Oct. 27, 2026
Stu Levitan, "Madison: The Illustrated History Vol. 2, 1932-1979."
It’s as though someone spent 2300 hours reading the microfilm of every State Journal and Capital Times, and the relevant issues of the Daily Cardinal, from 1932 to 1979 and hundreds of hours combing the photo archives of the State Historical Society, University Archives and Capital Newspapers, and synthesized all the information in one handy volume. It’s just like that
Madison BookBeat host Stu Levitan discusses his new book, "Madison: The Illustrated History Vol. 2, 1932-1979," {University of Wisconsin Press}, with guest interlocutor Ursula Lawrence. An illustrated civic history of Madison through the heart of the twentieth century from the perspective of a print and broadcast journalist/plan commissioner/politician, it focuses on its government, politics, race relations, land use, transportation, housing, labor and industry, the public schools, and the University of Wisconsin. It is neither an encyclopedia nor a cultural history, but a decade-by-decade visual and narrative account of both the city’s organic development and the local impact of the Depression, World War II, and Vietnam