5 comments about Moonlight in Duneland: The Illustrated Story of the Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad.

1. This is more an art history type of book than railroad history



2. A must-have coffee table book for anyone connected to N.W. Indiana. Living history in a medium long past.



3. "Moonlight in Duneland" is a wonderfully subtle exploration of a marriage between the golden age of advertising and twilight of passenger rail service in suburban Chicago and northwest Indiana.

   The Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad has served the region for about ninety years, but in the 1920s the once floundering commuter train became a sudden success due to the advertising campaign commissioned by new owner Samuel Insull.

   Intending to create a ridership for the line, the ad campaign showed sophisticated Chicagoans what wonderful scenery and activities waited for them a short ride east in Indiana. The lithographs reprinted on the pages of "Moonlight in Duneland" are wonderfully rendered in the style of such illustrators as Maxfield Parrish and the Prairie Deco artists of the day. Each poster illustrates one of the many activities in different seasons. One could see Notre Dame football in the fall; relax on the Lake Michigan beaches in the summer; or snow ski on the Dunes in winter. The pages are mainly full page reprints of the photos with just enough text in the front of the book for explanation.

   This book is very well made and the prints are very well reproduced. I recommend it to anyone, but fans of Art Deco design and railroad enthusiasts will enjoy it.




4. We will never see these lovely posters on the hoardings in Chicagoland or Northwestern Indiana, but this wonderful book does as much as is possible to capture the glory of that long-gone, pre-Depression advertising age. The articles are interesting to railway aficianados and help to put the artworks in their proper context, but the crowning glories of the book are the full-page reproductions of all the known surviving South Shore Line posters. Yes, it was a simpler time; and No, the artists were not on the forefront and fringes of experimentation. But the posters do not pretend to be anything other than what they are--railway advertising--and they are superb examples of that, comparing favorably with the contemporaneous works of the Big Four in Britain, who were themselves experiencing a Golden Age at the time. Now if only someone would do for North Shore Line posters what this book does for the Chicago, South Shore and South Bend Railway! Buy two copies: one for the shelf, and one to cannibalize for prints to frame. (I know, I know, the thought of cutting up a book was anathema to me at first, but the results were spectacular.)



5. Perhaps you have never ridden the South Shore, or even heard of it...this book will walk you down a nostalgic path of its history. The illustrations are beautiful and worthy of framing. Moonlight in Duneland would be a wonderful gift for anyone who has ever lived in the Michiana area, or dreams of doing so.

1 comments about George Magoon and the Down East Game War: History, Folklore, and the Law (Folklore and Society).

1. George Magoon may not be particularly well known outside of specific regions in Maine, but readers will recognize him as an embodiment of distinctive character types: folk hero, trickster, local character, and wisecracker. This highly readable book shows why Magoon and a number of similiar characters from backwoods Maine deserve greater consideration within the wider scope of American history. Ives first documents Magoon's life history through the actual stories told by relatives of Magoon and through conventional historical resources, and he also situates the biography within the context of Maine's social history, particularly as it pertains to the legislation and enforcement of wildlife protection policies over 100 years ago. Ives then presents his readers with vivid and often highly entertaining stories about Magoon, many of which still remain vibrant within the oral traditions of Down Easters. The book then discusses similiar stories about Wilbur Day and Calvin Graves, two other woodsmen who also ran afoul of the law as it was enforced by game wardens one hundred years ago. Ives completes the book with an insightful and well-argued conclusion that brings together the disparate stories and historical figures by showing how the narratives can be read in relation to wider patterns of social tension and cultural change that ensued after the passage of laws that restricted hunting and trapping. The various participants in the "game war" and the specific stories are interesting in and of themselves, but Ives masterfully demonstrates how the particular examples can be read to reveal a wider understanding of the social history of wildlife management in America.

5 comments about Steel Giants: Historic Images from the Calumet Regional Archives.

1. Beautifully composed, printed and bound. Photos of the two steel giants of Northwest Indiana in the early 20th century. Has a library style cover.



2. That vast amalgam of the steel industry that lined virtually the entire South Shore of Lake Michigan never ceased to amaze me as I flew over it on my many trips in and out of Chicago from the East Coast, and it was equally depressing to watch the slow demise and near disappearance of Big Steel over the last thirty years leaving what appears to be a vast alley of soot and rust. It never occurred to me that I would ever need to know more about the subject than my own personal observations noted above. That all changed when I was engaged to design an exhibit based on the Steel Industry on the Lake Michigan South Shore.
   The current meager supply of easily accessible information was vastly improved by the publication of "Steel Giants". This impressive photographic compilation of the now vanished industry puts in one place access to vast archives formerly easily available only to scholars and those willing to travel to Indiana. Due to the source material itself, it's not not the perfect compendium of the industry that might have been compiled by an independent eye. It is instead what the steel industry saw as important to note for reasons of publicity or record. That other book will have to be left to other enquiring industrial archaeologists yet to come. So take this book for what it is---a vast self-portrait of the Twentieth Century steel giants as they saw themselves. That said, it comprises a magnificent and beautifully produced corporate photographic record that you can actually hold in your hands and appreciate at a cost far less than a plane ticket.



