Wisconsin Death Trip

First UK edition of Wisconsin Death Trip by Michael Lesy. (1973)

Large format hardcover in very good condition

General wear and tear to dust jacket (in good condition), now in a removable protective sleeve

Some slight toning to end papers and extremities to some of the interior pages

Otherwise, majority of pages clean, binding firm

Previous owner's name inside (this copy was owned by photographer Nick Hedges)

Some very minor wear to extremities of boards

Comes with a newspaper clipping loosely laid in

About

This book is about life in a small turn-of-the-century Wisconsin town. Lesy has collected and arranged photographs taken between 1890 and 1910. Against these are juxtaposed excerpts from the Badger State Banner, from the Mendota State (asylum) Record Book, and occasionally quotations from the writings of Hamlin Garland and Glenway Wescott.

Protestants behaving strangely in the 1890s. . . . an outbreak of craziness, multiple murders, suicides, ghost sightings, epidemics, gun-toting teenagers, schoolmarms hooked on cocaine and general mental illness (well, an insane asylum was nearby)all in a little town called Black River Falls, populated mostly by German and Scandinavian immigrants.