2023 Midwest History Catalog

Paper: 978-0-8093-3925-9

E-Book: 978-0-8093-3912-9

$27.95, 306

Onward to Chicacgo Freedom Seekers and the Underground Railroad in Northeastern Illinois

Larry A. McClellan

“Challenging the narrative that the Underground Railroad was mainly the work of white abolitionists, Larry A. McClellan’s determined research into local archives reveals detailed stories of the Black activists and freedom seekers who shared the work of combating slavery in the United States.”—Robin

Uncovering stories of the freedom network in northeastern Illinois

Decades before the Civil War, Illinois’s status as a free state beckoned enslaved people, particularly those in Kentucky and Missouri, to cross porous river borders and travel toward new lives. While traditional histories of the Underground Railroad in Illinois start in 1839, and focus largely on the romanticized tales of white men, Larry A. McClellan reframes the story, not only introducing readers to earlier freedom seekers, but also illustrating that those who bravely aided them were Black and white, men and women. McClellan features dozens of individuals who made dangerous journeys to reach freedom as well as residents in Chicago and across northeastern Illinois who made a deliberate choice to break the law to help.

Onward to Chicago charts the evolution of the northeastern Illinois freedom network and shows how, despite its small Black community, Chicago emerged as a point of refuge. The 1848 completion of the I & M Canal and later the Chicago to Detroit train system created more opportunities for Black men, women, and children to escape slavery. From eluding authorities to confronting kidnapping bands working out of St. Louis and southern Illinois, these stories of valor are inherently personal. Through deep research into local sources, McClellan presents the engrossing, entwined journeys of freedom seekers and the activists in Chicagoland who supported them.

McClellan includes specific freedom seeker journey stories and introduces Black and white activists who provided aid in a range of communities along particular routes. This narrative highlights how significant biracial collaboration led to friendships as Black and white abolitionists worked together to provide support for freedom seekers traveling through the area and ultimately to combat slavery in the United States.

Larry A. McClellan, emeritus professor of sociology and community studies at Governors State University, has been instrumental in adding listings to the National Park Service Network to Freedom register of the Underground Railroad. McClellan helped create GSU, was the mayor of University Park, and was a consultant for the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission. He is the author of The Underground Railroad South of Chicago and To the River: The Remarkable Journey of Caroline Quarlls, a Freedom Seeker on the Underground Railroad

Kelly, Illinois congresswoman

pages, 39 illus.

Latinos in Chicago Quest for a Political Voice Wilfredo Cruz

“This book is a thorough recounting of the multiple Latino groups’ search for voice in city politics. Combining media accounts and oral interviews, Cruz takes us through the good, the bad, and the ugly of finding a place on Chicago’s political table.”—Maria de los Angeles Torres, author of  The Lost Apple: Operation Pedro Pan, Cuban Children in the US and the Promise of a Better Future

The path to political power for Latinos in Chicago

In the Midwest’s largest city, Latinos have been fighting for political representation for more than half a century. In this exploration of urban politics in Chicago, Wilfredo Cruz shows for the first time how Latinos went from being ignored by the Irish-controlled political machine to becoming a respected constituency.

Beginning with the Latino community’s first attempt to acquire a political voice in Chicago politics in 1911 and continuing through Latino officeholders of the early twenty-first century, Cruz surveys not only the struggles of this community—specifically the two largest Latino groups in the city, Mexicans and Puerto Ricans—but also the ways in which Chicago’s Latinos overcame those challenges to gain their political voice.

For most of the twentieth century, Chicago politicians ignored the growing Latino community. This disregard changed with the 1983 election of Mayor Harold Washington, an African American who defied the political machine and actively recruited Latinos to his administration and helped them win city and statewide political offices. His actions opened the doors of government for Latinos in Chicago. Subsequent mayors, seeing the political success of Washington’s move, continued his policies.

Many up-and-coming Latino politicians making strides in Chicago, including state representative Aarón Ortíz, Alderman Andre Vasquez, and Alderman Rossana Rodríguez-Sanchez, contribute their takes on the struggle for political power and the challenges facing the rising new generation of elected officials. With this book, Cruz asks and answers this question: What does the future hold for Latinos politically in Chicago?

Wilfredo Cruz, an associate professor at Columbia College Chicago, is the author of multiple books, including City of Dreams: Latino Immigration to Chicago and Chicago Latinos at Work. A former investigative reporter for the Chicago Reporter, Cruz has also served as assistant press secretary to Chicago mayor Harold Washington and as director of the Office of Public Information at the Chicago Public Library.

Paper: 978-0-8093-3883-2

E-book: 978-0-8093-3884-9 $24.50, 184 pages, 39 illus.

Read more and order at www.siupress.com/latinosinchicago.

Paper: 978-0-8093-3910-5

E-book: 978-0-8093-3252-6

$24.95, 258 pages, 50 illus.

GRANT PARK

THE EVOLUTION OF CHICAGO’S FRONT YARD

Dennis H. Cremin

“Grant Park is Chicago’s storied front yard. If there is one place to see the rich panoply of Chicago history unfold, I can think of no better spot than Chicago’s lakefront park. Dennis Cremin has crafted a rich chronicle of Grant Park that highlights its central place in the history of Chicago. Chapter by chapter, Cremin takes his reader from the park’s origins in the shadow of Fort Dearborn to the creation of Millennium Park.” —Ann Keating, author of Chicagoland: City and Suburbs of the Railroad Age

On November 4, 2008, when president-elect Barack Obama celebrated his victory with more than one hundred thousand supporters in Chicago, everyone knew where to meet. Long considered the showplace and cultural center of Chicago, Grant Park has been the site of tragedy and tension, as well as success and joy. In addition to serving as the staging grounds for Abraham Lincoln’s funeral procession through the city, the park has been the setting for civil rights protests and the 1968 Democratic National Convention demonstrations. The faithful attended the open-air mass of Pope John Paul II in Grant Park, and fans gathered there to cheer for the Chicago Bulls after their championship wins. The long park overlooking the beautiful waters of Lake Michigan has played an active part in Chicago and U. S. history.

Read more and order at siupress.com/grantpark.

Dennis H. Cremin is the coauthor of Chicago: A Pictorial Celebration and contributor to The Encyclopedia of Chicago. He has extensive experience as a public historian, serving as director of research and public programs for the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Gaylord Building Historic Site and as a State Scholar for the Illinois Humanities Council. He served on the Road Scholars Speakers Bureau, provided guided tours for the City of Chicago’s Office of Cultural Affairs, and worked as an archivist for the Grant Park Music Festival. He is an associate professor of history at Lewis University in Romeoville, Illinois.

