technological priesthood.

The Wrath of Cochise: The Bascom Affair and the Origins of the Apache Wars by Terry Mort

FIVE STARS


The Wrath of Cochise: The Bascom Affair and the Origins of the Apache Wars by Terry Mort

This is a book about American history and the dynamic driving forces that drove it: a captivating, fascinating, and engrossing look into people’s focused motivations.
I loved the descriptive prospective of historical happenings that Terry Mort brought together.

Excerpts from The Wrath of Cochise:
Large events and issues are also relevant to the story, the Mexican War, North-South politics and slavery, the impact of the Civil War, military training and strategy, the roles of mining, emigration, and transportation. In short, in the Bascom Affair we have a microcosm of, and in some ways a metaphor for, the development of the West.

Mexico agreed to the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo a week after gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill, California. The treaty was a formal recognition of reality, because California was already occupied by the U.S. forces. Still, Santa Anna, Mexico’s once and future president, must have reflected ruefully on the sequence of events. Gold in California started a mass migration. Many hopeful gold seekers went by ship around Cape Horn; some went by ship to Panama, by canoe across the Isthmus and down a jungle river, to a further stretch of jungle paths on mule back, and finally to another ship heading north to California. But just as many went overland; it was faster. They would take a steamboat to Fort Leavenworth. From there, some would take the most direct route, across the Rockies. But others chose the southern route where the winter weather was not a problem. They would follow the Santa Fe Trail to southern New Mexico, turn west, and go through the Chiricahua country, following the Gila River trail, essentially the same trail blazed by Kearny first and then by the Mormon Battalion. (The Mormon Battalion, however, followed a more southerly route in Arizona, because they were burdened with wagons, unlike Kearny’s dragoons. They would therefore have followed the desert floors between mountain ranges. It’s unlikely that any of them went through Apache Pass, but certainly they passed close by. Similarly, gold-seeking Argonauts traveling in wagon trains would follow the Mormon Battalion’s route.)*

Human behavior routinely exposes the fact that the less entitled to respect some people feel themselves to be, the more noisily or vigorously they demand it.

A historical oddity; The Chiricahuas under Cochise’s leadership would go on to fight a war that lasted just over a decade, essentially the same length of time it took the Greeks to destroy Troy.

*The transcontinental telegraph was not completed until October 1861.
*California was admitted as a free state in 1850, quick work by Congress primarily because of the Gold Rush and the subsequent population explosion.

An Uncommon Departure

An Uncommon Departure

Leaving town by airplane, train, or driving are common.

Nearly half a century ago, August 18, 1972, my wife Jane and I set sail on our 46-foot home-built and designed dream boat from the far western end of the Great Lakes in Minnesota.

Selling everything, we only packed our boat with essentials, bicycles, books and tools.

It would be ten years before we acquired another motor vehicle.

We were going where the wind blew, when the spirit moved us, and the price was right; fishing and foraging as we went.

This adventure was a glorious lark and would turn out to be the very best years of our lives.

On our maiden voyage, we sailed the Great Lakes to Buffalo, the Erie Canal to the Hudson River, and south to NYC. It was blowing and snowing October 20th when we tied up at the ship museum dock in lower Manhattan. Someone was obviously telling us something. Turn south to Florida...we did.

P. S.
Back in Wisconsin we had been looked upon as radical misfits. In Florida, on the other hand, we stood out as straight arrows. Everything is relative (where there is a will there is a relative).

Thus began a life long adventuresome adventure that generated four books.

Our dear friend Professor Skip Koloski had this to say, “anyone that criticizes you has never had an original thought in their entire lives.”

John Grimsrud, December 28, 2018

Becoming by Michelle Obama

Becoming by Michelle Obama

FIVE STARS +++++

This book is an autobiographical look at a united and supportive family committed to making the world a better place.

This excellent and uplifting story is worthy of more than five stars.

Focused determination coupled with active community involvement climbing the ladder one rung at a time propelled Michelle to the top of corporate success.

Reading the narrative of paths chosen and directions taken is inspirational.

Excerpts from Becoming by Michelle Obama

Barack was the only candidate capable of delivering real change. Barack wanted to get American troops out of Iraq. He wanted to roll back the tax cuts George W. Bush had pushed through for the super-wealthy.


If I’d learned anything from the ugliness of the campaign, from the myriad ways people had sought to write me off as angry or unbecoming, it was that public judgment sweeps in to fill any void. If you don’t get out there and define yourself, you’ll be quickly and inaccurately defined by others. I wasn’t interested in slotting myself into a passive role, waiting for Barack’s team to give me direction. After coming through the crucible of the last year, I knew that I would never allow myself to get that banged up again.


“The single most important thing we want to achieve,” the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, had declared to a reporter a year earlier, laying out his party’s goals, “is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” It was that simple. The Republican Congress was devoted to Barack”s failure above all else. It seemed they weren’t prioritizing the governance of the country or the fact that people needed jobs. Their own power came first.
The public radio program This American Life had devoted two hours to telling the stories of students and staff from William R. Harper Senior High School in Englewood, a neighborhood on the South Side. [of Chicago] In the previous year, twenty-nine of the school’s current and recent students had been shot, eight of them fatally. These numbers were astonishing to me and my staff, but the sad fact is that urban schools around the country were contending with epidemic levels of gun violence.
Congress appeared determined to block any measure that could help keep guns out of the wrong hands, with legislators more interested in collecting campaign donations from the National Rifle Association than they were in protecting kids. Politics was a mess, I said. On this front, I had nothing terribly uplifting or encouraging to say. I went on, though, to make a different pitch, one that came directly from my South Side self. Use school, I said.


I’ve never been a fan of politics, and my experience over the last ten years has done little to change that.

North: Finding My Way While Running the Appalachian Trail by Scott Jurek

North: Finding My Way While Running the Appalachian Trail by Scott Jurek

Five Stars

This is the story of a one of a kind super athlete. Scott is focused, self-motivated, and driven to extremes.

This is my second book by Scott Jurek, and it proved to be a classic. We both came from the same motivating Duluth/Superior area and were driven by intensive and compulsive drives to excel and surpass our environment. I departed in 1972 before Scott was born, but totally understand his needs to act. John M. Grimsrud, author.
Excerpts from North: Finding My Way While Running the Appalachian Trail:

Nobody expected a twenty-five-year-old from Minnesota to show up and win the Western States 100, first try. Nobody expected a sea-level Seattleite to win the Hardrock Hundred, and certainly nobody expected a stagnant forty-something to run the Appalachian Trail in record time. Nobody; except the man in the ring. I thought about that Roosevelt quote printed on my 1999 Western States race guide: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”


I wasn’t becoming more powerful, not at all. Instead I was being stripped down not only of fat, muscle, and nerve but also of my mental toughness. I was losing it, but maybe that’s what I needed to do.