Paper: 978-0-8093-3848-1
E-book: 978-0-8093-3849-8
$29.95, 294 pages, 113 illus.
“This book is a treasure to be passed on to future generations.”
Gregory Heisler, author of Gregory Heisler: 50 Portraits
“If you go anywhere in Illinois, you have to start here.”
—William Furry, Executive Director, Illinois State Historical Society
Text by Gary Marx and photographs by Daniel Overturf, with a foreword by Dick Durbin
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 post-Ice 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.
Gary Marx is a journalist whose work has appeared in the Kansas City Star and numerous other publications. Daniel Overturf is an exhibiting photographer and professor emeritus of photography at Southern Illinois University Carbondale Together Marx and Over turf are the authors of A River Through Illinois
“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
Paper: 978-0-8093-3869-6
E-book: 978-0-8093-3870-2
$26.95, 366 pages, 30 illus.
After portraying Mary Lincoln in hundreds of performances and giving lectures over a more than thirty-year career, Donna D. Mc Creary has fielded every imaginable inquiry about the First Lady. Gathered here, read ers will find answers to the most frequently asked questions to come from live audi ences. This first question-and-answer book arises directly from a public’s enduring curiosity with one the country’s most important historical figures. Decades of conversations with audiences, scholars, and relatives of the Todd family frame McCreary’s intimate and devoted research to offer a new and unique portrait of the most tragic First Lady.
Though Mary has been portrayed in books and film, McCreary’s book contains information not found elsewhere—details others have overlooked and those that would not fit well into a narrative history— such as lists of Mary’s beaus, servants, and
the Todd family slaves; appendixes that present mini-biographies of families and friends; and a uniquely thorough timeline.
Mary Lincoln Demystified covers areas in which McCreary’s audiences have ex pressed the most interest: Mary’s sanity, her family relationships, her views on slav ery and African Americans, her personality and habits, and what happened to her possessions and children after she died.
While sympathetic to the woman she portrayed for two decades, McCreary examines both sides of controversial issues and presents the facts with her trademark style and flair. More than a good read, Mc Creary’s Q&A factbook, based as it is on decades of extensive research in primary and secondary sources, will be the defini tive resource for answers about Mary for years to come.
Donna D. McCreary, a writer, lecturer, and performer, is the author of Lincoln’s Table: Victo rian Recipes from Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois to the White House and Fashionable First Lady: The Victorian Wardrobe of Mary Lincoln. McCreary portrayed Mary Lincoln from 1992 to 2012 and now lectures at Lincoln sites, museums, and libraries throughout the Midwest. She is a cofounder of Mary Lincoln’s Coterie.
“Dismissing Mary Lincoln as a villain does no justice to her, to Abraham Lincoln, or to history. She was not a caricature. She was a complicat ed, intelligent, passionate, flawed human being. To demystify her is to know her better and, in turn, to know Abraham Lincoln better; and McCreary seeks to do just that by illustrating Mary Lincoln’s humanity.”
Stacy Pratt McDermott, author of Mary Lincoln: Southern Girl, Northern Woman
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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 in volved in the Ferguson Uprising and the Black Lives Matter movement. A Brick and a Bible examines how African American work ing-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. Mid western Black radicalism that contests that interlocking systems of oppression directly relates the distinct racial, political, geograph ic, 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, Chi cago, 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 Sop kin 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 mid western 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.
“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
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 Chi cago 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, Chi cago 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, con tinued 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.
“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
$26.50, 274 pages, 17 illus.
Paper: 978-0-8093-3876-4
E-book: 978-0-8093-3877-1
$27.50, 264 pages, 24 illus.
Paper: 978-0-8093-3886-3
E-book: 978-0-8093-3887-0
Avenues of Transformation traces the surpris ing 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 perpet uation 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—and captures the compelling moment when Illinois statehood stood ready to more perfectly unify the nation.
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 Histor ical Society. He is a professor of library services and history at William Rainey Harper College.
Kaskaskia, Illinois 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 Margue rite 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.
