Oddball Michigan A guide to 450 really strange places

Jerome Pohlen

Book - 2014

"There's more to Michigan than beautiful forests, shuttered factories, and miles and miles of stunning shoreline. Armed with this offbeat travel guide, you'll soon discover the strange underbelly of the Great Lakes State. Michigan has monuments to fluoridation, snurfing, the designer of the Jefferson nickel, and the once-famous Mr. Chicken, as well as festivals honoring tulips, Christmas pickles, and a 38-acre fungus. It's where you'll find the World's Largest Lugnut, the Nun Doll Museum, Joe's Gizzard City, the Teenie-Weenie Pickle Barrel Cottage, Howdy Doody, and Thomas Edison's last breath. The state also has its share of weird history--it's where Harry Houdini perished on Halloween night in 1...926, where skater Tanya Harding's posse whacked Nancy Kerrigan, and where the Kellogg brothers invented popular breakfast cereals and less-popular yogurt enemas. Along with humorous histories and witty observations, Oddball Michigan provides addresses, websites, hours, fees, and driving directions for each of its 450 entries. "--

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Subjects
Genres
Guidebooks
Published
Chicago : Chicago Review Press [2014]
Language
English
Main Author
Jerome Pohlen (-)
Item Description
Includes indexes.
Physical Description
x, 336 pages : illustrations, maps ; 22 cm
ISBN
9781613748930
Contents unavailable.
Review by Library Journal Review

In the great state of Michigan, "oddball" can mean many things, but chief among these are giant statues of Paul -Bunyan, giant cherry pie pans, and giant ice cream cones. To be fair, Pohlen's ninth in his "Oddball" states series also includes historical sites, natural phenomena, and landmarks related to pop culture icons, such as the hospital where Madonna was born (now an old folks' home) and a majestic Magic Johnson statue at Michigan State University, his alma mater. Organized by region, this compendium begins with the weirdness that is the Upper Peninsula and ends with the mixed legacy of Detroit, a city that brought the world Henry Ford and the Motown sound, but also has some of the worst urban blight in America (fertile ground for art installations!). In 450 funny blurbs, the author covers sights people might go out of their way for, as well as attractions one might check out while just passing through, providing location, cost, and contact information for each. VERDICT Amusing, brisk, surprising, and slightly educational, this is a great resource for the discerning connoisseur of cheesy and eccentric tourist attractions of the Upper Midwest.-Emilia Packard, Austin, TX (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.