Wisconsin: A History

A haven for summer tourists and winter sport enthusiasts, Wisconsin is famed for its physical beauty and its prodigious production of cheese and dairy products. Richard Nelson Currents compact history reveals the colorful past of Americas Dairyland, from early explorers and gangsters to latter-day sports heroes and cheeseheads.Both the Ringling Brothers Worlds Greatest Shows and Barnum & Baileys Greatest Show on Earth originated in Wisconsin, along with the typewriter, Johnsons Wax, and the first automatic assembly line. Wisconsin inventors contributed to the mechanization of American farms by developing harvesters, reapers, and other machinery. Sen. Robert M. (Fighting Bob) La Follette brought progressive reform to the state; a few decades later another Wisconsin native, Joseph McCarthy, revealed his agenda as a U.S. senator.To football fans, the capital of Wisconsin is Green Bay, where in 1919 Earl Louis Lambeau organized the Packers. Even during its fifteen-year losing streak, Green Bay fans sustained their fanatical devotion to the team.Fast-paced and entertaining, Currents history chronicles how Wisconsins homegrown ideas, from the Wisconsin Idea of efficient state government to ski-tows and speedometers, made their way into the broader marketplace of American culture.