Michael Lesy
author
Michael Lesy is an American non-fiction writer known for his work combining historical photographs with original writing. He grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and received a B.A. from Columbia University, an M.A. from the University of Wisconsin, and a Ph.D. from Rutgers University. From 1990 to 2020, he served as an emeritus professor of literary journalism at Hampshire College. His debut book, 'Wisconsin Death Trip' (1973), was inspired by his studies in American social history and became a cult classic for its haunting portrayal of life and death in rural Wisconsin at the turn of the century.[1,2,3,4]
- American social history
- photography
- mortality
- rural life
Books
-
Wisconsin Death Trip€72.00
Works by Michael Lesy
- 1973 Wisconsin Death Trip First book; adapted into a film in 1999.
- 1976 Real Life: Louisville in the Twenties
- 1980 Time Frames: The Meaning of Family Pictures
- 1982 Bearing Witness: A Photographic Chronicle of American Life
- 1985 Visible Light
- 1987 The Forbidden Zone
- 1991 Rescues: The Lives of Heroes
- 1997 Dreamland: America at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century
- 2002 Long Time Coming: A Photographic Portrait of America, 1935-1943
- 2005 Angel's World: The New York Photographs of Angelo Rizzuto
- 2007 Murder City: The Bloody History of Chicago in the Twenties
- 2013 Repast: Dining Out at the Dawn of the New American Century Co-authored with Lisa Stoffer.
- 2017 Looking Backward: A Photographic Portrait of the World at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century
- 2021 Snapshots 1971–77
Awards
- 2006 Simon Fellow
- 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship for Photography Studies