Wisconsin Death Trip

by Michael Lesy

Book Overview

First published in 1973, this remarkable book about life in a small turn-of-the-century Wisconsin town has become a cult classic. Lesy has collected and arranged photographs taken between 1890 and 1910 by a Black River Falls photographer, Charles Van Schaik.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0826321933
• ISBN13: 9780826321930
• Release Date: January 2000
• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
• Length: 148 Pages
• Weight: 1.93 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 11.1" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Incorrect order

Great book. I ordered a hardcover and a paperback was received with a sticker damaging the cover.

Saw this Book Once and Searched for It For Years

This book made such an impression on me when I once picked it up in a used book store and begged my mother to buy it. I was young and my mother gave me that 'is this really my child' look. Fast forward and it now sits in my coffee table. Some have attempted to take it home and some urge me to toss this book. It is a puzzlement but a creepy, sad, sometimes beautiful and always interesting book.

My Favorite Book

"The pictures you're about to see are of people who were once actually alive." So begins historian Michael Lesy's masterpiece - a by turns touching and disturbing examination of life and death in a small Wisconsin town during the final 15 years of the nineteenth century. Lesy stumbled across a cache of 30,000 glass plate images made by a local town photographer named Charley Van Schaick and spools of microfilm from the local newspaper - and combined the most compelling of these images and newspaper excerpts to create a vivid examination of Victorian prairie life. Although there are numerous post-mortem memorial photographs to add morbid appeal to the book, the newspaper and insane asylum excerpts are what I find absolutely enthralling. If ever anyone tries to suggest to you that times were better "before", you might want to refer them to these matter-of-fact tales of murder, suicide, insanity, and lethal pestilence. Death was a constant threat and entire families of 6 children could be wiped out by diptheria in a matter of days. It's no wonder that so many were driven to suicide: the depth of despair that these people must have gone through is at times palpable. To give you an idea of the sort of macabre fascinations you can find in these olde newspapers, here are some excerpts: "The 60 year old wife of a farmer in Jackson, Washington County, killed herself by cutting her throat with a sheep shears" "Mrs. James Baty... died suddenly of a hemorrhage of the lungs. She leaves a husband, her family of 6 children having died of diptheria last summer" "Mrs. John Larson... drowned her 3 children in Lake St. Croix during a fit of insanity... Mrs. Larson imagines that devils pursue her" And my personal favorite: "Mrs. Carter... was taken sick at the marsh last week and fell down, sustaining internal injuries which have dethroned her reason. She has been removed to her home here and a few nights since arose from her bed and ran through the woods... A night or two after she was found trying to strangle herself with a towel... It is hoped the trouble is only temporary and that she may soon recover her mind" You don't see entries like that in newspapers anymore!!

Mesmerizing

In the spring of 2000, I was sitting in the admissions office at Hampshire College, waiting to be interviewed. With some time to kill, I browsed a bookshelf featuring the works of Hampshire professors. One of these books was Wisconsin Death Trip. It caught my attention thanks to the Static-X album of the same name (of which I was a big fan at the time...no longer, though), so I pulled it from the shelf to find that haunting cover photo staring at me with its dark, blurry eyes. It drew me in, in a way that was far from comfortable. It left me no choice. I had to see what was inside. As it turned out, I had a long wait for my interview, and I made it through most of the book. If it had been anything other than a sunny spring afternoon, I doubt the interview would have gone well at all. Suicide and murder, madness and despair, babies in coffins and grim stone-faced Lutherans. The images were haunting, and those conjured up by the simple matter-of-fact accounts even more so. This book haunted me. Fast forward a year and a half, and I'm a first-year student at Hampshire. I walk into the bookstore and what do I see but Wisconsin Death Trip. I'm short on cash, but I buy it. I haven't really got a choice. Just about everyone who comes into my room gets to look at it. Fortunately, this is Hampshire College, so that probably helps my social life a bit. Four years later, the Death Trip still holds a prominent place on my shelf. Every so often I take it out and open it, and inevitably I end up reading it cover to cover. This book is powerful, haunting, and above all else important. Uncomfortable as it may be, this is American history. This is a tale of the price we pay for progress. These are the souls who were caught in the gears of the machine. In my time at Hampshire I had Mr. Lesy as a teacher. Towards the end of the semester, I asked him why he felt compelled to write this book. He told me that after looking through the images and articles used herein, that he realized that he was looking at "an American Holocaust." And that, he felt, was something that people needed to know about. I wholeheartedly agree. Pick up this book and you will not put it down.

Vivid Truth of agrarian White American History

I read this book frequently during the 70's after leaving Wisconsin where I went to college and lived briefly on a farm. The impact has remained with me throughout my life; the devastating loneliness and alienation and great griefs that actually are so much a part of the 'roots' of white America. The spectre of the end of the timeless native american cultures, without a media to sensationalize or distort, were nevertheless traumatic to watch. Especially to people for whom there were few social holding places- in a world plagued and stark. The style of the book with entries from the State Assylum intake log, the local newspapers, some journals and the shocking family pictures, and pictures of the dead, constitutes a multiple fact assault that feels nothing less than gothic fiction. I don't believe it is possible to get a clearer understanding of the European agrarian foundations of America- and the incipient madness that was never far from the essence of that life. My Antonia is like a fairy tale by comparison.

Taking a look at an era not unlike our own

At the end of the nineteenth century and up through World War II, sociologists debated human behavior and intelligence. Are people born predisposed to genius or moronity? Are they born with a genetic ability to be or become wealthy and others are born to be poor? Can one's environment affect one's intelligence and one's station in life, or is it a genetic quality? Leading advocates of both positions certainly used a great deal of research to prove one point or another. Ironically, a leading advocate of the environmental influences of behavior eventually went into advertising, the greatest proof of environmental influences on individuals. And, in another bit of irony, Adolf Hitler influenced his audiences with propaganda to lead them to believe race and genetics determined who and what people were! Michael Lesy's scholarly work (it was originally a thesis for his degree) takes a practical look at this debate. In fact, Mr. Lesy addresses that debate in his conclusion, as he relates the debates raging in ivory towers, his book in the main related the reality of the world in the heartland. These men in academia might not have known of the individuals who are named in the news reports, but their debate sought to answer those question that arose from these actions. In reading these accounts, we realize that the only difference between "the good ol' days" and today is likely the speed of communications. Many of these articles were already several days, if not weeks, old when they printed; today they would be splashed on the front pages and people would debate what is happening to our society that it is eroding so. Attempts on others lives were frequent. Mental illness prevalent. The photographs also tell a story. Infant mortality. Newlyweds looking to a bright future. Vibrant businesses. Artistic photographs that seek to illuminate certain features of a photo. These glass plate photos were what originally inspired Mr. Lesy to do this project. Amazingly, these accounts are not from the large metropolitan areas, but from the rural areas of Wisconsin. At this same period, Wisconsin was the leader in Progressivism with Robert "Fighting Bob" LaFollette leading the state to lead the nation in enacting reforms such as Social Security, Worker's Compensation, and the minimum wage. So while the environment improved, the sad state of human affairs remained similar to the nation at large. This book also proves to be a conversation piece. After reading it, I started bringing it to family gatherings. My grandmother remembered similar stories from her youth. My mother read similar accounts as she did geneology. Others were amazed that news reports then are eerily similar to news reports today. Obviously, the human condition remains bizarely similar. The "good ol' days" it would appear weren't so good.