by its founder in boom times and bust.

Today we read about the financial hardships the golf industry is facing during our present financial crisis and how the lack of leisure time impacts on a game as time consuming as golf.

It apparently was ever thus. When golf began here in the late 19th century, golf courses had to be located on railroad and streetcar lines because few people had cars.

Later after the boom times of the 1920s, the Great Depression struck and new golf course construction all but disappeared, but boomed again after World War II.

One of the most interesting chapters in the book is called "Jewish Golf: Oak Ridge Country/Hillcrest Golf Club." Most private clubs in the 1920s were off-limit to Jews.

A Minneapolis rabbi, Maurice H. Lefkovits, wrotethat "Minneapolis Jewry enjoys the painful distinction of being the lowest esteemed community in the land so far as the non-Jewish population of the city is concerned." Shefchik further explained that the Anglo-Saxon industries of agriculture, milling, mining, banking and forestry rarely hired Jews, who made their way in other industries like insurance, law and medicine.

Dave Wood is a past vice-president of the National Book Critics Circle and former book review editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. He can be reached at 715-426-9554.