Twin Cities Album: A Visual History Book

"Through hundreds of photographs and entertaining commentary, veteran author Dave Kenney offers a virtual tour through 150 years of events and movements that shaped the culture and landscape of the Twin Cities. The first complete history of Minneapolis and St. Paul published in two decades, Twin Cities Album: A Visual History spans their ramshackle beginnings as cross-river rivals to their thriving metropolitan partnership today." "Early photographs show ghosts of nineteenth-century city life - tepees on the Minneapolis riverbank, shopkeepers loading oxcarts on downtown streets, sleighs on Nicollet Avenue, St. Paulites riding the first streetcars. Fascinating images of early airplanes, women factory workers, and traffic jams with horses, bicycles, and autos reflect the technological boom of the first decades of the 1900s. Scenes of victory parades, Prohibition, new entertainments, and unemployed men bring alive both the optimism of the new century and the frustration at its failed promises. Photos of former GIs with their young families reveal a changed Minnesota after World War II. Images of early local television programs give way to those of new sports teams and dramatic protests during the 1960s and 1970s. Photographs of the Guthrie Theater and the christening of the first skyway in Minneapolis reveal the evolving face of the cities in the 1980s and 1990s." But this book is more than a stunning collection of images. It brings alive the past that is all around us, showing unfamiliar buildings on well-known city streets. We see hard-working strangers in our places, doing what we do: struggling in the rush of daily life, making time to mark important events, and taking joy in relaxing with family and friends.