Carl J. Ekberg has published many books and articles including Stealing Indian Women: Native Slavery in the Illinois Country. Sharon K. Person 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
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Miranda E. Wilkerson and Heather Richmond
$24.50 • 234 pages • 34 illus. • paper: 978-0-8093-3721-7 • e-book: 978-0-8093-3722-4
This engaging history of one of the largest ethnic groups in Illinois explores the influence and experiences of German immigrants and their descendants from their arrival in the middle of the nineteenth century to their heritage identity today. Coauthors Miranda E. Wilkerson and Heather Richmond examine the primary reasons that Germans came to Illinois and describe how they adapted to life and distinguished themselves through a variety of occupations and community roles.
Exploring the complex and ever-evolving German
American identity in the growing diversity of Illinois’s linguistic and ethnic landscape, this book contextualizes their experiences and corrects widely held assumptions about assimilation and cultural identity. Federal census data, photographs, lively biographical sketches, and newly created maps bring the complex story of German immigration to life. The generously illustrated volume also features detailed notes, sugges tions for further reading, and an annotated list of books, journal articles, and other sources of information.
John Radzilowski and Ann Hetzel Gunkel
$24.50 • 244 pages • 48 illus. • paper: 978-0-8093-3723-1 • e-book: 978-0-8093-3724-8
Illinois boasts one of the most visible concentrations of Poles in the United States. Chicago is home to one of the largest Polish ethnic communities outside Poland itself. Yet no one has told the full story of our state’s large and varied Polish community—until now. Poles in Illinois is the first comprehensive history to trace the abundance and diversity of this ethnic group throughout the state from the 1800s to the present.
The authors look at family life among Polish immigrants, their role in the economic development of the
state, the working conditions they experienced, and the development of their labor activism. Close-knit Polish American communities were often centered on parish churches but also focused on fraternal and social groups and cultural organizations. Polish Americans, including waves of political refugees during World War II and the Cold War, helped shape the history and culture of not only Chicago, the “capital” of Polish America, but also the rest of Illinois with their music, theater, literature, food.
Mathieu W. Billings and Sean Farrell
$24.50 • 270 pages • 28 illus. • paper: 978-0-8093-3799-6
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 vividly illustrate the significance and diversity of Irish contributions to Illinois.
Billings and Farrell remind us of the countless ways
e-book: 978-0-8093-3800-9
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.
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$24.50 • 128 pages
115 illus. • paper: 978-0-8093-3818-4
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
e-book: 978-0-8093-3819-1
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.
$19.50 • 168 pages • 355 illus • paper: 978-0-8093-3805-4
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
e-book: 978-0-8093-3806-1
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.
$26.50
256 pages
35 illus.
paper: 978-0-8093-3484-1
The Natural Heritage of Illinois is an engaging collection of ninety-three essays on the lands, waters, plants, and animals found in Illinois. Written in lively, accessible prose, the book discusses how wind, water, glaciers, earthquakes, fire, and people have shaped Illinois’ landforms, natural habitats, rivers and
e-book: 978-0-8093-3485-8
streams, and the ways in which native plants and animals, from individual species to entire ecosys tems, have thrived, survived, or died out. Full of fascinating information and expert knowledge, this book will prove invaluable to scholars, students, teachers, and casual nature lovers.
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Larry P. and Donna J. Mahan
$19.95 • 160 pages • 102 illus. • paper: 978-0-8093-3255-7 • e-book: 978-0-8093-3256-4
One of the unique and most scenic treasures in the Midwest, the Shawnee National Forest spans more than 279,000 acres deep in southern Illinois. The natural beauty, stunning vistas, and diverse flora and fauna of this picturesque region invite exploration by all who love nature. This easy-to-use guidebook highlights 20 exciting day or weekend trips within and near the Shawnee National Forest, making it easy to
take advantage of the forest’s myriad opportunities for outdoor recreational activity.
From biking and bird watching to hiking, horse back riding, and rock climbing, the Shawnee National Forest is home to an abundance of possibilities for outdoor fun. With this practical guide in hand, adventure seekers and nature lovers alike can make the most of southern Illinois’s own natural treasure.
W. Douglas Robinson
$26.00 • 486 pages • 39 illus. • paper: 978-0-8093-3517-6
Designed to help bird watchers in the field and at home discover the significance of their observations, this book documents current knowledge of the birds of southern Illinois by surveying both the published liter ature on the subject and the unpublished field notes of active observers summarizing many important observations that are not readily available elsewhere.
Southern Illinois Birds includes information on early arrival and late departure dates of migrants, the highest reported single-day counts in each season, and
records of all vagrants. In addition, Robinson includes maps and guides to some of the best birding areas in the region to encourage birders and others to explore the many birding and scenic attractions in southern Illinois.
