BLANCHARDVILLE — The Blanchardville Library will host a program with Dean Robbins that will be open to the public at 6 p.m. on March 19.
“Wisconsin Idols: 100 Heroes Who Changed the State, the World, and Me” is an essay collection that offers a unique perspective on legendary figures with often surprising connections to Wisconsin. Author Dean Robbins puts a personal spin on these stories, based on interviews, intensive research, and lifelong obsessions. Readers tag along to every corner of Wisconsin as Robbins relates astonishing examples of courage and integrity, providing inspiration for an age desperately in need of heroic role models.
With revelatory anecdotes, humorous details, and poignant storytelling, the book establishes Wisconsin as a notably influential place: a crossroads for people who changed the world.
The subjects range from certified state icons such as Georgia O’Keeffe, Chris Farley, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to unexpected choices such as the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Harrison Ford, and Joni Mitchell. An ailing Elvis Presley stops a late-night fight on the streets of Madison, in the last miracle of his miraculous life; Oprah Winfrey learns a life-changing lesson about empathy during her impoverished Milwaukee childhood; Jackie Robinson defies racial barriers to form a friendship with a young white fan in Sheboygan; and twin-sister advice columnists Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren sharpen their listening skills during a momentous decade in Eau Claire.
Wisconsin Idols also introduces lesser-known heroes such as Viola Smith, renowned as “the fastest girl drummer in the world”; Jeffrey Erlanger, the boy in the electric wheelchair who touched millions of people in a famous episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood; Caroline Quarlls and Joshua Glover, enslaved people who escaped to freedom on a harrowing journey through the state’s Underground Railroad; and Meinhardt Raabe, who achieved lasting fame as the Munchkin coroner in The Wizard of Oz.
Wisconsin Idols was picked as the Book of the Month by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Madison Magazine and praised by the Wisconsin State Journal, Wisconsin Public Radio, Milwaukee Magazine, Capital Times, and other media outlets.
“Dean Robbins’s collection of brief essays is a passionate and poetic homage to one-hundred musicians, artists, thinkers, entertainers, and athletes (including me) whose presence, however brief or long, in his beloved Wisconsin impacted the state and him. It’s both insightful and entertaining,” NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said.
Dean Robbins is a nationally acclaimed author of nonfiction children’s books about his personal heroes. With Wisconsin Idols, he publishes his first book about heroic figures for adults, drawing on his career as an award-winning journalist and arts critic.
