"THE SHAPE OF THINGS has always given me the most intense satisfaction," wrote Francis Lee Jaques (1887-1969). "Everything one sees and senses . . . Such beauty one wants to preserve---to make it available to others." Capturing on canvas the profound beauty he found in nature, "Lee" Jaques rose to the top ranks of American wildlife painters.

The Shape of Things: The Art of Francis Lee Jaques

Arts & Photography

Johnston, Patricia Condon

History & Criticism

Afton Historical Society Pr

FEW CITIES have had such colorful yesterdays as Stillwater, Minnesota. Fewer still can boast a hometown photographer who so faithfully preserved them.

Stillwater: Minnesota's Birthplace

Photography & Video

AN UNEXPLORED CHAPTER in American art is treated with eloquence in this beautiful book. The period covered is pre-1940. Twenty-seven artists including Nicholas Brewer, Elizabeth Chant, and Alexis Jean Fournier and their paintings are addressed in separate essays, arranged alphabetically for easy reference.

Minnesota Impressionists

Coen, Rena Neumann

Longtime resident Ed Robb combines memoir with narrative history to profile this quiet river town---which even in the third millennium remains blessedly unspoiled by progress.

Afton Remembered

History

Robb, Edwin

Americas

GLIMPSE PIONEER CELEBRATIONS at Fort Snelling and in early communities including Fairbault, Hastings, LeSueur, Minneapolis, Sauk Center, Saint Paul, Shakopee, and Winona.

Christmas and New Year's on the Minnesota Frontier (Annual Christmas Book Series)

Politics & Social Sciences

Heilbron, Bertha Lion

Social Sciences

The industrialization of America economy between 1862 and 1893 provided pioneer farm families with the means to realize their dream on the Minnesota prairie. At the same time that complex machinery and railroad transportation became affordable, the United States government made available millions of acres of free land, which attracted thousands of European immigrants to the American Midwest. 
The way of life of these first industrialized farmers gave the nation much of its economic might and many of its characteristic values. It also fostered a distinctive wave of Victorian-era architecture. The concept of the so-called L-house evolved out of hard experience on the land rather than from philosophical musing on the drawing board. The classic farmhouse was a structural species evolved through adaptation to a specific set of economic circumstances. 
Now the last of these original farmhouses are disappearing. Many of them have been left standing open, neither locked nor boarded up. Once a house is abandoned, it becomes subject to damp and decay, which removed the paint, wallpaper, and plaster. Air and light and heat enter through broken windows and rotted roof to dry and bleach the boards. Cleaned to the bones, the house becomes stark and silent, belying the color and variety of the life that went on within it. 
How these classic farmhouses looked outside and inside, how they fit into their farmsteads, and how they sometimes evolved from small simple shapes into large compound structures as the families prospered is detailed in "Death of a Dream." Some of William Gabler’s stunning photographs are composed of a dozen or more negatives taken from varying positions to better illustrate the many aspects of his subjects.

Death of the Dream: Farmhouses in the Heartland

Gabler, William G.

Rubenstein, Sally

Gabler, William

MINNESOTANS HAVE long suspected that the last ice age never fully receded from the state, but that has not kept them from having a good time. "Icy Pleasures" explores the many ways that the people of Minnesota have embraced its Siberian reputation with winter carnivals and cold weather sports.

Icy Pleasures: Minnesota Celebrates Winter

Larson, Paul Clifford

FACES OF CHRISTMAS PAST is an engaging, middle-aged look at the perils of Christmas, our own self-imposed burdens of ritual duty (like the newsy Christmas Xerox), and the more unsettling fact that successive Christmases, more even than New Year’s, mark the passing of our life from childhood to death. "Old Christmas card photos show us how we’ve aged," says author Bill Holm, "reminding us that, though time may curve in Einstein’s physics, in our small life it is a straight line to white hair and bifocals." 
Holm also reminds us of the great consoling ritual of music, so rich and full of feeling at Christmas. Our best defense against age and death may be singing, he says, so we’d better open our mouths with courage and spirit to let the songs come.

Faces of Christmas Past

HOLM, Bill

Children's Books

BASED UPON interviews and correspondence with more than four hundred former patients, "We Hold This Treasure" is the inspiring story of the first state-funded hospital in the United States to provide care for indigent, handicapped children.

We Hold This Treasure: The Story of Gillette Children's Hospital

Medical Books

Koop, Steven E.

Administration & Medicine Economics

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Afton Historical Society Pr publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Afton Historical Society Pr

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Afton Historical Society Pr publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Shape of Things: The Art of Francis Lee Jaques

Stillwater: Minnesota's Birthplace

Stillwater: Minnesota's Birthplace

Minnesota Impressionists

Afton Remembered

Christmas and New Year's on the Minnesota Frontier (Annual Christmas Book Series)

Death of the Dream: Farmhouses in the Heartland

Icy Pleasures: Minnesota Celebrates Winter

Faces of Christmas Past

We Hold This Treasure: The Story of Gillette Children's Hospital