Madison BookBeat

Stu Levitan welcomes UW professor Paige Glotzer, whose first book is the important and eye-opening examination of the origins of systemic racism in housing, How the Suburbs Were Segregated: Developers and the Business of Exclusionary Housing, 1890-1960, just honored as the recipient of the 2021 Kenneth Jackson Award Best Book in North American Urban History from the Urban History Association.It should come as no surprise that racial segregation has been a bedrock principle of suburban development from its very beginning, way back in the 19th century. In 1891, a British land syndicate called the Lands Trust Company purchased a large tract of land in northern Baltimore MD, formed the Roland Park Company and began developing what became one of the first planned segregated suburbs in the United States. How the leaders of the Roland Park Company formulated their exclusionary practices, and extended their influence into the very structure of federal housing policy, is the business that occupies Prof. Glotzer in her revelatory investigation of racial capitalism, published this spring by the good people at Columbia University Press. It’s a narrative that even implicates some names well known in Madison, including John Nolen, Prof. Richard T. Ely and realtor Paul Stark.Paige Glotzer is a graduate of NYU, with a Master’s and Ph D from Johns Hopkins University in the aforementioned Baltimore. Since 2018, she has been Assistant Professor and holder of the John W. and Jeanne M. Rowe Chair in the History of American Politics, Institutions, and Political Economy, at the fabled Department of History at the University of Wisconsin. In her young career, she has already received numerous awards for her scholarship on housing segregation, the suburbs, and related topics

Madison authors, topics, book events & publishersIt's Stu Levitan's birthday, his 68th birthday to be precise, so he's taking the day off and dialing up an encore presentation of a conversation from this past February with UW Prof. Francine Hirsch, the author of Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal After World War II. Published by Oxford University Press, it is an award-winning reappraisal of the trial that became the pivot point between World War 2 and the Cold War.On November 20 1945, the United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union opened the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, putting on trial 22 Nazi leaders and seven organizations, charged with conspiring in a crime against peace, planning and waging wars of aggression, participating in war crimes, and committing crimes against humanity.On September 30 and October 1, 1946 judges from the four countries announced their verdicts – 12 of the accused, including Reich Marshall Herman Goering and German foreign minister Joachim Von Ribbentrop, were sentenced to death by hanging, seven received prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life, and three were acquitted. Four organizations -the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party, the Secret State Police, or Gestapo, the Protective Squadron or SS, and the Security Service, or SD, were found criminal – but only for what they did after the start of the war on September 1, 1939; three organizations – the Reich Cabinet, the Storm Troopers, or SA and the German General Staff and High Command – were found not guilty.In the collective memory of the west, these Nuremberg Trials – the only 4-power trials - were first and foremost an American exercise of finding truth and dispensing justice. Chief US prosecutor Robert H Jackson, on leave from his post as associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, was both star and director, with able prosecutors from Great Britain in friendly support. The French were only marginally relevant, and the Soviets … well, they were at best an annoyance and at worst an embarrassment whose obvious and overwhelming conflicts threatened the very legitimacy of the entire exercise.But what if that Nuremberg Moment was just a myth, and our memory is not of the whole story? What if, notwithstanding their own dealings with Hitler and their own war crimes, the Soviets were actually essential to the Tribunal happening at all? What if it was a Soviet lawyer who came up with the fundamental breakthrough in international law underpinning the entire trial?Those are the questions that Prof. Hirsch asks and answers brilliantly in this landmark account, for which she has already received the American Society for International Law’s 2021 Certificate of Merit for a preeminent contribution to creative scholarship.Fran Hirsch is the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison so it is no surprise that she has produced such a work of scholarship and style. Her first book, Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005) received awards from the American Historical Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, and the Council For European Studies. She also scores a very healthy 4.4 rating on Rate My Professor. It is a pleasure to welcome to Madison BookBeat, Prof. Fran Hirsch.

Madison authors, topics, book events and publishers. We deviate from the usual concept just a bit this week to welcome Jackie Lees and KG Miles to discuss their book, Bob Dylan in London: Troubadour Tales, a combination illustrated guidebook for a walking tour, history lesson and critical analysis.And there is sort of a Madison connection, because Madison was the last place Dylan stayed before he went to New York for the first time in January 1961, which is where KG’s next book, Bob Dylan in the Big Apple: Troubadour Tales of New York, begins. It was bitterly cold in NY that winter, and it would be even colder when Dylan went to London in December 1962, which is where Jackie and K.G. pick up the story.It is a story they are eminently qualified to write, as Londoners who are longtime Dylan aficionados and co-curators of the Dylan Room at the Troubadour Club. Jackie took a break from a career writing and editing for a homelessness charity to work on the book, the room and also provide some amateur management to the Dylan Band. K.G., whom I saw speak at the inaugural conference of the Bob Dylan archives in 2019, is as I said also the author of a companion volume coming in about three weeks, Bob Dylan in the Big Apple: Troubadour Tales of New York.It is a pleasure to welcome to Madison BookBeat, Jackie Lees and K.G. Miles.

