Minnesota State Fair

Enhanced by more than twelve hundred photographs, a history of the Minnesota State Fair includes recipes from 4-H groups, food stands, and blue ribbon-winning contestants.

Fresh, often humorous photographs that will invite smiles, chuckles, and favorite memories of a treasured Minnesota experience--the end of summer celebration of farms, friends, food, and fireworks.

Letters of the alphabet in various graphic styles accompany words associated with fairs.

Covers everything from prize animals to fair architecture to speeches to Pronto Pups.

The first richly illustrated history of crop art and of generations inspired by Lillian Colton and her arresting portraits of celebrities in seeds.

More than a century and a half after its founding, the Iowa State Fair is the state's central institution, event, and symbol. During its annual run each August, the fair attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors who make the pilgrimage to the fairground to see the iconic butter cow, to ride the Old Mill, to walk through the livestock barns, and to people-watch. At the same time that they enjoy fried candy bars and roller coasters, Iowans also compete to raise the best corn and zucchinis, to make the best jams and jellies, to rear the finest sheep and goats, the largest cattle and hogs, and the handsomest horses. This tension between entertainment and agriculture goes back all the way to the fair's founding in the mid-1800s, as historian Chris Rasmussen shows in this thought-provoking history. The fair's founders had lofty aims: they sought to improve agriculture and foster a distinctively democratic American civilization. But from the start these noble intentions jostled up against people's desire to have fun and make money, honestly or otherwise--not least because the fair had to pay for itself. In short, the Iowa State Fair has as much to tell us about human nature and American history as it does about growing corn.

You can get almost anything on a stick at the Minnesota State Fair. This year, murder is added to the list. Despite the thousands of people in close proximity to the crime scene, efforts to find a witness are futile. Family and friends construct radically different portraits of the victim, and the list of suspects keeps growing. No suspect has a corroborated alibi. Three admit being at the fair that day. The investigation crisscrosses the Twin Cities, and travels from the fairgrounds to Rochester, Minnesota. St. Paul investigators Pete Culnane and Martin Tierney must separate fact from fiction, and determine whose lies mean what.