In 1836, only three years after Chicago was founded, Chicagoans set aside the first narrow shoreline as public ground and declared it “forever open, clear, and free. . . .” Chicago historian and author Dennis H. Cremin reveals that despite such intent, the transformation of Grant Park to the spectacular park it is more than 175 years later was a gradual process, at first fraught with a lack of funding and organization, and later challenged by erosion, the railroads, automobiles, and a continued battle between original intent and conceptions of progress. Throughout the book, Cremin shows that while Grant Park’s landscape and uses have changed throughout its rocky history, the public ground continues to serve “as a display case for the city and a calling card to visitors.” Amply illustrated with maps and images from throughout Chicago’s history, Grant Park shows readers how Chicago’s “front yard” developed into one of the finest urban parks in the country today.

Avenues of Transformation

Illinois’s Path from Territory to State

James A. Edstrom

“From cover to cover, this reads as political history at its best. James A. Edstrom unpacks the political landscape of the state, and the nation, and succeeds like no other in recreating the personal and political dimensions of early Illinois. It will be an indispensable study of Illinois’s statehood for years to come.”—

A territory split by slavery, a state forged for union

Avenues of Transformation traces the surprising path, marked by shame, ambition, and will that led to Illinois’s admission to the Union in 1818. Historian James A. Edstrom guides the reader through this story by associating each stage of the narrative—the original statehood campaign, the passage of Illinois’s statehood-enabling act by Congress, and Illinois’s first constitutional convention—with the primary leaders in each of those episodes. The lives of these men—Daniel Pope Cook, Nathaniel Pope, and Elias Kent Kane— reflect the momentous tangle of politics, slavery, and geography. This history maps the drive for statehood in the conflict between nation and state, in the perpetuation of slavery, and in the sweep of water and commerce. It underscores the ways in which the Prairie State is uniquely intertwined—economically, socially, and politically—with every region of the Union: North, South, East, and West— and captures the compelling moment when Illinois statehood stood ready to more perfectly unify the nation.

This volume is the first full-length book in over a century to describe and analyze Illinois’s admission to the Union. It marks the first time that a historian has analyzed in detail the roll-call votes of the first state constitutional convention, seated evenly by pro- and antislavery delegates. Edstrom’s wit and prose weave a lively narrative of political ambition and human failure. Patiently crafted, Avenues of Transformation will be the first source for readers to turn to for gaining a better understanding of Illinois statehood.

Paper: 978-0-8093-3876-4

E-book: 978-0-8093-3877-1 $26.50, 274 pages, 17 illus.

Learn more and order at www.siupress.com/avenues.

M. Scott Heerman

, author of The Alchemy of Slavery: Human Bondage and Emancipation in the Illinois Country, 1730–1865

James A. Edstrom is a librarian, researcher, and author whose scholarship on Illinois history has appeared in journals such as Illinois Heritage and Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. He is a professor of library services and history at William Rainey Harper College.

Paper: 978-0-8093-7010-8, $22.50 E-book: 978-0-8093-7011-5, $14.99 200 pages, 14 illus.

Read more and order at siupress.com/newstarchamber.

The New Star Chamber and Other Essays

ANNOTATED EDITON

Edgar Lee Masters

“Masters was an idealistic Democratic Party activist and friend of presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan when this book was published in 1904. The annotations, new to this edition, identify people and terms important to understanding the essays.”— Herbert K. Russell, author of Edgar Lee Masters: A Biography

Tracing the troubled roots of American capitalism and imperialism

Coedited by noted Masters scholar, Jason Stacy, and his class, “Editing History,” this annotated edition of Edgar Lee Masters’s The New Star Chamber and Other Essays reappears at a perilous time in US history, when large corporations and overseas conflicts once again threaten the integrity of American rights and liberties, and the United States still finds itself beholden to corporate power and the legacy of imperial hubris. In speaking to his times, Masters also speaks to ours.

These thirteen essays lay bare the political ideology that informed Spoon River Anthology. Masters argues that the dangerous imperialism championed by then-President Theodore Roosevelt was rooted in the Constitution itself. By debating the ethics of the Philippine-American War, criticizing Hamiltonian centralization of government, and extolling the virtues of Jeffersonian individualism, Masters elucidates the ways in which America had strayed from its constitutional morals and from democracy itself. The result is a compelling critique of corporate capitalism and burgeoning American imperialism, as well as an exemplary source for understanding its complicated author in the midst of his transformation from urban lawyer to poet of rural America.

Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950), best known for Spoon River Anthology, was born in Garnett, Kansas and grew up in Petersburg and Lewistown, Illinois. After practicing law in Chicago for over three decades, he left to pursue writing full time, publishing a total of twelve plays, twenty-one books of poetry, six novels and six biographies.

Jason Stacy is the author of Spoon River America: Edgar Lee Masters and the Myth of the American Small Town

Assistant editors: Brandon Adams, Scott Both, Joseph Davis, Shawn Emily, Jessica Guldner, Amy Kapp, Joseph King, Andrew Niederhauser, Abbigayle Schaefer, Elizabeth Schroader, Andrew Shepherd, Nicholas Swain, and Lucas Turnbull.

In print again for the first time since 1904, this edition includes an introduction and historical annotations throughout. Edited and annotated by students at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, and designed and illustrated by students at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, this volume traces economic and political pathologies to the origins of the American republic. The New Star Chamber and Other Essays is as vital now as it was over 100 years ago.

Illinois Trails &

Traces

PORTRAITS AND STORIES ALONG THE STATE’S HISTORIC ROUTES

Text by Gary Marx and photographs by Daniel Overturf, with a foreword by Dick Durbin

“In a lyrical combination of archeological and historical research, personal stories, and startling photographs, Gary Marx and Daniel Overturf remind us that the territory of Illinois long predates the coming of white settlers. They reveal how today’s roads and railbeds were once buffalo traces and Native American trading routes, and tell a deep, layered, and uncommon history of the prairie state.”

Mary Wisniewski, author of Algren: A Life

Exploring Illinois history through the paths we travel

Illinois Trails & Traces partners the deft writing of Gary Marx with vivid photography by Daniel Overturf to illuminate ever evolving patterns of travel and settlement. Taking the reader on a journey down early buffalo traces and Native American trails, this book shows how these paths evolved into wagon roads and paved highways. Marx and Overturf explore historic routes ranging from Route 66 to the Underground Railroad, all the way back to postIce Age animal migration trails followed by Paleo-Indian people. The authors also examine how rivers, canals, and railroads spurred the rapid rise of Illinois as a modern state.

Marx and Overturf bring history into the present by including over forty photographic portraits and written profiles of individuals who live along these routes today. Many of the people you will meet on these pages work to preserve and honor the history of these passages. Others profiled here embody the spirit of the old roads and provide a vivid link between past and present. Through this journey, we discover that we’ve all been traveling the same road all along.

Paper: 978-0-8093-3848-1

E-book: 978-0-8093-3849-8

$29.95, 294 pages, 113 illus.