This is a definitive reference for ornithologists and amateur bird watchers, conservation and government agencies, college students in biology, and future researchers who wish to determine the status and abundance of southern Illinois birds.
Robert H. Mohlenbrock
$30.00 • 200 pages • paper: 978-0-8093-3605-0 • e-book: 978-0-8093-3606-7
Flowering Plants: Asteraceae, Part 3 is the third and final volume in botanist Robert H. Mohlenbrock’s comprehensive sequence of books on the aster family in Illinois. In this volume, Mohlenbrock iden tifies 128 species in 49 genera with 11 hybrids and 57 lesser taxa. He provides an easy-to-use key to the genera and species and a complete description and nomenclatural and habitat notes for each plant, including its uses, if applicable. The book details the
most important features of the species and includes common, locally used names. Synonyms that have been applied to species and lesser taxa in Illinois are given under each species.
As important to amateurs interested in wildflower identification as to professional botanists and land planners, this last volume of Mohlenbrock’s Asteraceae is an essential addition to the esteemed Illus trated Flora of Illinois series.
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$26.95 • 312 pages • 31 illus. • paper: 978-0-8093-3810-8
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 down town, helped unify the city, saved the city’s economy, and was itself saved from destruction in the 1970s.
This unique volume combines urban history,
e-book: 978-0-8093-3811-5
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. The Loop rooted Chicago’s downtown in a way unknown in other cities, and it protected that area—and the city itself—from the full effects of suburbanization during the second half of the twentieth century. Masses of data underlie new insights into what has made Chicago’s downtown, and the city as a whole, tick.
$24.95 • 280 pages • 24 illus. • paper: 978-0-8093-3781-1 • e-book: 978-0-8093-3782-8
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, politicians, and business and religious leaders; a woman in showbiz
and her street-thug husband whose checkered lives inspired a 1955 James Cagney movie; and the first police woman in Chicago, hired as a result of the senseless killing of a young factory girl in a racially tinged case of the 1880s. Also included are tales of industry and invention Other chapters explore civic, cultural, and political happenings, as well as history of city landmarks.
Engrossing and imaginative, this collection opens new windows into the past of the Windy City.
$22.95 • 258 pages • 32 illus. • paper: 978-0-8093-3862-7
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.
After marrying Harold McCormick, Edith spent lavishly. The couple purchased treasures like the jewels of Catherine the Great, entertained in their Chicago mansion, and founded both the Chicago Grand Opera and the John R. McCormick Memorial Institute for
e-book: 978-0-8093-3791-0
Infectious Diseases. Edith experienced phobias and panic attacks. Dissatisfied with rest cures, she moved to Zurich and pursued analysis with then-unknown Carl Jung. While in Europe she funded up-and-coming musicians, artists, and writers, including James Joyce. In Chicago, Edith donated land for what would become Brookfield Zoo. Her 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.
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$24.50 • 328 pages • 86 illus. • paper: 978-0-8093-3707-1
In this social and ecological account of the Chicago River, Libby Hill tells the story of how a sluggish water way emptying into Lake Michigan became central to the creation of Chicago as a major metropolis and transportation hub.
This widely acclaimed volume weaves the perspec tives of science, engineering, commerce, politics, economics, and the natural world into a chronicle of the river from its earliest geologic history through its
e-book: 978-0-8093-3708-8
repeated adaptations to the city that grew up around it. While explaining the river’s role in massive public works, such as drainage and straightening, designed to address the infrastructure needs of a growing population, Hill focuses on the synergy between the river and the people of greater Chicago, whether they be the tribal cultures that occupied the land after glacial retreat, the first European inhabitants, or more recent residents.
$22.95 • 184 pages • 14 illus. • paper: 978-0-8093-3672-2 • e-book: 978-0-8093-3673-9
In this riveting true story of coming of age in the Chicago Mob, Charles “Charley” Hager is plucked from his rural West Virginia home by an uncle in the 1960s and thrown into an underworld of money, cars, crime, and murder on the streets of Chicago Heights.
Fueled by vivid recollections of turf wars and chop shops, of fix-ridden harness racing and the turbu lent politics of the 1960s, Chicago Heights reveals
similarities between high-level organized crime in the city and the corrupt lawlessness of Appalachia. Hager candidly reveals how he got caught up in a criminal life, what it cost him, and how he rebuilt his life back in West Virginia with a prison record.
