John Gurda

×

Expand

Courtesy Wisconsin Historical Society Press

Author John Gurda.

media release: Join us for "Book Bites" - a series of brief Facebook Live book talks from the Wisconsin Historical Society Press exploring all things Wisconsin! The series streams on the WHS Press Facebook page.

On Wednesday, December 7 John Gurda discusses his new book Brewtown Tales: More Stories from Milwaukee and Beyond

Drawing from Gurda’s long-running Sunday Milwaukee Journal Sentinel column, Brewtown Tales contains an assortment of captivating stories about the city. Readers will find in these pages the biography of a bridge, a requiem for a union, odes to both autumn and spring, a poem about aging, tales of two shipwrecks, a frank take on segregation, a visit to a junkyard, and memories of the summer of ’68, among many other things. With Gurda’s characteristic wit and eye for detail, these essays convey the distinctive flavors of Milwaukee, as well as a few more exotic places, from Vilas County to Vietnam.

John Gurda is a Milwaukee-born writer and historian who has been studying his hometown since 1972. He is the author of twenty-three books, including Cream City Chronicles, Milwaukee: A City Built on Water, The Making of Milwaukee, and Milwaukee: City of Neighborhoods. In addition to his work as an author, Gurda is a lecturer, tour guide, and local history columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The common thread in all of his work is an understanding of history as “why things are the way they are.”