Madison authors, topics, book event and publishers.Stu Levitan deviates a bit from that concept today with his guest Lisa S. Johnson because she’s got a new book out which you might want to know about for your holiday gift-giving or gift-asking needs. The book is Immortal Axes, Guitars That Rock, an absolutely gorgeous coffee table photography book focusing on some of the most important guitars in modern music – guitars played on seminal recordings and at historic events – and even some concerts in Madison — by the likes of Les Paul, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Duane Allman, B.B. King, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Phil Lesh, Johnny Cash and more, 157 guitarists in all, 350 pages of high-end photographs and insightful short essays, plus a Forward by Peter Frampton and an afterward by Suzi Quatro. The book is published by the good people at Princeton Architectural Press.Lisa S Johnson followed a somewhat circuitous route to becoming one of the pre-eminent photographers in a very rarified field.She traveled solo around Europe and South Africa for seven months as she was turning 21, went back home to Canada and got a hotel job in the icy and isolated North West Territories. Then two years at an exclusive private club in Edmonton before transferring to Florida where she put herself through college studying photography. Naturally, she ended up with a job at a private photo lab with the necessary security clearance to handle material for NASA and various defense contractors. Then a decade with the Eastman Kodak company before the corporate world started to get her down.After injuring her neck, she took up Kundalini yoga, and took to it so well she quit her job at Kodak and opened up two yoga studios in Las Vegas, where she continues to live. All the while, though, she was continuing with her photographic pursuits, but now, thanks indirectly to her father’s interest in a 1917 Gibson mandolin, with a new focus– guitars. The lure of the modern lyre was so great she sold her studios to concentrate on a guitar project, and in 2013 published her first book, 108 Rock Star Guitars – the number itself a nod to various spiritual aspects of yoga. This new book expands the area of interest to include guitars notable for their custodian’s contributions to country, jazz and blues.Lisa S. Johnson’s website is immortalaxes.com, her twitter handle is lsjrockphotos. It’s a pleasure to welcome to Madison BookBeat, Lisa S Johnson.

Madison authors, topics, book events and publishersToday’s program hits for the cycle, as we welcome George Hesselberg. His book Deadlines: Slices of Life from the Obit Beat, a collection of obituaries he wrote for the Wisconsin State Journal from 1979 to 2017, was just published by our very good friends at the Wisconsin Historical Society Press, and was the subject of an event a few days ago at Mystery To Me Books, which is still available for virtual viewing.It is an inescapable truth that every person and animal on this planet is going to die. Some will die in glory, some will die in shame, most will die in private, their passing unnoticed by all outside their circle of family and friends. Or their passing would go unnoticed, were it not for their newspaper obituary. Usually, the obituary is a straightforward account of the signposts and milestones of their lives – dates and places, marital and family status, occupation, hobbies, details of the visitation and funeral.But in the hands of a journalist with unbounded curiosity and great style, an obituary can prompt an account that transcends the commonplace and becomes a piece of writing worthy of collecting and publishing in a book. A journalist, that is, like George Hesselberg, and a book like Deadlines: Slices of Life from the Obit Beat.And what lives they were. The unofficial mayor of the Mazomanie nude beach. UW Police chief Ralph Hanson, and pioneering Madison policewoman Mary Ostrander. The avatar of attorney advertising, Ken Hur. Folk artist Simon Sparrow. Legendary sandal maker Cecil Burke, and fourth-generation cobbler Michael J. Falci Jr. A radio villain. A short order cook, and esteemed academic. A sword-maker, a beloved rural doctor, a circus owner, a Holocaust survivor, and scores more, 66 entries in all – and not all of them about human beings. These are not stories about their deaths – these are stories about their lives.George followed the traditional path to a career in journalism. Cheesemaker, sign painter, stage hand, candy hawker, a series of jobs in Norway including night watchman, bartender at Peppe’s and translator, and, most relevant of all for today’s discussion, grave digger.Then he settled down to a 45-year career with the State Journal, first as a general assignment and regional reporter then as the paper’s most popular columnist. He retired from the paper in 2017, but thankfully for us, continues to write.His previous books include a collection of columns from 30 years ago, Paint Me Green And Call Me Fern, his coverage of the 1994 Winter Olympics in Norway, Olympic Moose Salami and other Lillehammer Tales, and the children’s books, Vesper Stories and Special Days, Special Tales. A native of Bangor WI, he holds a BA in journalism and Scandinavian studies from the UW and lives in Fitchburg WI.It is a pleasure to welcome to Madison BookBeat my friend, George Hesselberg.