3. I think anyone who has either worked, lived, or has a family member that worked at either Inland Steel or USS Gary Works must have this book. Very few words but lots of very interesting and previously unseen by many people in and or from the area. The adjacent areas to these two mills have come full circle. They both started as sand dunes and now are re-approaching that same state again. AS the Steel Industry in these areas have gone, so have the areas (cities). Again, this is a must for anyone from these areas. Besides many of my fathers pictures are in this book. Regardless IT'S A MUST.



4. The book provides an excellent pictorial presentation of the development of the Steel Industry in Northwest Indiana. It presents background information identifying the development of the communities during the subsequent construction of two of the largest steel producing facilities in the United States.



5. i bought this for my son because his father worked in the mills,and he is enjoying this book so much,if you're from Indiana or in any way connected to the steel mills this ia a great book to have.

3 comments about The Outlaws of Cave-in-Rock (Shawnee Classics).

1. This book tells the story of the outlaws of the early West (western Kentucky, southeastern Illinois, and Tennessee from around 1795 to 1820). These men were not the gun-toting, bank-robbing criminals of the Wild West but were highway robbers and river pirates who most often wielded knives and axes. They preyed on pioneers living in isolated cabins in the wilderness and on traders coming down the Ohio River on flatboats or traveling inland along wilderness trails.

   Most of these criminals at one time or another used Cave-in-Rock as their headquarters. This huge cave, on the Illinois side of the lower Ohio River, is about 85 miles below Evansville, Indiana.

   The most notorious of all the criminals of this time and place were the two Harpe brothers, who were said to kill men, women, and children simply to gratify a lust for cruelty. One story epitomizes the brutality of their exploits: Traveling through western Kentucky, the Harpes came to a cabin, where they found only a mother and her baby, the husband being off hunting. They asked to spend the night, and the next morning they asked the woman to prepare breakfast for them. She consented to do so but said that it would take her some time because her child was not well and she had no one to nurse it. The men then said that she should put the baby in its cradle and they would rock it while she cooked. After the woman had served their breakfast, she went to the cradle to see if the child was asleep, expressing some astonishment that her child should remain quiet for so long a time. She found the infant lying breathless, its throat cut from ear to ear.

   "Outlaws of Cave-in-Rock" was first published in 1923 and was recently reprinted by Southern Illinois University Press. Historians, amateur and professional, will value this book interesting for the light it sheds on a period of the nation's history that has received too little attention.




2. This book by a noted historian tells how river pirates and wilderness highwaymen (and women) preyed on westward travelers in the 1800s.
   
   As the country developed westward, a particular mix of men and women criminals practiced their arts at the moving edge of civilization and law. Whether traveling by land or river, many travelers passed through Southern Illinois during this time and had to deal with criminals whose practices were sometimes beyond imagination. A central player in this drama was the "Cave-in-Rock", a large cavern that opens appealingly upriver on the Ohio near the present day village and state park of the same name.
   
   While the cavern functioned as an Inn and Tavern that was a welcome sight to travelers, at times the proprietors served up meyhem and murder along with the grog and gruel. This was aptly shown in the movie How the West Was Won.
   
   The Outlaws of Cave-in-Rock focuses on the major criminal elements and their leaders that operated along the Ohio River near Cave-in-Rock and the nearby inlands of the Shawnee Hills. Mr. Rothert does an excelent job of distinguishing between documented and oral history and tells about the individuals as well as the events of interest. The blood lust and gold lust of some of the central figures is astounding and their resourcefulness in obtaining both is frightening.
   
   In showing the flavor of the dark side of humanity that plagued these westward travelers, The Outlaws of Cave-in-Rock is unmatched.



3. Very interesting, would have liked more factual records, but realize going back to Revolutionary times might
   be hard to cover.

5 comments about Chicago Then and Now (Compact) (Then & Now Thunder Bay).

1. I enjoyed this book. Some of the pictures do not compare well because they were taken at different angles or from a different side of the street. Nevertheless, this is a great book. I found lots of stuff to compare. Native Chicagoans, who take an interest in the city, will like it. I purchased it for my brother for Christmas...liked it so much I purchased one for myself.



