April 21, 1967, dawned cool and foggy in northern Illinois. It had been a tough winter and the cold had yet to fully retreat. In fact, it would snow again three days […]
Category: Illinois / regional
Throwbacklist Thursday: Call of the Mild
Until climate change renders snowball fights the exclusive preserve of those able to climb K2, May will remain the most welcome of months, for have mercy, it is spring. Natural history, […]
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 […]
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 […]
Q&A with Painting the Gospel author Kymberly Pinder
Kymberly N. Pinder is Dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of New Mexico. Her book Painting the Gospel: Black Public Art and Religion in Chicago explores the […]
Alan Harper’s blues odyssey
Alan Harper left his home in England in 1979 on a pilgrimage to find the blues. His journey led him to Chicago where he worked at a sandwich restaurant and […]
Burn days at Prairie Crossing
Our new release Prairie Crossing looks at a suburban Chicago housing development founded as an experiment to use access to nature as a means to challenge America’s failed culture of suburban sprawl. […]
The fate of Mr. Pitner
In the new UIP release The Dumville Letters, Anne M. Heinz and John P. Heinz bring us the antebellum-era correspondence of Ann Dumville and her daughters Hepzibah, Jemima, and Elizabeth, as well as their […]
Throwbacklist Thursday
Drink bothered the Founding Fathers. Not on a personal level, of course. John Adams drank a tankard of hard cider with his breakfast and George Washington went on many a bender. […]
“Uncle Honey” a family affair
Thousands of newspaper readers across North America are familiar with Alan Guebert’s family members. Since 1993, along with the agribusiness issues of the day, Guebert has sprinkled family memories into […]
Christmas in Illinois: Carol fail
Christmas in Illinois is one of our more popular titles of recent years. A fruitcake of prose bursting with stories, songs, good cheer, and recipes, Christmas in Illinois features contributions by Illinoisians […]
Chicago River Bridges wins Society for the History of Technology prize
Patrick McBriarty’s Chicago River Bridges has been selected as the winner of the 2015 Eugene S. Ferguson Prize, awarded biennially by the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT). The Ferguson […]