Thirty-four years ago, self-publishing a book was a challenge.
Undeterred, John Louis Anderson forged ahead with "Scandinavian Humor & Other Myths" in June 1986.
In the book's first three months in print, it sold 30,000 copies.
"No matter what happens," Anderson told the Star Tribune in September 1986, "My mother thinks I've already succeeded because a Lutheran preacher of her acquaintance quoted from my book from the pulpit."
The book was a success. In its first two years in print, it sold more than 200,000 copies.
Anderson, of Wayzata, died March 7. He was 72.
He followed up the success of his first book with "German Humor: On the Fritz." The book, published by Harper & Row in 1989, focused on a subject that Anderson knew well because, as he said, he grew up in "the most German-American town in the United States."
That town was New Ulm, Minn., where Anderson was born and raised. He graduated from New Ulm High School, despite, he once joked, the reservations of several teachers.