2. Great pictures on every page of this wonderful book. Only Chicagoans will appreciate it however. The photos are large and grand, and the author has tried hard to recreate the original angle mostly. That's my only complaint. Lovely book.



3. This book has a relatively unusual format. A picture (often dating from before 1900) of a building or structure is shown on the left page, and a modern picture of the same building or structure is shown on the right facing page. A number of reviewers have complained about the fact that the comparative pictures were not usually taken from the same spot. I am unsure how easy it is to take a new picture of a structure from the exact location of a previous photo, at least without special technical assistance. In addition, the spot from which an old photo was taken may have been an empty lot which now contains a building--thus ruling out a new photo getting taken from the exact same spot as the old.
   
   Besides the familiar Chicago landmarks, this book contains some pictures of churches. I especially appreciated the photos of St. Ignatius Church and St. Stanislaus Kostka Church.



4. I received the Miami version of this book as a gift and decided to purchase the Chicago versions as gifts for my mom and mother-in law for Christmas. I haven't given them yet but of course I have read them. For any one who is interested in seeing architecture or neighborhoods as they look now and what they used to look like, it's a fascinating read. Just enough history is included as to not make the reading tedious. Also there are books of other major cities as well.



5. There's something about black and white photos that facinates me. I studied these pictures for hours, roving over each little detail. As a history lover, I found this book to be great.

5 comments about Bloody Williamson: A Chapter in American Lawlessness.

1. Williamsburg County had an unbelievable amount of violence, in both variety and magnitude, in such a short period of time. In less than fifty years this one county had labor wars, Ku Klux Klan wars, gang wars, and one of the worst feuds in American history. Paul Angle is a good writer, but that is only an added benefit. Reading the media accounts of these events would be fascinating enough. Anyone interested in a case study of a dysfunctional community should read this book.



2. While working near Marion, Illinois (Williamson County) in the winter of 2002 and spring of 2003 I was (at first) completely unaware of the history of the area. Finding that I was a history lover, a co-worker, native to the area, told me about "the troubles" and recommended this book. I quickly decided that Bloody Williamson was one of the better books I had ever read concerning this violent era in American history. While reading the book, I rode over many of the roads and visited as many of the old sites as I could find.



3. This is a true gem, which depicts the violent history of a rural southern county in Illinois. The author tells of organized labor, bootleggers, gangs and the KKK of the 1920s in Williamson County, Illinois. Angle writes in any easy format for most readers and his book is well indexed. I would highly recommend this book to all readers!
   
   Mike Koch, author of "The Kimes Gang."



4. If you are a history buff, you will almost certainly enjoy this book immensely as I did. It tells the incredible but little known story of one of the most violent chapters in U.S. history. In fact, some historians believe that the gangs of Williamson County were the most dangerous and violent gangs in U.S. History. Paul Angle does a wonderful job of telling this fascinating story which covers a period of about 50 years. I was particularly interested in it because my father lived through it. He lived in Marion, Illinois at the time and the Sheriff who plays a large part in the book was the father of his best friend. He also personally witnessed some of the things mentioned in the book. My father is 99 years old now and he still remembers it all clearly. But even without that personal connection to the story of Williamson County, I would have been just as fascinated.
   
   I was amazed when reading the review by Alan Mills. How could someone get the most basic facts presented in the book so wrong? He claims that the mine owner hired thugs who killed the miners when, in fact, the mine owner hired guards and non-union miners to work the mines and the union miners killed them! And the "thugs" did not hang around because they were dead! Also, Williamson is a county not a town. Another reviewer guessed that Alan had just read the back cover but he couldn't have even done that based on his "review."



5. In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, Williamson County, Illinois became a byword for lawlessness. The county first came to nationwide attention in the 1870s, when a bloody feud, comparable to the worst that the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee had to offer, wracked the area. Then in the 1920s, the town was beset by union and Ku Klux Klan violence to a shocking degree. Indeed, the rest of the country, and even the rest of the world was appalled at the violence, and the townspeople who condoned it.
   
   This is a wonderfully interesting book. The author does an excellent job of bringing bloody Williamson to life, and showing it in all its lack of glory. This tale of union murderers and KKK hoodlums (often the same people) is sure to shock you, and make you very glad that you didn't live then and there!
   
   I highly recommend this book!

5 comments about Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Blacks in the New World).