As the world eagerly awaits Peter Jackson’s documentary about the Beatles last public performance, Stu Levitan welcomes Jim Berkenstadt, author of The Beatle Who Vanished, to discuss a fascinating story about performances near the beginning of their career.In the spring and summer of 1964, the Beatles ruled pop music like no one before or since. In April, they held the top five spots on the Billboard Hot 100, with another 7 singles also on the list. In late May, even the rerelease of their debut single from 1962, Love Me Do, had gone to number one.They’d conquered Great Britain and America. Now they’re about to take over the world, with a month-long tour of Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. The tour is set to start June 4.But Manager Brian Epstein does not let them relax on the third, scheduling a photo shoot for the Saturday Evening Post in the morning, and recording sessions in the afternoon and evening. But they never get to the EMI studios, because drummer Ringo Starr collapses during the photo session and is whisked away to hospital with a diagnosis of tonsillitis and pharyngitis.Soon, Beatles producer George Martin is calling a London drummer named Jimmie Nicol to invite him to an audition that afternoon. He passes the audition, and from June 4 to June 13, Jimmie Nicol is a Beatle. It was, he later said, “the best thing to happen to me. The worst thing to happen to me.”The strange saga of Jimmie Nicol – why he was the one who got the call, what those ten days were like, and how they affected the rest of his life – is the business that occupies Jim Berkenstadt in this definitive account of one of the great and mysterious footnotes in modern pop.No one is more qualified to investigate and recount the story of Jimmie Nicol than Jim Berkenstadt. He’s not only the Rock and Roll Detective, specializing in uncovering the lost histories and mysteries of pop music. He’s also an international authority on the Beatles, and has been a credited consultant on several projects by the Fab Four and the Estate of George Harrison. He has co-authored or edited four other books, three on the Beatles and one on the band Nirvana. His new book, Mysteries in the Music: Case Closed, is coming in March from Genius Book Publishing. He lives north side with his wife, Holly Cremer Berkenstadt.

Madison authors, topics, book events and publishers.We click on two of the criteria today as Stu welcomes the award-winning journalist Terry Frei, author of Third Down and a War to Go: The All-American 1942 Wisconsin Badgers, from our very good friends at the Wisconsin Historical Society Press.The 1942 Wisconsin football team, was coached by one of Knute Rockne’s fabled Four Horsemen, and led by three All-Americans. It went 8-1-1, finishing second in the Big Ten and placing third in the final Associated Press poll. Among the stars were several who would go on to play in the National Football League, including the legendary Elroy Crazy Legs Hirsch. And there were players who would play an important role at the UW for decades to come, like Otto Breitenbach and Bob Rennebohm.But there were far more who would suit up in far more serious uniforms – the uniforms of a branch of the United States Armed Forces. Their country called them to war, and off they went. They didn’t all see combat, but many did – and several died. Including one of the most respected, even beloved, athletes in Badger history, two-time All-American Dave Schreiner.Who these young men were, what their 1942 season was like, and what happened to them during and after the war, is the business that occupies Terry Frei in this gripping account of some extraordinary – but altogether typical – young men.It is a book he is uniquely qualified to write. Not only is he an award-winning journalist – voted by his peers as the best sports journalist in Oregon three times, and four times in Colorado – he is also the son of a member of that 1942 Badger squad, WW2 pilot, and longtime assistant coach for the Denver Broncos, the late Jerry Frei, from Stoughton Wisconsin.Among Terry Frei’s six other books, Horns, Hogs and Nixon’s Coming – Texas v Arkansas in Dixie’s Last Stand, March 1939: Before the Madness, and the novel Olympic Affair. His website is TerrytFrei.com, that’s FREI, and his twitter handle is @TFrei. He lives in Denver CO.It’s a pleasure to welcome to Madison BookBeat, Terry Frei.

