Boys with a sprinkler, nuns at a ball game, proud hunters with their quarry--this collection of more than three hundred pictures dating from the earliest cameras to the mid-twentieth century offers a trip back in time. Peg Meier, award-winning former reporter for the Star Tribune, also shares excerpts collected from diaries and letters that allow Minnesotans of ages past to comment on pine tree vistas, harvest bounty, and the weather, always the weather.

First published in 1993, the beloved Too Hot, Went to Lake promises a history of the state and its people that's easy to enjoy.

Beloved pets. Holiday rituals. Schoolyard antics. Teenage perspectives on a world at war. Childhood is a mixed bag of challenges and joys wherever one grows up. In Minnesota, youthful memories may be arranged seasonally: making snow angels in January, swatting mosquitoes in July. They may be tinged with a nostalgic glow or imprinted by lessons hard won.

In this new collection, Peg Meier explores the themes of childhood--the bitter and the sweet. Thanks to Minnesotans who took the time to write, whether as children in the moment or as adults looking back, Meier unearthed a wealth of...