Progressive Era activist and reformer Fannie Barrier Williams was one of the most prominent educated African American women of her generation. A new effort to honor the woman who was a prominent spokesperson […]
Category: american history
“Serious crimes” keep Corrupt Illinois figure in prison
Inmate No. 40892-424, better known as former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, had hoped to he would be able to return home early. Those hopes were dashed by a the federal […]
Throwbacklist Thursday: Welcome to the Machine
With robots and other thinking devices prepared to replace us in about eight days, we thought it time to curry favor by highlighting UIP titles that engage the dilemmas and […]
Release Party: Indians Illustrated
In the second half of the nineteenth century, Americans swarmed to take in a raft of new illustrated journals and papers. Engravings and drawings of “buckskinned braves” and “Indian princesses” […]
Happy birthday, Eugene Kinckle Jones
Social activist and influential executive secretary of the National Urban League Eugene Kinckle Jones was born on July 30, 1885. Felix L. Armfield‘s biography Eugene Kinckle Jones: The National Urban League […]
Hillary the Hermit Crab
One of the pleasures of reading Hillary Clinton in the News is the trip back to yesteryear to see the freaks and embarrassments who made up the American media’s infotainment […]
Release Party: Immigrant Identity and the Politics of Citizenship
The latest e-book in our trendsetting Common Threads series, Immigrant Identity and the Politics of Citizenship draws on decades of scholarship to provide the context for current discussions about immigration, a topic of national […]
The Socialist Mayor and the Industrialist
Frank Zeidler transformed Milwaukee during his three terms as mayor of the Wisconsin city. However, the kind of change that Zeidler, a member of the Socialist Party of America, brought […]
200 Years of Illinois: Follow that Bison
On July 15, 1805, William Rector undertook an important, if arduous, task. By government order, he was to survey the Buffalo Trace, also known as the Vincennes Trace, a makeshift […]
Q&A with Spider Web author Nick Fischer
Nick Fischer is Adjunct Research Fellow of the School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies at Monash University, Melbourne. He answered some questions about his book Spider Web: The Birth of American Anticommunism. […]
Release Party: Free Spirits
Often dismissed as a nineteenth-century curiosity, spiritualism in fact influenced the radical social and political movements of its time. Believers filled the ranks of the Free Democrats, agitated for land […]
Throwbacklist Thursday: Goils Were Goils and Men Were Men
Generally considered a bummer of epic proportions, the Great Depression nonetheless inspired a measure of nostalgia. Americans looked back to a simpler time, of lives unencumbered by food, employment, homes, […]