Learn more and order at www.siupress.com/trailsandtraces

Gary Marx is a journalist whose work has appeared in the Kansas City Star and numerous other publications. Daniel Overturf, an exhibiting photographer and professor emeritus of photography at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, has coauthored Artificial Lighting for Photography (2009) with Joy McKenzie. Together Marx and Overturf are the authors of A River Through Illinois (2007).

Paper: 978-0-8093-3918-1, $28.95

Hardcover: 978-0-8093-3919-8, $38.00

E-book: 978-0-8093-3920-4, $18.99 340 pages, 24 illus.

Carl Walworth worked for thirty-one years as a reporter, editor and later publisher in the newspaper industry in Illinois. He currently is the library director at the Mattoon Public Library. He is the author of The Mayor of Moultrie Avenue and a researcher for Lake Sara, the Hidden Jewel in America’s Heartland. Walworth has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Illinois in Urbana and an MBA from Nova Southeastern University.

Glenn Poshard has been at the forefront of educational and economic development initiatives at the regional, state, and national level for more than five decades. His lengthy service-oriented career has included time as a soldier, teacher, Illinois state senator, a member of the U.S. Congress, chairman of the Southern Illinois University Board of Trustees, and President of the SIU system. The Poshard Foundation for Abused Children, a volunteer organization founded by Poshard and his wife, Jo, has served the needs of vulnerable children in Southern Illinois for nearly 25 years.

Son of Southern Illinois

GLENN POSHARD’S LIFE IN POLITICS AND EDUCATION

Carl Walworth with Glenn Poshard

Southern Illinois is in Glenn Poshard’s DNA. My friend and former colleague, Glenn made a life of politics and public service: soldier, state senator, congressman, candidate for governor and president of Southern Illinois University. Every step of the way he was faithful to his values and his heritage even at the cost of popular support. More than any person I know, Glenn Poshard has given a life of commitment to the families of Southern Illinois.

—Senator Dick Durbin

A life of principles, service, and faith

This first biography of Glenn Poshard traces the life of a young man who rose from rural poverty in Southern Illinois to become a United States congressman and president of the Southern Illinois University system. This profound portrait unveils a life and career dedicated to making higher education affordable and improving the quality of life for the community of Southern Illinois.

Beginning with his childhood in a two-room home near Herald, Illinois and the early, tragic loss of his sister, this biography navigates Poshard’s service in the military, his time as a state senator and United States congressman, his run for governor, his years at Southern Illinois University, and the establishment of the Poshard Foundation for Abused Children. Intimacies of his personal life are disclosed, such as his struggles with and treatment for depression, his passion for education, and the lasting bonds he formed with his teachers. His unpopular decision to refuse PAC donations is also highlighted, along with the work that went into sponsoring the Illinois Wilderness Act, and his relationship with civil rights activist John Lewis. Glenn Poshard’s efforts for the Wilderness Act designated Southern Illinois’s famous Garden of the Gods as a National Wilderness Preservation System, which continues to attract visitors from around the world.

Poshard’s path from poverty was riddled with hardship, but his perseverance and family values ultimately allowed for longstanding personal and civic growth. From an admirable work ethic to a steadfast commitment to problem-solving, this biography illuminates the life and accomplishments of an impressive and generous leader.

Learn more and order at siupress.com/sonofsouthernillinois.

Dawn’s Light Woman & Nicolas Franchomme

Marriage and Law in the Illinois Country

Carl J.

Ekberg and Sharon K. Person

“Ekberg and Person have done it again, training their tenacious research and creative analysis on the complex social world of early Illinois families. Foregrounding marriage, kinship, property, and law, the authors explore day-to-day dramas that also reveal the workings of empire and power in an early American community.”—Robert Michael Morrissey, author of Empire by Collaboration: Indians, Colonists, and Governments in Colonial Illinois Country

Native women’s marital rights and roles in colonial Illinois society

Kaskaskia, Illinois, once the state’s capital, torn from the state by flood waters, and now largely forgotten, was once the home to a couple who helped transform the region in the 1720s from a frontier village to a civil society. In the heart of France’s North American empire, the village was a community of French-Canadian fur traders and Kaskaskia Indians who not only lived together but often intermarried. These Indigenous and French intermarriages were central to colonial Illinois society, and the coupling of Marguerite 8assecam8c8e (Dawn’s Light Woman) and Nicolas Franchomme, in particular, was critical to expanding the jurisdiction of French law.

While the story of Marguerite and Nicolas is unknown today, it is the story of how French customary law (Coutume de Paris) governed colonial marriage, how mixed Indian-French marriages stood at the very core of early colonial Illinois society, and how Illinois Indian women benefited, socially and legally, from being married to French men. All of this came about due to a lawsuit in which Nicolas successfully argued that his wife had legal claim to her first husband’s estate—a legal decision that created a precedent for society in the Illinois Country.

Within this narrative of a married couple and their legal fight— based on original French manuscripts and supported by the comprehensively annotated 1726 Illinois census—is also the story of the village of Kaskaskia during the 1720s, of the war between Fox Indians and French settlers, with their Indian allies, in Illinois, and of how the spread of plow agriculture dramatically transformed the Illinois Country’s economy from largely fur trade–based to expansively agricultural.

Paper: 978-0-8093-3886-3

E-book: 978-0-8093-3887-0

$27.50, 264 pages, 24 illus.

Read more and order at www.siupress.com/dawnslight.

Carl J. Ekberg is emeritus professor of history at Illinois State University. He has published many books and articles including Stealing Indian Women: Native Slavery in the Illinois Country. Sharon K. Person, emerita professor of English at St. Louis Community College, is the author of Standing Up for Indians: Baptism Registers as an Untapped Source for Multicultural Relations in St. Louis, 1766–1821 Together, they are the authors of St. Louis Rising: The French Regime of Louis St. Ange de Bellerive.

A Brick and a Bible

Black Women’s Radical Activism in the Midwest during the Great Depression

Melissa Ford

Paper: 978-0-8093-3855-9

E-book: 978-0-8093-3856-6

$28.50, 242 pages, 14 illus.

“In A Brick and a Bible, radical Black working-class women take center stage as the shapers of their own destinies. By charting these women’s diverse engagement with Communist-affiliated groups across the Midwest, Melissa Ford reveals the centrality of the region as a key site for Black radical politics. With clarity and grace, Ford recovers the stories of Black women determined to bring an end to race, gender, and class oppression.”—Keisha N. Blain, author of Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom  Learn

Uncovering the social revolution led by Black women in the heartland

In this first study of Black radicalism in midwestern cities before the civil rights movement, Melissa Ford connects the activism of Black women who championed justice during the Great Depression to those involved in the Ferguson Uprising and the Black Lives Matter movement. A Brick and a Bible examines how African American working-class women, many of whom had just migrated to “the promised land” only to find hunger, cold, and unemployment, forged a region of revolutionary potential.