Madison authors, topics, book events and publishersIt’s the most wonderful time of the year, time for the Wisconsin Book Festival, 28 events this week alone, both in-person and online, and Stu Levitan welcomes one of the featured presenters, and one of the brightest stars in the firmament that is the University of Wisconsin faculty, Professor Jordan Ellenberg, to discuss his NYTimes best-seller, Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else. Prof. Ellenberg will be appearing this Saturday at 3 o’clock at the Discovery Building, 330 N Orchard St., so Stu thought it would be a good idea to dial up an encore presentation of our conversation from this past July.As coined by the ancient Greeks, “geometry” literally means “measuring the world,” and the world which Jordan Ellenberg measures in Shape is wide and far-flung indeed. Gerrymandering, the tv show Survivor, Abraham Lincoln, pandemics and flitting mosquitoes, artificial intelligence, even an answer to the question ‘how many holes in a straw’? And it’s an accessible world – yes, there are symbols and equations, and you’re welcome to have pad and paper with you as you read, but the book is mainly a narrative built on stories and people.Jordan Ellenberg was not a late-bloomer. The son of two biostatisticians, he taught himself to read at age two by watching Sesame Street, he was competing in high school math competitions while in the fourth grade, and four years later he was taking honors calculus at the University of Maryland. At 17, he beat out 400,000 North American high school students to win the USA Mathematical Olympiad, and over a 3-year period took two golds and a silver at the International Mathematical Olympiad.He took his BA and Ph D at Harvard, with a masters from Johns Hopkins in creative writing in between, then started his academic career at Princeton. He came to the University of Wisconsin in 2005, made full professor in 2011, was named a Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor in 2014 and since 2015 has been the John D MacArthur Professor of Mathematics.His previous books include How Not To Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking in 2014 and the novel The Grasshopper King. He also has a credited cameo in the 2017 movie Gifted in the role of math professor, giving him a Kevin Bacon degree of separation of two and making him one of the extraordinarily small and select group of people with an Erdos/Bacon number. He maintains a blog Quomodocumque.wordpress.com and tweets at JSEllenberg. It is a great pleasure to welcome to MBB Professor Jordan Ellenberg.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, time for the Wisconsin Book Festival, and Stu Levitan welcomes one of the featured presenters, University of Wisconsin Professor Chad Alan Goldberg, editor of an important new volume Education for Democr...

As the 2021 National League Central Conference Champion Milwaukee Brewers are about to open their playoff series against, yes, the Atlanta Braves, Stu Levitan welcomes Prof. Patrick W. Steele for a discussion of his award-winning book, Home of the Braves: The Battle for Baseball in Milwaukee, from the good people at the University of Wisconsin Press.Milwaukee Wisconsin has a great, even historic, baseball heritage, dating to the late nineteenth century. Mid-twentieth century, the minor league Milwaukee Brewers were frequent league champs, and were even owned during the war years by the legendary Bill Veeck.Which is, indirectly, why in 1953, the owner of the Boston Braves, a Major League baseball team in the National League, moved the team to Milwaukee. The Milwaukee Braves found immediate success on the field and in the stands. They took the National League title in 1957 and 58, winning the World Series in just their fifth year over the mighty and haughty New York Yankees. Attendance at the county-owned County Stadium lead the league and even set records, and was second over that entire period only to the Dodgers of Flatbush and Chavez Ravine. It meant a lot to Milwaukee to be a Big-League city, and it was very good for everybody’s business.But then in October 1964 the owners – the new owners – announced they were moving the team to Atlanta. Milwaukee County sued them, and kept the Braves for another year, but in 1966, they opened the season in Atlanta stadium.And that’s why there’s an “A” on Henry Aaron’s cap on his plaque in the Hall of Fame.How the Braves came to Milwaukee, and why they left is the business that occupies Patrick W Steele in Home of the Braves: The Battle for Baseball in Milwaukee¸ for which he won the Gambrinus Prize from the Milwaukee County Historical Society.Dr. Steele is an assistant professor of history at Concordia University, where he focuses on Asian and American history, the Vietnam War, the Modern Middle East, and for our purposes, the history of sports, including baseball and football. It was a pleasure to welcome to MBB,His first two degrees are from UW-Milwaukee, his Ph D in Modern American history from Marquette University, with a dissertation, entitled Strategic Air Warfare and Nuclear Strategy: The Formulation of Military Policy in the Truman Administration, 1945-1950, somewhat beyond the scope of today’s conversation. And no surprise – Patrick is also a member of the Milwaukee Braves Historical Association.Stu had not yet started this show when Patrick appeared at the Wisconsin Book Festival in 2018, so he’s pleased to finally be able to welcome to Madison BookBeat, Professor Patrick W. Steele.