Savoy. Champaign. Village (1956) two miles south of Champaign. Named for Princess Clotilde of the Alpine Duchy, the House of Savoy, who visited Illinois in 1861 with her husband, Prince […]
Illinois Place Name of the Day – Oct. 14, 2008
Lickskillet. Lickskillet is a popular (usually informal) place name, occurring at least a hundred times in the United States. The stories told to explain the name are remarkably similar, usually […]
Recent online attention
A variety of University of Illinois Press books have received online attention in recent weeks: –Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years, Volume 1: Made for America, 1890-1901 on […]
Illinois Place Name of the Day – Oct. 13, 2008
Golf. Cook. Village (1928). Named for the game of golf. The local story is that Albert J. Erling, president of the Milwaukee Road, would have the train stopped at this […]
“Dime Novel Desperadoes” profiled in the Chicago Tribune
John Hallwas’s new book Dime Novel Desperadoes: The Notorious Maxwell Brothers was featured in the Chicago Tribune‘s October 11, 2008, “Illinois Style” column. “No books had been written about them; in the […]
Just Landed: A bevy of new books
A handful of new books landed on my desk in the past few weeks: –Terrence Malick by Lloyd Michaels (October 20, 2008) –Health Culture in the Heartland, 1880-1980: An Oral History […]
Illinois Place Name of the Day – Oct. 10, 2008
Goofy Ridge. Mason. Nine miles northeast of Havana. The origin of the name is unknown. According to a local story, the name dates from the Prohibition era of the 1920s, […]
Illinois Place Name of the Day – Oct. 9, 2008
Wing. Livingston. Seven miles northeast of Fairbury. Founded in 1883 by a man named Byrd. According to a local story, there was already a Byrd in Illinois so there ought […]
The New York Review of Books praises “The Lincoln-Douglas Debates”
The October 23, 2008, issue of The New York Review of Books includes a dual review of Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America by Allen Guelzo and The […]
Illinois Place Name of the Day – Oct. 8, 2008
My hometown! Park Forest. Cook, Will. Founded in 1946 as a residential community for returning veterans of World War II by Carroll F. Sweet and American Community Builders. The name […]
David Wagoner featured on The Writer’s Almanac
“A Woman Feeding Gulls,” a poem from David Wagoner’s book Traveling Light: Collected and New Poems, was featured on the October 5, 2008, edition of Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac. David […]
Pilot program for e-textbooks
The University of Texas at Austin, in coordination with John Wiley & Sons, is testing an e-textbook program, reports today’s Inside Higher Ed. “Many observers, both in academe and in the publishing […]