A Short History of Wisconsin

With an approach both comprehensive and accessible, historian Erika Janik shows how Wisconsin was shaped by the same world wars, waves of new inhabitants, and upheavals in society and politics that shaped the nation.  Swift, authoritative, and compulsively readable, A Short History of Wisconsin commences with the glaciers that hewed the region’s breathtaking terrain, early Native American cultures, and French explorers and traders, and moves through the civil war and two world wars, covers advances in the rights of women, workers, African Americans, and Indians, and recent shifts involving the environmental movement and the conservative revolution of the late twentieth century. But only part of the story lies in sweeping societal change: Janik finds the story of a state not only in the broad strokes of immigration and politics, but in the daily lives shaped by work, leisure, sports, and culture. A Short History of Wisconsin offers a fresh understanding of how Wisconsin came into being and how Wisconsinites past and present share a deep connection to the land itself.