Twelve-year-old Gus McCarty struggles at school with an obnoxious classmate named Al until an accident sends him back in time to a lumber camp with an equally troublesome lumberjack named Alex.

Michigan's foremost lumbertowns, flourishing urban industrial centers in the late 19th century, faced economic calamity with the depletion of timber supplies by the end of the century. Turning to their own resources and reflecting individual cultural identities, Saginaw, Bay City, and Muskegon developed dissimilar strategies to sustain their urban industrial status. This study is a comprehensive history of these lumbertowns from their inception as frontier settlements to their emergence as reshaped industrial centers. Primarily an examination of the role of the entrepreneur in urban economic development, Michigan Lumbertowns considers the extent to which the entrepreneurial approach was influenced by each city's cultural-ethnic construct and its social history. More than a narrative history, it is a study of violence, business, and social change.

Long before Thomas O¿Donnell entered school he had chewed tobacco and pitched horseshoes with lumberjacks at his father¿s camp. He witnessed the felling of the tallest trees and watched wide-eyed as the lumberjacks rode the logs through swift waters. He sat at the table when they arm wrestled and was a spectator at axe throwing competitions. Life in a North Woods Lumber Camp is O¿Donnell¿s personal story of his life growing up in a lumber camp, vivid recollections that lay dormant for fifty years following his death. William J. O¿Hern has brought this lost treasure to light in a lavishly illustrated book with dozens of period photographs.

Narrating the history of Michigan's forest industry, Karamanski provides a dynamic study of an important part of the Upper Peninsula's economy.