Art Cullen

This is a good biography book for the Storm Lake area. Those of us who are not from that area found it to be full of too much detail and excess stories about local folks. It was a book club choice and no one would recommend the book after reading it. It was written in a journalistic manner that was very jumpy and needed some good editing. It seems that the author's editorials were collected together into a book form with no thought about the impact on readers outside the area. It was a hard push to finished reading it for our book club discussion.… (mehr)

5616. Storm Lake A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from a Heartland Newspaper, by Art Cullen (read 17 Mar 2019) The author of this book lives in Storm Lake, Iowa, where he founded The Storm Lake Times in 1990. He tells of his life in a roundabout way and how he came to start a new newspaper in Storm Lake. He talks a lot about how Storm Lake has changed, with many people from Mexico and elsewhere who work in the packing plant there. But it is not a systematic account, but seems to be kind of hit and miss. I would much have preferred a more fact-driven story of his life and town. His ideas are good and make much sense and his discussion of the problems of farmers and ecology are pointed and pertinent. But some of the discussion did not prove overwhelmingly interesting. A few times it was clear he did not proof read very carefully.. He says Kiron, the home town of the notorious Congressman Steve King, is in Sac County but actually Kiron is in Crawford County. He says Guadalajara, Mexico, is "a city the size of Chicago". but the population of Guadalajara is 1,460,148 whereas Chicago has a population of 2,695,598. These are things which make me think he is not very meticulous about fact-checking. But he says many good things and the book is well worth reading.… (mehr)