Storm Lake
Storm Lake

Author: Art Cullen

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2018-10-02

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0525558888

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"A reminder that even the smallest newspapers can hold the most powerful among us accountable."—The New York Times Book Review Watch the documentary Storm Lake on PBS. Iowa plays an outsize role in national politics. Iowa introduced Barack Obama and voted bigly for Donald Trump. But is it a bellwether for America, a harbinger of its future? Art Cullen’s answer is complicated and honest. In truth, Iowa is losing ground. The Trump trade wars are hammering farmers and manufacturers. Health insurance premiums and drug prices are soaring. That’s what Iowans are dealing with, and the problems they face are the problems of the heartland. In this candid and timely book, Art Cullen—the Storm Lake Times newspaperman who won a Pulitzer Prize for taking on big corporate agri-industry and its poisoning of local rivers—describes how the heartland has changed dramatically over his career. In a story where politics, agri­culture, the environment, and immigration all converge, Cullen offers an unsentimental ode to rural America and to the resilient people of a vibrant community of fifteen thousand in Northwest Iowa, as much sur­vivors as their town.

From Hell to Iowa
From Hell to Iowa

Author: Charles Notis

Publisher:

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 141

ISBN-13: 9781627750202

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"From Hell to Iowa" is the story of an incredible journey taken by Charles Notis. The author was born in 1944 in far southern Albania, which was under the ruthless dictatorship of Enver Hoxha for about forty years. Charlie and his mother were separated from the rest of the family when the border between Albania and Greece was suddenly closed in the spring of 1945. After living in this hell on earth for the first ten years of his life, Charlie and his mother made a miraculous escape from Albania in October 1954. They then joined the rest of the family a year later and settled in Brockton, Massachusetts. The chain of events that followed are miraculous in their own regard. The Vietnam War was especially significant in the author's life, although he served in the Army only a short time. He found his way to graduate school at Iowa State University where he earned a master's degree in meteorology and then, with meteorologist Harvey Freese, founded a weather consulting company called Freese-Notis Weather. This process, along with raising a family in Iowa, is also fascinating in the way it came about. This hard-to-believe contrast in the author's life is appropriately titled "From Hell to Iowa."