A Brick and a Bible theorizes a tradition of Midwestern Black radicalism, a praxis-based ideology informed by but divergent from American Communism. Midwestern Black radicalism contests that interlocking systems of oppression directly relate the distinct racial, political, geographic, economic, and gendered characteristics that make up the American heartland. This volume illustrates how, at the risk of their careers, their reputations, and even their lives, African American working-class women in the Midwest used their position to shape a unique form of social activism.

Case studies of Detroit, St. Louis, Chicago, and Cleveland—hotbeds of radical activism—follow African American women across the Midwest as they participated in the Ford Hunger March, organized the Funsten Nut Pickers’ strike, led the Sopkin Dressmakers’ strike, and supported the Unemployed Councils and the Scottsboro Boys’ defense. Ford profoundly reimagines how we remember and interpret these “ordinary” women doing extraordinary things across the heartland. Once overlooked, their activism shaped a radical tradition in midwestern cities that continues to be seen in cities like Ferguson and Minneapolis today.

Melissa Ford is an assistant professor at Slippery Rock University specializing in African American history. Her work has appeared in  American Communist History. She is a former Black Metropolis Research Consortium fellow.

Forgetting and the Forgotten

A Thousand Years of Contested Histories in the Heartland

Michael C. Batinski

“This is an exquisitely crafted study that highlights the ways that local pastkeepers in Jackson County, Illinois, marginalized and silenced Native American, African American, and working-class experiences and stories.”—Sean Farrell, coauthor of The Irish in Illinois

Revealing the forgotten in community histories

Histories try to forget, as this evocative study of one community reveals. Forgetting and the Forgotten details the nature of how a community forged its story against outsiders. Historian Michael C. Batinski explores the habits of forgetting that enable communities to create an identity based on silencing competing narratives. The white settlers of Jackson County, Illinois, shouldered the hopes of a community and believed in the justice of their labor as it echoed the national story. The county’s pastkeepers, or keepers of the past, emphasizing the white settlers’ republican virtue, chose not to record violence against Kaskaskia people and African Americans and to disregard the numerous transient laborers. Instead of erasing the presence of outsiders, the pastkeepers could offer only silence, but it was a silence that could be broken.

Batinski’s historiography critically examines local historical thought in a way that illuminates national history. What transpired in Jackson County was repeated in countless places throughout the nation. At the same time, national history writing rarely turns to experiences that can be found in local archives such as court records, genealogical files, archaeological reports, coroner’s records, and veterans’ pension files. In this archive, juxtaposed with the familiar actors of Jackson County history—Benningsen Boon, John A. Logan, and Daniel Brush—appear the Sky People, Italian immigrant workers, black veterans of the Civil War and later champions of civil rights whose stories challenge the dominant narrative.

Michael C. Batinski, a professor emeritus of history at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, first expressed his interest in historical consciousness in small places by writing Pastkeepers in a Small Place: Five Centuries in Deerfield, Massachusetts. He is also the author of two books on early American politics,  The New Jersey Assembly, 1738–1775: The Making of a Legislative Community and Jonathan Belcher: Colonial Governor.

Paper: 978-0-8093-3837-5

E-book: 978-0-8093-3838-2

$28.50, 268 pages, 8 illus Shawnee Books

Read more and order at www.siupress.com/forgetting.

$27.95,

Read more and order at www.siupress.com/backyardprairie.

A Backyard Prairie

The Hidden Beauty of Tallgrass and Wildflowers

Fred Delcomyn and James L. Ellis

“Cultivating and learning about the rich life of the prairies, grasslands that once occupied most of the Midwest, inspired in Fred Delcomyn and James L. Ellis a love and appreciation that they transmit beautifully through the pages of this lovely book. Their adventures come alive here, providing a model for others eager to understand the plants and animals, the original inhabitants of the lands where we live and farm today.”—

Peter H. Raven, coauthor, Biology of Plants

All the makings of natural wonder in your backyard

In 2003 Fred Delcomyn imagined his backyard of two and a half acres, farmed for corn and soybeans for generations, restored to tallgrass prairie. Over the next seventeen years, Delcomyn, with help from his friend James L. Ellis scored, seeded, monitored, reseeded, and burned these acres into prairie. In A Backyard Prairie, they document their journey and reveal the incredible potential of a backyard to travel back to a time before the wild prairie was put into plow rows. It has been said, “Anyone can love the mountains, but it takes a soul to love the prairie.” This book shows us how.

The first book to celebrate a smaller, more private restoration, A Backyard Prairie offers a vivid portrait of what makes a prairie. Delcomyn and Ellis describe selecting and planting seeds, recount the management of a prescribed fire, and capture the prairie’s seasonal parades of colorful flowers in concert with an ever-growing variety of animals, from the minute eastern tailed-blue butterfly to the imperious red-winged blackbird and the reclusive coyote.

This book offers a unique account of their work and their discovery of a real backyard, an inviting island of grass and flowers uncovered and revealed. We often travel miles and miles to find nature larger than ourselves. In this rich account of small prairie restoration, Delcomyn and Ellis encourage the revival of original prairie in our backyards and the patient, beauty-seeking soul sleeping within ourselves.

Both Fred Delcomyn and James L. Ellis serve on the board of directors of Grand Prairie Friends, a conservation organization in east-central Illinois involved in prairie restoration projects. Fred Delcomyn, a certified master naturalist and professor emeritus of the School of Integrative Biology at the University of Illinois, is the author of Foundations of Neurobiology along with numerous scholarly articles on insects. James L. Ellis, a botanist with the Illinois Natural History Survey, manages and maintains the University of Illinois Natural Areas. He has published extensively on prairie ecology, conservation, restoration, and management.

Paper: 978-0-8093-3818-4

E-book: 978-0-8093-3819-1

128 pages, 115 illus.

Snake Road

A Field Guide to the Snakes of LaRue–Pine Hills

Joshua J. Vossler

“The LaRue–Pine Hills area is one of our favorite ‘day trip’ spots, and we unreservedly recommend that visitors take Vossler’s book along to enhance this unique experience. Go and enjoy a ‘snaky’ day!”—Larry P. and Donna J. Mahan, authors, 20 Day Trips in and around the Shawnee National Forest

Visiting the mecca of snake watching

Twice a year, spring and fall, numerous species of reptiles and amphibians migrate between the LaRue–Pine Hills’ towering limestone bluffs and the Big Muddy River’s swampy floodplain in southern Illinois. Snakes, especially great numbers of Cottonmouths, give the road that separates these distinct environments its name. Although it is one of the best places in the world to observe snakes throughout the year, spring and fall are the optimal times to see a greater number and variety. Among the many activities that snakes can be observed doing are sunning themselves on rocks, lying in grasses, sheltering under or near fallen tree limbs, or crossing the road. In this engaging guide, author Joshua J. Vossler details what to expect and how to make the most of a visit to what is known around the world as Snake Road.