Chicago Heights is part rags-to-riches story, part murder mystery, and part redemption tale.
$29.95 • 224 pages • 139 illus. • cloth: 978-0-8093-3579-4
Chicago is home to many fascinating, architectur ally and historically important fountains. In this volume, Greg Borzo reveals more than one hundred outdoor public fountains of Chicago with noteworthy, amusing, or surprising stories. Complementing the text are fineart color photos, taken by photographer Julia Thiel, as well as a smaller number of historical photos.
Borzo begins by providing an overview of Chicago’s fountains and discussing the oldest ones, explaining
e-book: 978-0-8093-3580-0
who built them and why, how they survived as long as they have, and what they tell us about early Chicago. At the heart of the book are thematic chapters on drinking fountains, iconic fountains, plaza fountains, and park and parkway fountains.
A beautiful book and a guide to the city’s many fountains, Chicago’s Fabulous Fountains provides fascinating histories and behind-the-scenes stories of these underappreciated artistic and architectural treasures.
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$28.50, 268 pages, 8 illus.
Paper: 978-0-8093-3837-5
E-book: 978-0-8093-3838-2
Michael C. Batinski
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 forget ting 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 tran sient laborers. Instead of erasing the presence of outsiders, the pastkeepers could offer only silence, but it was a silence that could be broken.
What transpired in Jackson County was repeated in countless places throughout the nation.
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.
Le’Trice D. Donaldson
In a bold departure from previous scholarship, Le’Trice D. Donaldson locates the often overlooked era between the Civil War and the end of World War I as the beginning of black soldiers’ involvement in the long struggle for civil rights. Donaldson traces the evolution of these soldiers as they used their military service to challenge white notions of an African American second-class citizenry and forged a new identity as freedom fighters willing to demand the rights of full citizenship and manhood.
Through extensive research, Donaldson not
only illuminates this evolution but also interrogates the association between masculinity and citizenship and the ways in which performing manhood through military service influenced how these men struggled for racial uplift. Following the Buffalo soldier units and two regular army infantry units from the frontier and the Mexican border to Mexico, Cuba, and the Philippines, Donaldson investigates how these locations and the wars therein provide windows into how the soldiers’ struggles influenced black life and status within the United States.
Le’Trice D. Donaldson , an assistant professor of African American and U.S. history at the Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi, is the author of A Voyage through the African American Experience.
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$22.95, 360 pages
Paper: 978-0-8093-2704-1
$24.50, 352 pages, 30 illus.
Paper: 978-0-8093-2885-7
E-book: 978-0-8093-8736-6
Black Writing from Chicago takes readers on a cultural trip through Chicago’s literary history. Editor Richard R. Guzman compiles the first comprehensive collection of the works of Chica go’s black writers from 1861 to the early 21st century. The anthology, which includes works from newspaper writing, poetry, fiction, drama, essays, and historical and social commentary, seeks not only to represent a broad range of writings but also to focus tightly on such themes as hope and despair, racism and equality,
spirituality and religion. More than sixty writers, from the anonymous “J. W. M. (Colored)” to Ken Green, unfold a story that reflects the literary periods in black American history. Each author’s selection is preceded by a biographical and a bibliographical introduction. Readers interested in Chicago, race relations, and literature, as well as scholars of history, sociology, urban stud ies, and cultural studies, will find the collection invaluable.
Richard R. Guzman is a professor of English and the coordinator of the master of arts in liberal studies and the master of leadership studies programs at North Central College. He is a coeditor of Smokestacks and Skyscrapers: An Anthology of Chicago Writing.
When Race Becomes Real is a critically acclaimed collection that pushes the boundar ies of current discussions about race. In these personal and evocative essays, thirty contemporary black and white writers describe their own intimate experiences with race and discrimina tion, taking an unflinching look at both society and themselves. The result is an incisive and powerful anthology that rethinks what it means to be black—and white—in the modern world.
Only through frank and tough conversation, Singley tells us, can America hope to realize its goals of justice and racial equality. This
collection opens that much-needed honest dialogue, exploring a wide range of racial experiences in relation to a myriad of topics: from crime and religion to humor, history, and desire. When Race Becomes Real directly tackles one of our most taboo subjects with bravery, wit, and emotion. Sometimes shocking, some times amusing but always honest, this collection encourages readers to move beyond the ineffective reluctance and objectivity that hinder contemporary conversations and in doing so forge a new path in racial consciousness.
