Fleeing debt, John Deere made his way from Vermont to Illinois with a dream: to earn big money making tools. The blacksmith settled in the charmingly-named Grand Detour, Illinois, and […]
Category: american history
Q&A with Taste of the Nation author Camille Bégin
Camille Bégin is a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Sensory Studies at Concordia University in Montreal. She answered some questions about her book Taste of […]
Sensing Chicago awarded by the Illinois State Historical Society
Sensing Chicago: Noisemakers, Strikebreakers, and Muckrakers by Adam Mack has been given an award for Superior Achievement by the Illinois State Historical Society. The awards committee noted, “This scholarly book […]
Throwbacklist Thursday: The Pitching Hour
For a boring sport, baseball sure produces a lot of interesting writing. Maybe because writers have a lot of time to think, take notes, nap, and so on waiting for […]
200 Years of Illinois: U.S. as in United States
“My family is American, and has been for generations, in all its branches, direct and collateral.” April 27 marks the 194th anniversary of the birth of Ulysses S. Grant, victor […]
Bumper crop
What does America need? You probably have a long list. It might even include “a good five-cent cigar.” What does America NOT need? More corn. We’re swimming in corn. South America is […]
Author honors at OAH
The Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting in Providence, Rhode Island, April 7-10, 2016 was a great opportunity for editors and staff from the Press to congregate with people in […]
Struggle for the Soul of the Postwar South awarded at OAH
Struggle for the Soul of the Postwar South: White Evangelical Protestants and Operation Dixie by Elizabeth Fones-Wolf and Ken Fones-Wolf has won the David Montgomery Award from the Organization of […]
5 reasons to visit us at OAH
If you are headed to the Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting in Providence, Rhode Island during April 7-9 there are a few things you’ll want to be on the […]
Q&A with the editors of Women, Work, and Worship in Lincoln’s Country
Ann Dumville and her daughters Jemima, Hephzibah, and Elizabeth were not history makers in the way we traditionally think of such figures. None of these women held high political office […]
Throwbacklist Thursday: Workin’ on the Railroad
Though another state calls itself the Crossroads of America, Illinois deserves the title as much as any of the Lower 48, for here the prairie gathers the railroads and interstates to […]
Q&A with Driven by Fear author Guenter Risse
Guenter B. Risse is a professor emeritus of the history of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He answered some questions about his book Driven by Fear: Epidemics and Isolation […]