Vossler catalogs twenty-three native snake species by both common and scientific names, lists identifying features, and estimates the probability of spotting them. Throughout this book, stunning color photographs of each species’ distinctive physical characteristics enable identification by sight only, an important feature, since Illinois law prohibits the handling, harming, or removal of reptiles and other wildlife on and around the road. Since snakes are visually variable—individual snakes of the same species can differ tremendously in size, color, and pattern—photographs of as many variations as possible are included. To aid in identification, eleven sets of photographs contrast the features of similar species and point out how and why these snakes may be easily confused. Visitors can keep track of the snakes they have identified by using the checklist in the back of the book. A list of recommended reading provides sources of additional information about snakes in southern Illinois and beyond.

Joshua J. Vossler, an associate professor and academic librarian at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, is the coauthor of Humor and Information Literacy: Practical Techniques for Library Instruction. He specializes in making instructional videos about research skills. He is a lifelong snake watcher and herpetological enthusiast.

Paper: 978-0-8093-3805-4

E-book: 978-0-8093-3806-1

$19.50, 168 pages, 355 illus.

Shawnee Books

Read more and order at www.siupress.com/snakeroad.

Paper: 978-0-8093-3862-7

Cloth: 978-0-8093-3790-3

E-book: 978-0-8093-3791-0

$22.95, 248 pages, 34 illus.

Read

Edith

The Rogue Rockefeller McCormick

Andrea Friederici Ross

“A deeply researched, briskly readable account of the life of Chicago grande dame Edith Rockefeller McCormick. . . . This is fascinating, stranger-thanfiction Chicago history, and a page-turner. Can’t wait for the miniseries it’s sure to inspire.”—

Deanna Isaacs, Chicago Reader

“‘Unusual woman’ is only a hint to whom readers will meet in the book. It is filled with family members and recipients of her patronage who have their own views of Edith and her spending. She acquired costly jewels and antiques but was also interested in affordable housing for young, first-time home buyers.”—

Chicago’s quirky patron saint

The story of Edith Rockefeller McCormick, daughter of John D. Rockefeller, is that of a woman who strove for the independence to make her own choices. Rejecting the limited gender role carved out for her, she forged her own path, despite pushback from her family and ultimate financial ruin.

After marrying Harold McCormick, Edith spent lavishly. The couple purchased treasures like the jewels of Catherine the Great, entertained in their Chicago mansion, and helped found both the Chicago Grand Opera and the John R. McCormick Memorial Institute for Infectious Diseases. Societal and personal issues caused Edith to experience phobias and panic attacks. Dissatisfied with rest cures, she moved her family to Zurich and pursued analysis with then-unknown Carl Jung, becoming his leading patron. While in Europe she funded up-and-coming musicians, artists, and writers, including James Joyce as he wrote Ulysses. Later, in Chicago, Edith donated land for what would become Brookfield Zoo. Her unusual beliefs and pursuit of humanitarian goals ultimately provoked her family to cut her off financially.

Respectful and truthful, Ross presents the full arc of this amazing woman’s life and expertly explains Edith’s generosity, intelligence, and fierce determination to change the world.

Andrea Friederici Ross is the author of Let the Lions Roar! The Evolution of Brookfield Zoo. A native of the Chicago area and a graduate of Northwestern University, Ross works in a grade school library, where she encourages young readers to develop a lasting love of books.

Jodie Jacobs, Chicago Theater and Arts

The Loop

The ‘L’ Tracks That Shaped and Saved Chicago Patrick T. Reardon

“It is an odd paradox that few Chicagoans would call the ‘L’ beautiful, yet we’re quite sure and happy that it defines the very essence of our town. It is a set of trains screeching overhead, yet also a place—the Loop!—and a state of mind. Now a superb reporter, Patrick T. Reardon, tells the full and fascinating story of how Chicago built the ‘L’ and how the ‘L’ built Chicago. Read this book on the ‘L’ and you might miss your stop.”—

Tom McNamee, editorial page editor of the Chicago Sun-Times

Every day Chicagoans rely on the loop of elevated train tracks to get to their jobs, classrooms, or homes in the city’s downtown. But how much do they know about the single most important structure in the history of the Windy City? In engagingly brisk prose, Patrick T. Reardon unfolds the fascinating story about how Chicago’s elevated Loop was built, gave its name to the downtown, helped unify the city, saved the city’s economy, and was itself saved from destruction in the 1970s. This unique volume combines urban history, biography, engineering, architecture, transportation, culture, and politics to explore the elevated Loop’s impact on the city’s development and economy and on the way Chicagoans see themselves.

For more than three decades Patrick T. Reardon was an urban affairs writer, a feature writer, a columnist, and an editor for the Chicago Tribune. In 2000 he was one of a team of 50 staff members who won a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting. Now a freelance writer and poet, he has contributed chapters to several books and is the author of Faith

Stripped to Its Essence

Tales of Forgotten Chicago

Richard C. Lindberg

“Reading Richard Lindberg’s new book Tales of Forgotten Chicago is like spending the afternoon exploring Chicago’s attic. Nestled in amongst the holiday decorations and old suitcases are people, places, and events that were once the talk of the Windy City, but have since slipped from civic memory.”—Dana Dunham, Chicago Review

of

Books

Tales of Forgotten Chicago contains twenty-one fascinating, little-known stories about a great city and its people. Richard C. Lindberg has dug deeply to reveal lost historical events and hidden gems from Chicago’s past. Spanning the Civil War through the 1960s, the volume showcases forgotten crimes, punishments, and consequences: poisoned soup that nearly killed three hundred leading citizens, a woman in showbiz and her street-thug husband whose checkered lives inspired a 1955 James Cagney movie, and the first policewoman in Chicago. Also included are tales of industry and invention, such as America’s first automobile race, the haunting of a wealthy Gilded Age manufacturer’s mansion, and the identity of the telephone’s rightful inventor. Chapters on the history of early city landmarks spotlight the fight to save Lakefront Park and a North Side baseball park becoming Wrigley Field. Other chapters explore civic, cultural, and political happenings such as the great Railroad Fairs of 1948 and 1949, Richard J. Daley’s revival of the St. Patrick’s Day parade, and the founding of the Special Olympics in Chicago. Finally, some are just wonderful tales, such as a touching story about the city’s first Christmas tree.

Richard C. Lindberg is an award-winning author, journalist, and lecturer who has written and published nineteen other books about Chicago history, politics, criminal justice, sports, and ethnicity.

Paper: 978-0-8093-3810-8

E-book: 978-0-8093-3811-5

$26.95, 312 pages, 31 illus.

Paper: 978-0-8093-3781-1

E-book: 978-0-8093-3782-8

$24.95, 280 pages, 24 illus.

Paper: 978-0-8093-3820-7

E-book: 978-0-8093-3821-4

$26.50, 276 pages, 23 illus.

