Review
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The voluminous new history of Wisconsin agriculture by author and historian Jerry Apps is a pleasure to consume, learn
from, and enjoy.
Sorry, but this is as close to critical this review is going to get. As many know, Apps is a master storyteller and
prolific writer, comfortable in rural fiction and nonfiction realms. It could be argued he’s the best-ever Wisconsin
rural folklorist.
This book, however, is something unlike anything Apps has attempted in his long and fruitful career. A
richly-illustrated release from the Wisconsin Historical Society Press, Wisconsin Agriculture: A History is a concise
and informative chronicle of this place called Wisconsin.
A work of this sort is a challenge for any writer or historian, evidenced by the dearth of agricultural history titles
with a Wisconsin slant. Perhaps the telling of the story is so difficult it has dissuaded others from taking a swing.
There are a few nuggets, including Robert Gard’s enduring yet ethereal My Land, My Home, My Wisconsin: The Epic Story of
the Wisconsin Farm and Farm Family from Settlement Days to the Present (1978) and Joseph Schafer’s comprehensive A
History of Wisconsin Agriculture in Wisconsin (1922). But a true history book like this one requires a level and depth
of understanding and source materials few possess. A farm-born Wisconsin native, Apps has lived it all along—farmer,
educator, storyteller, and author.
Apps follows some of his familiar folksy pathways in the telling of this history, and natural history, of farming in
Wisconsin. But he does so in a compelling way that might at once appeal to an array of audiences, from Wisconsin history
buffs to agricultural devotees to those with only minor interest in agriculture. Indeed, the book’s strengths are its
broad appeal and the way it moves smoothly and efficiently through centuries of developments. Wisconsin agriculture is
varied, from cows and corn and soybeans, to vegetables, fruit, and an array of specialty crops. Yet each is a story in
itself.
Wheat dances in the wind in early chapters, cows and corn take their place in others. The immigrants who raise them
come in their own waves, bringing their traditions, customs, and beliefs. Machines keep getting better, and so does the
cheese. Education drives innovation as agriculture achieves and maintains a huge swath of Wisconsin’s economy,
challenged though it always is by nature and economics.
Apps tells the good stories and the tough ones, from cranberry festivals to migrant workers marching for rights. Some
may wish for more detail, as in Wisconsin’s ground water challenges, but, given the task at hand, Wisconsin Agriculture
doesn’t have time to linger too long on these complicated challenges of the commons.
The author’s storytelling skills are complemented by the quiet hands of the Wisconsin Historical Society Press editors
and designers who composed the pullouts, sidebars, photographs, and graphics that steer the book in the friendliest of
ways. The sum of all accomplishes a rare feat for books of history: You can pick up Wisconsin Agriculture, open to
almost any page, and be instantly drawn in. - See more at:
http://www.wisconsinacademy.org/magazine/wisconsin-agriculture-history-jerry-apps#sthash.Rk2vmIOM.dpuf (Bill Berry,
Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters Magazine, March 2016)
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About the Author
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Jerry Apps was born and raised on a central Wisconsin farm. He is a former county extension agent and professor emeritus
for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Today he works as a rural
historian, full-time writer, and creative writing instructor.
Jerry is the author of more than forty fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books with topics ranging from barns,
one-room schools, cranberries, cucumbers, cheese factories, and the humor of mid-America to farming with horses and the
Ringling Brothers circus. He and his wife, Ruth, have three grown children, seven grandchildren, and one
great-grandson. They divide their time between their home in Madison and their farm, Roshara, in Waushara County.
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