Bernestine Singley has been assistant attorney general in both Massachusetts and Texas. She is currently at work on two novels and a collection of short stories.
$16.95 • 90 pages • paper: 978-0-8093-3840-5 • e-book: 978-0-8093-3841-2
In The Kitchen of Small Hours, Derek N. Otsuji embraces the fragility and endurance of a family of immigrants from two prefectures in Japan: Kagoshima in the south and Okinawa, an island more than four hundred miles from the mainland. In these poems, five generations sing, save, scold, bury, and cook against the culture and history that emerged from the pineapple and sugar cane plantations of mid-nine teenth-century Hawaii, from the bomb-scapes and
hatreds of World War II, and from the canning and tourism industry of the twentieth century. Otsuji writes of how his family used stories and rugged cheer to fill the spaces apart from the cane fields and the canning factory. Their recipes, rituals, celebrations, songs, dances, myths, and family stories passed from grandmother to father to son, who folds them into lyrics.
$16.95 • 92 pages • paper: 978-0-8093-3842-9 • e-book: 978-0-8093-3843-6
In The Flesh Between Us the speaker explores our connections to each other, whether they be lovely or painful, static or constantly shifting, or, above all, unavoidable and necessary. Intensely and unapolo getically homoerotic in content and theme, The Flesh Between Us sensuously conducts the meetings between strangers, between lovers, between friends and family, between eater and eaten, between the soul and the body that contains it. Pushing the boundaries of what has been traditionally acceptable for gay and
erotic content and themes, the poems adapt persona, Greek mythology, Judaism, and classic poetic forms to interrogate the speaker’s relationship to god and faith, to love and sex, to mother and father.
Adkisson’s poems refuse the placid satisfaction of confession. Whatever attachments the reader dares to draw must be made with blade or tongue. The reader must commit to the potential violence narrated by these poems.
$16.95 • 90 pages • paper: 978-0-8093-3814-6 • e-book: 978-0-8093-3815-3
Fraught with obsession, addiction, and unrequited love, Fieldglass immerses us in the speaker’s transition from childhood to adulthood. A queer coming-of-age, this collection is a candid exploration of sexual identity, family dynamics, and friendships that elude easy categorization.
Saturated by her surroundings and permeated by the emotional lives of those close to her, the speaker struggles with feelings of displacement, trauma, and separateness. She is perpetually in transit, moving
most often between the city and the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains. As the collection unfolds, the speaker journeys toward adulthood, risking intimacy and attempting to undo her impulses toward silence and absorption.
Reflective, graceful, and understated, Pond’s images accumulate power through restraint and suggestion. Deeply personal and intense, searching and yearning, associative and lyric, Fieldglass is a confessional about growing up, loving hard, and letting go.
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Robert Bray
$24.50 • 276 pages • paper: 978-0-8093-3873-3 • e-book: 978-0-8093-8589-8
At the core of Abraham Lincoln’s success was his self-education, centered on his love of and appreciation for learning through books. From his early studies of grammar school handbooks and children’s classics to his interest in Shakespeare’s Macbeth and the Bible during his White House years, what Lincoln read helped define who he was as a person and as a politician. This unique study delves into the books,
pamphlets, poetry, plays, and essays that influenced his thoughts and actions. Bray considers Lincoln’s fascination with science, mathematics, political economics, liberal social philosophy, and theology and devotes special attention to Lincoln’s enjoyment of American humor. This comprehensive book uncovers the how of Lincoln’s inspiring rise to greatness by connecting the content of his reading to the story of his life.
Erika Holst
$21.95 • 136 pages • 115 illus. • paper: 978-0-8093-3696-8 • e-book: 978-0-8093-3697-5
This richly illustrated compendium of twenty-two historic buildings in the Abraham Lincoln National Heritage Area includes houses, a hotel, and an art center, all of which are open to the public. Each site links today’s visitors with a place Lincoln lived, a home of a Lincoln friend or colleague, or a spot that illuminates Lincoln’s era and legacy in central
Illinois. Along with dozens of modern and historical photographs, entries contain explorations of historical connections to Lincoln and detailed information about exceptional features and artifacts. Complete with maps, this showcase of Illinois heritage is a handy guide for day trips, extended tours, or armchair adventures.