Engaging the Civil War

Read more and order at www.siupress.com/bondsofwar.

The Bonds of War

A Story of Immigrants and Esprit De Corps in Company C, 96th Illinois Volunteer Infantry

Diana L. Dretske

“In this intriguing collective biography of five immigrant men, Diana L. Dretske sheds important light on immigrant soldiers in the Civil War and on the Western Theater of the war, two aspects of the Civil War that are traditionally neglected. Their story is well told, making for a very rewarding and edifying read.”—Jason H. Silverman, author of Lincoln and the Immigrant and When America Welcomed Immigrants

The bond of citizenship earned during the Civil War

When curator Diana L. Dretske discovered that the five long-gone Union soldiers in a treasured photograph in the Bess Bower Dunn Museum were not fully identified, it compelled her into a project of recovery and reinterpretation. Utilizing an impressive array of local and national archives, as well as private papers, the author’s microhistorical approach records events that often go unnoticed, such as a farmer enlisting in the middle of a crop field, a sister searching her brother’s face for signs of war, and an immigrant dying in an effort to become a good American citizen.

This book, the most intensive examination of the 96th Illinois Volunteer Infantry since the regiment’s history was published in 1887 centers on immigrants from the British Isles who wished to be citizens of a country at war with itself. Far removed from their native homelands, they found new promise in rural Illinois. These men, neighbors along the quiet Stateline Road in Lake County, decide to join the fighting at its most dangerous hour. The bonds of war become then the bonds of their new national identity.

The Bonds of War uncovers the common soldier from the cataclysm that is the American Civil War by offering a collective biography of five soldiers of the 96th in the Western Theater. The human drama of their lives unfolds before the reader on battlefields such as Chickamauga and within the high pine stockades of Andersonville. Their lives argue that those who seem to matter least in military history are the very ones who can tell us the most about the experience of war and the reasons for remembering.

Diana L. Dretske, curator and Lake County historian at the Bess Bower Dunn Museum of Lake County, has explored, for more than thirty years, the history of northeastern Illinois through her research, presentations, and blog. Her books include Lake County, Illinois: An Illustrated History and Views of America: Fort Sheridan. In 2012 the Illinois State Historical Society recognized her with a lifetime achievement award for outstanding contributions in promoting, preserving, and commemorating Illinois history.

Women Making War

Female Confederate Prisoners and Union Military Justice

Thomas F. Curran

“Women Making War takes up a worthy topic that has not received enough attention from historians. To date, it is the only full scholarly treatment of Confederate women engaged in war in the critical area of St. Louis. The book combines prodigious research in many dispersed and difficult-to-use sources with deep knowledge of the local context. Women Making War is an excellent piece of historical writing.”—Stephanie McCurry, author of Women’s War: Fighting and Surviving the American Civil War

“Thomas F. Curran provides much-needed insight into the lives of Confederate women who, in their efforts to subvert the Union cause, ran afoul of military authorities. Anchored by a variety of entertaining and informative primary sources, he reminds us that there is still more to explore about female agency in directing the course of the Civil War.” Victoria E. Ott, author of Confederate Daughters: Coming of Age during the Civil War

Partisan activities of disloyal women and the Union army’s reaction

During the American Civil War, hundreds of women were arrested and imprisoned by the Union Army in the St. Louis area. The majority of them were fully aware of the political nature of their actions and had made conscious decisions to assist Confederate soldiers in armed rebellion against the U.S. government. Their crimes included offering aid to Confederate soldiers, smuggling, spying, and sabotaging. By determining that women—who were excluded from the politics of the public sphere—were capable of treason, Federal authorities implicitly acknowledged that women acted in ways that had serious political meaning.

Thomas F. Curran analyzes the activities that led to arrests, the reactions women partisans evoked from Federal authorities, and the impact women’s partisan activities had on Federal military policy and military prisons. He also reveals how these women’s experiences were later disregarded in order to comport with a Lost Cause myth: the need for valiant men to protect defenseless women.

Thomas F. Curran has taught in the department of social studies at Cor Jesu Academy in St. Louis since 2003, and before that he taught at Saint Louis University and the University of Notre Dame. For eight years he served as managing editor of the Journal of Policy History. Curran is the author of Soldier of Peace: Civil War Pacifism and the Postwar Radical Peace Movement.

978-0-8093-3803-0

Paper:

E-book: 978-0-8093-3804-7 $26.50, 274 pages, 18 illus.

Paper: 978-0-8093-3859-7

Cloth: 978-0-8093-3860-3

E-book: 978-0-8093-3861-0

$16.95 paper, $28.50 cloth, 218 pages, 21 illus.

Lincoln’s New Salem

Benjamin P. Thomas with a foreword by Ralph G. Newman and introduction by Kenneth J. Winkle

“Benjamin P. Thomas, author of the best single-volume biography of Lincoln, made his debut as a Lincolnian with this evocative, highly readable study. Like the biography, it has held up remarkably well in the decades since its publication. Southern Illinois University Press deserves kudos for reissuing it with a new introduction by such an exceptionally knowledgeable scholar as Kenneth Winkle.”—Michael Burlingame, author of An American Marriage: The Untold Story of Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd

A new edition of a Lincoln classic

This authoritative classic tells the story of the Illinois village on the Sangamon River in which Abraham Lincoln lived from 1831 to 1837. Benjamin P. Thomas’s three-part examination of the town often referred to as Lincoln’s “alma mater” features the founding and early history of New Salem, Lincoln’s impact on the village and its effect on him, and the story of the Lincoln legend and the reconstruction of the town.

Lincoln’s New Salem highlights the young Lincoln’s arrival, his important wrestling match with Jack Armstrong, his self-education, his brief military career in the Black Hawk War, his experience as a postmaster largely indifferent to postal regulations, his financial woes with the general store, and his election to the state legislature. Making the point that New Salem was where Lincoln acquired faith in himself and in other people, Thomas introduces us to those who created New Salem and who knew, influenced, and befriended Lincoln, delving into his relationships with his neighbors and the loyal friends who often came to his aid.

Read more and order at www.siupress.com/newsalem.

This colorful history closes with a discussion of the Lincoln legend, which prompted the gradual realization that New Salem was not a dismal mire from which Abraham Lincoln had to extricate himself but was, in fact, an energizing force. This realization led to research and finally to the restoration of New Salem, which began in 1932. The preservation of the village remains vitally important.

First published in 1934 and revised by the author in 1954, this reissue includes a previously unpublished piece about New Salem and Illinois governor Henry Horner by Benjamin Thomas, a new introduction by Kenneth J. Winkle, and new photos by Robert Shaw, in addition to original drawings by Romaine Proctor and a 1971 foreword by Ralph G. Newman.

Benjamin P. Thomas (1902–56), a lifetime Lincoln scholar, is best known for his definitive Abraham Lincoln: A Biography. For many years he was the secretary of the Abraham Lincoln Association.

