The University of Wisconsin Press | Fall 2013 - page 39

uwpress . wisc . edu 39
AGRICULTURE / HISTORY / WISCONSIN & MIDWEST
The Round Barn, A Biography
of an American Farm, Volume 1
Silo and Barn, Milkhouse, Milk Routes
Jacqueline Dougan Jackson
“Perhaps the fullest, most concrete, history of the heyday of the American
family dairy farm. It is a Tocqueville of the barn and pasture and big
house, the milk route, the cornfield, and the making of an honorable
living and a beautiful life. The Round Barn is a unique, unprecedented, and
incomparable work, a definitive American work, a work of incalculable
value to our history, our sense of ourselves as Americans, and perhaps our
future.”—Reginald Gibbons, Northwestern University
Based on extensive primary materials from the Dougan Dairy of Beloit, Wiscon-
sin, The Round Barn tells an authentic, sometimes gritty, often humorous story
of a “life as well as a living.” Making use of extensive oral histories, documents,
letters, diaries, photographs, and creative nonfiction, Jacqueline Dougan Jackson
faithfully re-creates the story of her family’s farm in a chronicle that spans over
seven decades.
Volume 1 focuses on the farm’s milk business—from tending the cows to pro-
cessing the milk to milk delivery—and it illustrates the partnership between the
Dougan Dairy and the University of Wisconsin’s College of Agriculture in all its
groundbreaking scientific influence.
The Round Barn, A Biography
of an American Farm, Volume 2
The Big House, Around the Farm
Jacqueline Dougan Jackson
“Jackie Jackson throws open the Round Barn doors at the Dougan family
farm to tell us an American story. She gives us a rich history of farm life at
the mercy of the forces of science and the market but grounded in rock-
solid Wisconsin values.”—U.S. Senator Dick Durbin
Volume 2 of The Round Barn warmly and extensively narrates the history of the
Dougan family farm and continues where the dairy tour ended in the first install-
ment. The book broadens its focus to general farming, as author Jacqueline Dou-
gan Jackson describes the start and development of hybrid seed corn and artificial
breeding on her family’s farm.
Jacqueline Dougan Jackson is the author of fourteen books, including Stories
from the Round Barn and More Stories from the Round Barn. A founding faculty
member of Sangamon State University, now University of Illinois–Springfield, she
has had her fiction read over Wisconsin Public Radio. She grew up on a Wiscon-
sin dairy farm amidst extended family and pet goats.
Volume 3 is forthcoming in 2014, and it will widen The Round Barn’s scope to the
relationships of the farm with the community, state, nation, and world.
SEPTEMBER
539 PP. 6 × 9
176 B/W PHOTOS, 13 ILLUS., 3 MAPS, 2 TABLES
PAPER $24.90 T ISBN 978-1-884941-18-4
Distributed for
Jacqueline Dougan Jackson
SEPTEMBER
487 PP. 6 × 9
166 B/W PHOTOS, 8 ILLUS., 3 MAPS
PAPER $24.95 T ISBN 978-1-881480-10-5
Distributed for
Jacqueline Dougan Jackson