$16.95 • 218 pages • 21 illus. • paper: 978-0-8093-3859-7 • e-book: 978-0-8093-8277-4
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.
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.
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In April 1831, on a flatboat grounded on the Rutledge milldam below the town of New Salem, Abraham Lincoln worked to pry the boat loose, directed the crew, and ran into the village to borrow an augur to bore a hole in the end hanging over the dam, causing the water to drain and the boat to float free. Seventeen years later, while traveling home from a round of political speeches, Lincoln witnessed another similar occurrence. For the rest of his journey, he considered how to construct a device to free stranded boats from shallow waters.
In this first thorough examination of Abraham Lincoln’s mechanical mind, Jason Emerson brings forth the complete story of Lincoln’s invention and patent as more than mere historical footnote.
Emerson shows how, when, where, and why Lincoln developed his invention; how his penchant for inven tions and innovation was part of his larger political belief in internal improvements and free labor prin ciples; how his interest in the topic led him to try his hand at scholarly lecturing; and how Lincoln, as president, encouraged and even contributed to the creation of new weapons for the Union during the Civil War.
Lincoln the Inventor delves into the ramifications of Lincoln’s intellectual curiosity and inventiveness, both as a civilian and as president, and consid ers how they allow a fresh insight into his overall character and contributed in no small way to his greatness.
$19.95, 118 pages, 12 illus.
Paper: 978-0-8093-3881-8
E-book: 978-0-8093-8671-0
Jason Emerson is a journalist and an independent historian who has been researching and writing about the Lincoln family for more than twenty-five years.
excellent series of compact books.
own all volumes and haven’t been disappointed by a single one of them.”
“Reading SIU Press’s Concise Lincoln Library offers something for every thirst. Deep drinkers and first-time students of the Civil War and Lincoln studies will come back for more, and this series will more than fill the glass.”
—Tom Peet, author of Reading Lincoln—William Furry, executive director, Illinois State Historical Society
Thomas F. Curran
$26.50 • 274 pages • 18 illus. • paper: 978-0-8093-3803-0 • e-book: 978-0-8093-3804-7
During the American Civil War, more than four hundred women were arrested and imprisoned by the Union Army in the St. Louis area. The majority of these women 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, sabotaging, and, rarely, serving in the Confederate army. Historian Thomas F. Curran’s extensive research highlights for the first time the female Confederate prisoners in the St. Louis area, and his thoughtful analysis shows how their activities affected Federal military policy.
Edited by Mark Flotow
$26.50 • 320 pages • 12 illus. • paper: 978-0-8093-3763-7 • e-book: 978-0-8093-3764-4
A vital lifeline to home during the Civil War, the letters of soldiers to their families and friends remain a treasure for those seeking to connect with and understand the most turbulent period of American history. Rather than focus on the experiences of a few witnesses, this impressively researched book documents 165 Illinois Civil War soldiers’ and sailors’ lives through the lens of their personal letters. Editor Mark Flotow chose a variety of letter writers who hailed from counties throughout the state, served in
different branches of the military at different ranks, and represented the gamut of social experiences and war outcomes.
Flotow includes brief biographies for each soldier quoted in the book, weaves historical context and analysis with the letters, and organizes them by topic. Thus, intimate details cited in individual letters reveal their significance for those who lived and shaped this tumultuous era. The result is not only insightful history but also compelling reading.
Rhonda M. Kohl
$26.50 • 330 pages • 22 illus. • paper: 978-0-8093-3822-1 • e-book: 978-0-8093-3204-5
Cavalry units from Midwestern states remain largely absent from Civil War literature, and what little has been written largely overlooks the individual men who served. The Fifth Illinois Cavalry has thus remained obscure despite participating in some of the most important campaigns in Arkansas and Mississippi. In this pioneering examination of that understudied regi ment, Rhonda M. Kohl offers the only modern, comprehensive analysis of a southern Illinois regiment during the Civil War and combines well-documented military
history with a cultural analysis of the men who served in the Fifth Illinois.
The narrative pulls the Fifth Illinois out of historical oblivion, elucidating the highs and lows of the soldiers’ service as well as their changing attitudes toward war goals, religion, liberty, commanding generals, Copperheads, and alcoholism. By reconstructing the cultural context of Fifth Illinois soldiers, Prairie Boys Go to War reveals how social and economic traditions can shape the wartime experience.