Concise Lincoln Library

This exciting series brings together expert scholars to elaborate on the life, times, and legacy of Abraham Lincoln. Through short, focused books, each concentrating on a different area of Lincoln’s life and career, the Concise Lincoln Library brings fresh perspectives to well-known topics, investigates previously overlooked subjects, and explores in greater depth topics that have not yet received book-length treatment. Learn more and see the full list of titles at www.conciselincolnlibrary.com.

Looking for Lincoln

Full-color, heavily illustrated guidebooks in the Looking for Lincoln series invite readers to learn more about the life, times, and legacy of Abraham Lincoln in central Illinois and the people, places, and forces in the region that shaped and elevated him to the White House. Collectively, books in the series examine Lincoln’s development and rise during his time in central Illinois; promote public awareness of the region’s history, culture, and significance; encourage heritage, cultural, and recreational tourism; and raise public consciousness about the needs and benefits of preserving the historic and cultural legacies of central Illinois.

Also Available

The Irish in Illinois

Mathieu W. Billings and Sean Farrell

“Mathieu W. Billings and Sean Farrell have done a magnificent job of combining primary research with a wealth of secondary material to produce an erudite and absorbing portrait of the Irish in Illinois from the mid-eighteenth to the early twenty-first century. The Irish in Illinois is a comprehensive and engaging book that should be read by everyone with an interest in Irish America, Illinois, or Chicago.”—Gillian O’Brien, author of Blood Runs Green: The Murder That Transfixed Gilded Age Chicago

The first statewide history of the Irish in the Prairie State

Today over a million people in Illinois claim Irish ancestry and celebrate their love for Ireland. In this concise narrative history, authors Mathieu W. Billings and Sean Farrell bring together both familiar and unheralded stories of the Irish in Illinois, highlighting the critical roles these immigrants and their descendants played in the settlement and the making of the Prairie State. Short biographies and twenty-eight photographs vividly illustrate the significance and diversity of Irish contributions to Illinois.

Billings and Farrell remind us of the countless ways Irish men and women have shaped the history and culture of the state. They fought in the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, the Civil War, and two world wars; built the state’s infrastructure and worked in its factories; taught Illinois children and served the poor. Irish political leaders helped to draw up the state’s first constitution; served in city, county, and state offices; and created a machine that dominated twentieth-century politics in Chicago and the state.

This lively history adds to our understanding of the the Irish in the state over the past 250 years. Illinoisans and Midwesterners celebrating their connections to Ireland will treasure this rich and important account of the state’s history.

Mathieu W. Billings is a faculty associate in the history and political science department at the University of Indianapolis.

Sean Farrell is a professor of history at Northern Illinois University. He is the author of Rituals and Riots: Sectarian Violence and Political Culture in Ulster, 1784–1886 and coeditor of Shadows of the Gunmen: Violence and Culture in Modern Ireland.

Coming in 2024

Puerto Ricans in Illinois

Maura I. Toro-Morn and Ivis García

Immigrants in the Valley

Irish, Germans, and Americans in the Upper Mississippi Country, 1830–1860

Mark Wyman

“Mark Wyman has painted a vivid picture of settlement in the Upper Mississippi Valley. He traces the origins, settlement patterns, and economic and cultural activities of migrants from Ireland, the German states, New England, and the South.”—Illinois Historical Journal

Thousands of newcomers flocked into the Upper Mississippi country in the decades leading up to the Civil War. Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, and Minnesota received immigrants from most areas of Europe, as well as Americans from the Upper South, New England, and the Middle Atlantic states. They all carried with them religious beliefs, experiences, and expectations that differed widely, attitudes and opinions which often threw them into conflict with each other. Drawing extensively on family letters sent home to Europe, missionary reports, employment records, and other diverse materials from 1830 to 1860, Wyman shows the interplay between the major groups traveling the roads and waterways of the Upper Mississippi Valley during those crucial decades. The result is a lively, richly illustrated account that will help Americans everywhere better understand their diverse heritage and the environment in which their family trees took root.

Mark Wyman is a professor emeritus of history at Illinois State University. He is the author of six books on labor, frontier, and immigration history.

German Americans on the Middle Border From Antislavery to Reconciliation, 1830–1877

Zachary Stuart Garrison

“[E]xquisitely crafted history, both in its nuanced reassessment of the nature and results of German antislavery activism before, during, and after the Civil War and its lucid explanation of the many complicated reasons behind the dizzying rise and fall of German social and political influence and status in the region over that period of time.”—Andrew J. Wagenhoffer, Civil War Books and Authors

Before the Civil War, Northern, Southern, and Western political cultures crashed together on the middle border, where the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri Rivers meet. German Americans who settled in the region took an antislavery stance, asserting a liberal nationalist philosophy rooted in their revolutionary experience in Europe that emphasized individual rights and freedoms. By contextualizing German Americans in their European past and exploring their ideological formation in failed nationalist revolutions, Zachary Stuart Garrison adds nuance and complexity to their story. Garrison’s unique transnational perspective to the sectional crisis, the Civil War, and the postwar era complicates our understanding of German Americans on the middle border.

Zachary Stuart Garrison teaches history at Chaminade College Preparatory School in St. Louis, Missouri. He previously taught at the University of Cincinnati and Lindenwood University and worked at Ohio Valley History.

Paper: 978-0-8093-3556-5

E-book: 978-0-8093-3557-2

$24.50, 282 pages, 38 illus.

Paper: 978-0-8093-3755-2

E-book: 978-0-8093-3756-9

$30, 232 pages, 4 illus.

Cloth: 978-0-8093-3395-0

E-book: 978-0-8093-3396-7

$39.50, 368 pages, 32 illus.

St. Louis & Empire 250 Years of Imperial Quest and Urban Crisis

Henry W. Berger

“With a book that either defies or transcends categorization, Henry W. Berger gives us a history of St. Louis from the perspective of its imperial aspirations as expressed through two hundred and fifty years of commercial initiatives. Berger’s book. . . is as much an endorsement as a critique of this interesting and exhaustively researched work that takes the reader on an interesting and enlightening journey from the origins of St. Louis.”— John Reda, Middle West Review

At first glance, St. Louis, Missouri, or any American city, for that matter, seems to have little to do with foreign relations, a field ostensibly conducted on a nation-state level. However, St. Louis, despite its status as an inland river city frequently relegated to the backwaters of national significance, has stood at the crossroads of international matters for much of its history. From its eighteenth-century French fur trade origins to post–Cold War business dealings with Latin America and Asia, the city has never neglected nor been ignored by the world outside its borders. In this pioneering study, Henry W. Berger analyzes St. Louis’s imperial engagement from its founding in 1764 to the present day, revealing the intersection of local political, cultural, and economic interests in foreign affairs.

