A country at war. Nationwide concerns about conserving fuel. A big push for eating locally produced foods that are lower on the food chain.

Sound familiar? It all happened almost a century ago.

In an insightful interview in AgriNews, author Rae Eighmey comments on how today’s events reflect challenges faced in World War I. “The way I approach history is, if you can get a recipe, you can immediately be transported back in time,” says Eighmey. The sixty recipes in her book, Food Will Win the War, will take you there, too.

Jane Jeong Trenka, author of the memoir The Language of Blood, is interviewed  by Amy Goetzman in MinnPost for an interesting take on the Haitian adoption issue. Trenka, who was adopted by an American family, found out as an adult that her Korean birth mother was still alive.

Jane Jeong Trenka has a new book out from local publisher Graywolf: Fugitive Visions: An Adoptee’s Return to Korea.

Well, they may not be the Grammy Awards, but the announcement this past weekend of the finalists for the Minnesota Book Awards  is cause for celebration for Borealis Books and Minnesota Historical Society Press and our authors! Five of our titles made the finalist list:

General Nonfiction:
I Go to America: Swedish American Women and the Life of Mina Andersonby Joy K. Lintelman

Memoir & Creative Nonfiction:
Kevin Kling’s Holiday Inn

Minnesota:
Minneapolis in the Twentieth Century: The Growth of an American City by Iric Nathanson
Opening Goliath: Danger and Discovery in Caving by Cary J. Griffith

Novel & Short Story:
A Travel Guide for Reckless Hearts by N. M. Kelby

Winners will be announced at the Minnesota Book Awards Gala on April 17, presented by the Friends of the St. Paul Public Library.

Bundle up! It’s a spirited game of “iceball”–or outdoor baseball in the middle of winter, all for a good cause–with the folks at Crispin Natural Hard Cider and the St. Paul Saints. This chilly good time features the St. Paul Saints in a benefit game for Second Harvest Heartland. Admission is free; however, donations are encouraged: for each $1 donated, Second Harvest Heartland will distribute more than $9 worth of grocery products for those in need. Along with money and nonperishable food, fans are also encouraged to bring warm jackets and clothing that will be collected by Joseph’s Coats. Last year’s event raised $20,000, and the game-time temperature was in the single digits. At 11 am, a tailgating party will ensue, and around noon fans will be invited to sample recipes which will be judged by the culinary experts of theheavytable.com. Also during the tailgate, stay warm by dancing about to the stellar sounds of Romantica and the Spectaculars. Family fun, baseball, Crispin Hard Cider, and do-goodery all in one shot! Tailgating starts on Saturday at 11 a.m., and the first pitch is at 1:30 p.m. For more info visit http://www.saintsbaseball.com/. (via secretsofthecity.com)
To learn more about the St. Paul Saints, see Stew Thornley’s Baseball in Minnesota: The Definitive History.

Meet Paul Hillmer, author of A People’s History of the Hmong, this Thursday, 1/28, at 6pm at the Concordia University library. Lee Pao Xiong, director for the Center for Hmong Studies, and Kao Kalia Yang, author of The Latehomecomer, will make introductory remarks followed by a thirty-minute presentation by Paul Hillmer, a question and answer period, and a book signing. We look forward to seeing you there!

The Around the Literary Twin Cities in (Almost) 80 Days scavenger hunt ended December 26, but tomorrow is the grand finale at the downtown Minneapolis Central Library’s Talk of the Stacks program, where the event organizers (Coffee House Press, Milkweed Editions, Graywolf Press, and The Loft Literary Center) plan to announce the winner. The program will feature a conversation about the literary life here in Minnesota with the executive directors of the four organizations mentioned above, moderated by MPR correspondent Marianne Combs.

“The Klan’s power was devastating precisely because it was so well integrated into family life.”

The winter issue of Minnesota History magazine has a fascinating article on the rise of the KKK in Minnesota in the 1920s, titled “One Flag, One School, One Language” and written by Elizabeth Dorsey Hatle and Nancy M. Vaillancourt.

Excerpt from the article

Published quarterly, Minnesota History magazine is available in the gift shop of the Minnesota History Center and online. Members of the historical society receive a free subscription, but subscriptions may also be purchased individually.

MHS Press is proud to announce the publication of a new book by Rae Katherine Eighmey, Food Will Win the War: Minnesota Crops, Cooks, and Conservation during World War I.  Eighmey details the extraordinary efforts of ordinary citizens in Minnesota and across the country, efforts that not only helped Allied forces win the war but also propelled the United States toward superpower status.

Much of Eighmey’s book deals with grassroots food conservation–families changing their weekly menus and incorporating meatless and wheatless days to help out overseas. The book includes more than sixty recipes, retooled for modern kitchens, for a hands-on history experience.

Cornmeal and Rice Waffles

Victory Cabbage

Our friends at Beacon Press in Boston have partnered with the Estate of Martin Luther King Jr. in a new publishing program, “The King Legacy,” which gives Beacon the sole right to print new editions of previously published King titles and to compile Dr. King’s writings, sermons, orations, lectures, and prayers into entirely new editions, including significant new introductions by leading scholars.

Beacon Press director Helene Atwan writes: “ I have been rereading and listening to Dr. King a lot of late (as you might imagine) and what surprises me most is how current his thinking is, how he seems to be speaking not from the 1950s or 60s but from the post 9/11 era, even from the Obama era. What he has to say to us in an age of globalization, in a so-called ‘post-racial’ age, is as valid and in some respects more urgent in a world where 25,000 children die in poverty every day; in a world where American soldiers are killing and dying in an unjust war; in a world where too many people are judged daily by the color of their skin, or the name they give their God, rather than the content of their character.”

Now available from Beacon Press are:

Stride Toward Freedom, Dr. King’s account of the Montgomery bus boycott, a book which should be read not only for its historic value but for what it teaches us about community activism. Like all of the books in the King Legacy, Stride has a new introduction (this one by acclaimed King scholar Clayborne Carson), which places the book in its historic perspective and describes how the book speaks to the twenty-first century.

Where Do We Go From Here, which was first published in paperback by Beacon Press in 1968 and includes a foreword by Coretta Scott King and new introduction by Dr. Vincent Harding, who was a close associate of Dr. King and is the author of many works about him.

To learn more about the King Legacy and Beacon Press, to order books, and to find additional resources on the life and work of Martin Luther King Jr., go here.

Prepare for the Vikings’ postseason play by boning up on stats with Joel Rippel’s Minnesota Sports Almanac, which features just about every sport championed by Minnesota’s own, including football, baseball, basketball, hockey, golf, bowling, wrestling, boxing, fishing, hunting, soccer, tennis, gymnastics, skating, dogsledding, curling, running, bike racing, auto racing, swimming, volleyball, cheerleading, and more.

Rippel, a longtime sports  reporter for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, includes a dizzying variety of informative data, including the Vikings’ year-by-year records, lists of games not played on Sundays, attendance records (largest and smallest), postseason honors, first-round draft choices, significant players, coaches, and events, and a fun set of players’ records, some of which are here.

[Image: Fran Tarkenton, about 1975, courtesy Minnesota Historical Society]