Half leather folio, 16 x 11 inches. Manuscript pagination to 390. Leather rubbed and a little tattered at the edges, but consolidated to treat red rot and free of residue. The first 48 pages are clippings from assorted publications, starting with a lengthy 1895 critique of what went wrong for the Confederates, published in the New York Sun. It picks up on page 56 with clippings from the Milwaukee Free Press, founded by Harry P. Myrick, spanning its very first issue printed June 18, 1901, through December 9. The Free Press clippings occupy up to page 158, with the remainder up to 390 left unused.

Articles about executive power, tariffs, tax evasion, pension fraud, post office deficits, and chronic complaints about other news outlets' "unfair and mean" reporting are among the timely conceits. The book is believed to have been compiled by one of the Free Press' contributing writers, and primarily his own work. A few items have pencil notes complaining about edits made by H.P. Myrick, founding editor of the Free Press; a few clippings also have Myrick's name written at the bottom. Pro-LaFollette and anti-Tammany, but the politics aren't always clear or consistent regarding Southern sympathies, imperialism, and women's rights. Spelling (including immigrant surnames) and grammar (is the United States? or, Are?) is a recurring point of contention.

Very tidily composed with evenly spaced, continuous strips (to rather pleasing aesthetic effect, especially with the age toning). On first consideration, a kind of foil to Michael Lesy's Wisconsin Death Trip, full of mainstream politics and pettiness, it still contains an inescapable amount of Midwestern weird, quacky characters and tabloid mystery: see "A Foolish Woman and Man" on a married woman murdering a "sporty young man" who had made unwanted sexual advances (our author is unsympathetic); and the tale of a "Quack Preacher" from Chicago who "expects to be lonesome in heaven for lack of men," noting the decline in male churchgoers--to which our author responds, "to have to sit and hear a donkey preach keeps them away." Another clipping about the investigation of Francis Schlatter: "Investigations touching the sanity of other healers than Schlatter ought to result in a large measure of benefit to the world and a largely increased population at the asylums.”

Other topics: "Wisconsin Bad Boys" (fraternal hazing, 129), "Education and Anarchism" (123, Admission of Hawaii as a state (77), death of McKinley (114), women working in offices (111), contentions on the term "Polly-wog" (33), Steel strike (88) plague scare (89), alcohol in Alabama (131), wealth distribution, "harmless amusements" (gambling), voter suppression (125), divorce and "The Mistakes of Women" (12).