Henry W. Berger is a professor emeritus of history at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the editor of A William Appleman Williams Reader: Selections from His Major Historical Writings.

Corn Kings and OneHorse Thieves A Plain-Spoken History of Mid-Illinois

James Krohe Jr.

“Krohe is both entertaining and enlightening on a wide variety of issues, events, and personalities. His literary voice is knowledgeable and bemused, with a dry wit that makes for an enthralling narrative.”—James

$29.50, 360 pages, 57 illus.

James Krohe Jr. presents an engaging history of an often overlooked region, filled with fascinating stories and surprising facts about Illinois’s midsection. Krohe describes in lively prose the history of mid-Illinois from the Woodland period of prehistory until roughly 1960, covering the settlement of the region; the exploitation by Euro-Americans of forest, fish, and waterfowl; the transformation of farming into a high-tech industry; and the founding and deaths of towns. The economic, cultural, and racial factors that led to antagonism and accommodation between various people of different backgrounds are explored, as are the roles of education and religion in this part of the state. The book examines remarkable utopian experiments, social and moral reform movements, and innovations in transportation and food processing. Accessible and entertaining yet well-researched and informative, Corn Kings and One-Horse Thieves draws on a wide range of sources to explore a surprisingly diverse section of Illinois whose history is America in microcosm.

In more than forty years as an award-winning magazine journalist, essayist, and critic, James Krohe Jr. has explored the history, politics, and culture of his native Illinois.

A. Edstrom, The Annals of Iowa

Paper: 978-0-8093-3602-9

E-book: 978-0-8093-3603-6

The Illustrated Flora of Illinois

All Titles in the Series

Ferns

Flowering Plants: Asteraceae, Part 1

Flowering Plants: Asteraceae, Part 2

Flowering Plants: Asteraceae, Part 3

Flowering Plants: Basswoods to Spurges

Flowering Plants: Flowering Rush to Rushes

Flowering Plants: Hollies to Loasas

Flowering Plants: Lilies to Orchids

Flowering Plants: Magnolias to Pitcher Plants

Flowering Plants: Nightshades to Mistletoe

Flowering Plants: Pokeweeds, Four-o’clocks, Carpetweeds, Cacti, Purslanes, Goosefoots, Pigweeds, and Pinks

Flowering Plants: Smartweeds to Hazelnuts

Flowering Plants: Willows to Mustards

Grasses: Bromus to Paspalum, Second Edition

Grasses: Panicum to Danthonia, Second Edition

Sedges: Carex

Sedges: Cyperus to Scleria

The Natural Heritage of Illinois: Essays on Its Lands, Waters, Flora, and Fauna

John E. Schwegman

Paper: 978-0-8093-3484-1

$26.50, 256 pages, 35 illus.

In Their Letters, in Their Words: Illinois Civil War Soldiers Write Home

Edited by Mark Flotow

Paper: 978-0-8093-3763-7

$26.50, 320 pages, 12 illus.

Organizing Freedom: Black Emancipation Activism in the Civil War Midwest

Jennifer R. Harbour

Paper: 978-0-8093-3769-9

$27, 208 pages 5 illus.

The Chicago River: A Natural and Unnatural History

Libby Hill

Paper: 978-0-8093-3707-1

$24.50, 328 pages, 86 illus.

Fortune and Faith in Old Chicago: A Dual Biography of Mayor

Augustus Garrett and Seminary

Founder Eliza Clark Garrett

Charles H. Cosgrove

Cloth: 978-0-8093-3794-1

$29.50, 320 pages, 32 illus.

Kaskaskia: The Lost Capital of Illinois

David MacDonald and Raine Waters

Paper: 978-0-8093-3731-6

$26.50, 226 pages, 99 illus.

Prairie Boys Go to War: The Fifth Illinois Cavalry, 1861–1865

Rhonda M. Kohl

Paper: 978-0-8093-3822-1

$26.50, 330 pages, 22 illus.

Pembroke: A Rural, Black Community on the Illinois Dunes

Dave Baron

Paper: 978-0-8093-3502-2

$26.50, 248 pages, 18 illus.

Legends and Lore of Southern Illinois

John W. Allen

Paper: 978-0-8093-2967-0

$28.50, 440 pages, 37 illus.

The Poorhouse: Subsidized Housing in Chicago

Devereux Bowly Jr.

Paper: 978-0-8093-3052-2

$29.50, 288 pages, 172 illus.

Railroad Tycoon Who Built Chicago: A Biography of William B. Ogden

Jack Harpster

Paper: 978-0-8093-3736-1

$22.50, 328 pages, 26 illus.

Chicago’s Fabulous Fountains

Greg Borzo

Cloth: 978-0-8093-3579-4

$29.95, 224 pages, 139 illus.

Black Writing from Chicago: In the World, Not of It?

Edited by Richard R. Guzman

Paper: 978-0-8093-2704-1

$22.95, 360 pages

The Ordeal of the Jungle: Race and the Chicago Federation of Labor, 1903–1922

David Bates Paper: 978-0-8093-3744-6

$29.50, 268 pages, 9 illus.

America’s Deadliest Twister The Tri-State Tornado of 1925

Geoff Partlow Paper: 978-0-8093-3346-2

$19.95, 160 pages, 48 illus.

Chicago: Metropolis of the MidContinent, 4th Edition

Irving Cutler

Paper: 978-0-8093-2702-7

$24.95, 464 pages, 300 illus.

Death Underground: The Centralia and West Frankfort Mine Disasters

Robert E. Hartley and David Kenney

Paper: 978-0-8093-2706-5

$22.95, 272 pages, 30 illus.

Chicago Heights: Little Joe College, the Outfit, and the Fall of Sam Giancana

Charles Hager with David T. Miller Paper: 978-0-8093-3672-2

$22.95, 184 pages, 14 illus.

20 Day Trips in and around the Shawnee National Forest

Larry P. and Donna J. Mahan

Paper: 978-0-8093-3255-7

$21.95, 160 pages, 102 illus.

Fluorspar Mining: Photos from Illinois and Kentucky, 1905-1995

Herbert K. Russell

Paper: 978-0-8093-3668-5

$19.50, 102 pages, 86 illus.

Making the Heartland Quilt: A Geographical History of Settlement and Migration in Early-Nineteenth-Century Illinois

Douglas K. Meyer

Paper: 978-0-8093-3514-5

$35, 354 pages, 67 illus.

It’s Good to Be Black

Ruby Berkley Goodwin

Paper: 978-0-8093-3122-2

$19.95, 280 pages

The Wreck of the “America” in Southern Illinois: A Flatboat on the Ohio River

Mark J. Wagner

Paper: 978-0-8093-3436-0

$19.50, 132 pages, 59 illus.

Prairie Defender: The Murder Trials of Abraham Lincoln

George R. Dekle, Sr.

Cloth: 978-0-8093-3597-8

$34.50, 248 pages, 21 illus.