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Renowned for his skill, courage, and indom itability during the Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant is considered a model for outstanding American generalship. However, unlike most of his fellow officers, Grant came from humble Midwestern beginnings and experienced a number of professional failures before rising to military prominence.
Grant grew up on a farm on the Ohio frontier and reluctantly attended West Point, where he finished in the middle of his class. In his early army career, he was often underesti mated by his peers despite valiant service. After the Mexican War Grant’s “Hardscrabble” farm outside St. Louis failed, and when he decided to rejoin the U.S. army, he was given the unenviable command of a rowdy volunteer regiment, the 21st Illinois.
How did Grant—an average student, failed farmer, and common man—turn the 21st
Illinois into a showcase regiment and become a successful general? In this engaging analysis, Jack Hurst argues that Grant’s military brilliance stemmed not from his West Point education but rather from his roots in Ameri ca’s lower middle class and its commonsense values. His upbringing in the antebellum rural Midwest undergirded his military skill and helped him develop an innate humility, sense of justice, and ability to focus, leading him to form close relationships with his men.
Through a detailed account of Grant’s early years, Hurst explores how Grant’s modest start and experiences in the Mexican War prefigured his greatest military triumphs. His strategy to always move forward, win or lose, turned even his losses into essential elements of victory and characterized the aggressive, relentless approach that would ultimately win the Civil War and save the Union.
Jack Hurst is a Civil War historian and retired newspaperman. He is the author of four books, most recently Men of Fire: Grant, Forrest, and the Campaign That Decided the Civil War and Born to Battle: Grant and Forrest—Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga. Jack, who served as an army journalist, wrote for the Chicago Tribune, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Nashville Tennessean.
Read more about the World of Ulysses S. Grant at www.siupress.com/wusg.
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Engaging the Civil War, a series founded by the editors of the Emerging Civil War blog group, adopts the sensibility and accessi bility of public history while adhering to the standards of academic scholarship. To engage readers and bring them to a new under standing of America’s great story, series authors draw on insights they gained while working with the public—walking the ground where history happened at battlefields and historic sites, talking with visitors in museums, and educating students in classrooms.
With fresh perspectives, field-tested ideas, and in-depth research, volumes in the series connect readers with the story of the Civil War in ways that make history meaningful to them while underscor ing the continued relevance of the war, its causes, and its effects. All Americans can claim the Civil War as part of their history. This series, which was co-founded by Chris Mackowski and Kristopher D. White, helps them engage with it.
Read more at www.siupress.com/engagingcw
$29.50, 200 pages, 16 illustrations
Cloth: 978-0-8093-3783-5
E-book: 978-0-8093-3784-2
Civil War Campaigns in the West
The end of the Vicksburg Campaign and the forty-day siege
In the first anthology to examine the Vicksburg Campaign’s final phase, nine prominent historians and emerging scholars provide in-depth analysis of previously unexamined aspects of the historic siege.
Ranging in scope from military to social history, the contributors’ invitingly written essays examine the role of Grant’s staff, the critical contributions of African American troops to the Union Army of the Tennessee, both sides’ use of sharpshoot ers and soldiers’ opinions about them, unusual nighttime activities between the Union siege lines and Confederate defen sive positions, the use of West Point siege theory and the ingenuity of Midwestern
soldiers in mining tunnels under the city’s defenses, the horrific experiences of civil ians trapped in Vicksburg, the Louisiana soldier’s defense of Jackson amid the strains of piano music, and the effect of the campaign on Confederate soldiers from the Trans-Mississippi region.
Editors Steven E. Woodworth and Charles D. Grear, along with their contribu tors—Andrew S. Bledsoe, John J. Gaines, Martin J. Hershock, Richard H. Holloway, Justin S. Solonick, Scott L. Stabler, and Jonathan M. Steplyk—give a rare glimpse into the often overlooked operations at the end of the most important campaign of the Civil War.
Steven E. Woodworth, a professor of history at Texas Christian University, has authored, coauthored, or edited more than thirty books on the Civil War era. Charles D. Grear, a professor of history at Central Texas College, has written extensively on Texas and the Civil War. Together they coedit the Civil War Campaigns in the West series.
Read more at www.siupress.com/cwcw
