BOOK REVIEW
Potato City: What will it be?

When I first heard the title "Potato City", I wondered about the name— which shows how little I  really knew about the North Branch vicinity despite living in the area twenty-six years. But after perusing the many and varied essays, it is a good fit.

   Part history, part nature writing, part memoir, it makes a diverse, interesting read. From the geological and historical standpoint the essays explain the importance of the sand plains and the oak savannas. It is this very fact that led to the growing of potatoes and the importance of that industry to the growth and development of North Branch.

   The prose is clean and crisp and creates vividly a sense of the area and the development of the town and raises some serious questions:  what kind of

a  community are we now and what do we want to become?  Do we want to become another typical suburban adjunct of the Metro area? Or do we want to keep at least a semblance of what was and still is (to a much lesser degree), the reality and the essence of the sand plains and the oak savannas so they are not completely lost and forgotten?

   What will it be? This book is a good starting point for some serious thinking and decision making.

Barb Ledbetter Nelson

Potato City is available at the Minnesota Historical Society's online store:

http://shop.mnhs.org/moreinfo.cfm?Product_ID=512&CFID=698026&CFTOKEN=59151593

published in Wild River Audubon Current, September 2004