1. In my opinion this work looks at the civil rights movement in a way that all historians shoud take note of. Dittmer's in-depth bottom up look at the way movements happen allows a deeper understanding of the incredible struggles that local Mississippians went through for a few small steps toward racial equality. It also knocks the national leaders (JFK, LBJ, MLK) off the pedestals that mainstream history has placed under them and shows the truly peripheral role that they played in the struggle.



2. Much of our common knowledge of U.S. civil rights movement's history comes from books and films portraying the nationally known struggles of the 1950s and 1960s. This book tells a different story - the struggles of the largely African American activists who, working without the benefit of the national spotlight, sought to open up the closed society of Mississippi to equal treatment for its African American citizens. It was a tremendous and extremely dangerous task. Mississippi was the toughest nut to crack among the Southern states. It was the most impoverished state in the union, where subjugation of African Americans was strictly enforced through intimidation, violence, disenfranchisement, job firings and economic ruin. Any sympathetic whites who dared to even question Mississippi justice were financially ruined and all but run out of the state. In this seemingly impossible to change social, political, and economic climate, a movement of local Mississippi African Americans emerged, with the help of activists from other states, who challenged the situation head-on by attempting to empower African Americans through voter registration drives, by attempting to set up cooperatives in order to gain economic power, and through education. The emphasis was not so much on organizing for desegregation of public facilities as it was on changing the power structure of Mississippi, to enfranchise its African American citizens and gain for them political and economic justice. Working from the bottom up, these activists had few allies, were largely ignored by the national media, and faced life threatening dangers on a daily and nightly basis. Many were savagely beaten, shot at, and repeatedly jailed. Several were murdered. They persisted, working diligently and out of the spotlight. Local People details the successes and failures of these every day struggles, and by doing so, lifts this aspect of the movement from obscurity to its rightful place in history. Prof. Dittmer is a first-rate writer - this book is very hard to put down once you start reading it. What emerges is a portrait of some of the most courageous people in our nation's history, such as Fannie Lou Hamer, Amzie Moore, and Bob Moses, and the local people who responded to the activists efforts. Local People is essential reading for any true understanding of the civil rights movement.



3. Marvelous. Should be required reading for all college and university students.



4. This was required reading for a graduate course in American history.
   
   John Dittmer's Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi paints a portrait of one of the most horrendous acts committed in our nation's history. The torture and abuse the black population endured just to be able to vote was unimaginable. Black men from Mississippi fought for our country in World War II but they could not have a voice in who helped run our country. They remained disenfranchised in this state. White supremacy ran rampant in Mississippi for decades.
   
   Trying to keep blacks from voting in the 1940's made headlines in the Jackson Daily News which read: "DON'T TRY IT!": "Don't attempt to participate in the Democratic primaries anywhere in Mississippi on July 2nd* Staying away from the polls on that date will be the best way to prevent unhealthy and unhappy results." (2) Senator Theodore "The Man" Bilbo played a major role in what became known as the "reign of terror" in trying to keep blacks from voting. Although a complaint was filed with the US Senate committee to Investigate Campaign Expenditures claiming Bilbo had something to do with ostracizing blacks he denied all charges of wrongdoing and was exonerated.
   
   The state constitution had been set up in such a manner that made it almost impossible . for any black man or woman to be able to register to vote. The four main criteria were:
   
   1. Prevent them from registering in the first place
   2. Two year residency requirement
   3. Two dollar poll tax
   4. "Understanding clause" which stated that any prospective voter must be able to read any section of the constitution or as an alternative, be able to understand it when read to him, or to give" a reasonable interpretation of it". (6)
   
   The vast majority of white Mississippians believed blacks should not vote. For four decades blacks struggled against forces of white supremacy with limited success. Most of the' power coming from the "Delta Aristocracy" dominated the state politically and economically for almost half the century (10).
   
   Racial violence was a daily reality for blacks in Mississippi. The caste system that existed before World War II still lingered and remained well into the future, After the war black activism began. Efforts began to be made for voter registration. Organizations began to form in order to advance the black population into what should already be theirs, human rights. Many still held jobs associated with slavery. Jim Crow commanded the pace of life in Mississippi. "Keeping the Negro in his place" was the duty of every white citizen (20). The black vote was not progressing the way organizations like the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) wished it would. Three of the factors that accounted for the failure to register large numbers of black votes are as follows:
   
   1. Tactics of intimidation
   2. No on to vote for
   3. Registration campaigns centered on the small black middle class
   
   Organizations such as the NAACP and the RCNl (Regional Council of Negro leadership) were both working toward the same goal; however, their differences were more territorial than ideological. They had to remember that their common enemy was the same. Mississippi came to be in a class by itself. The philosophy of the white population came to be that it was "open season" on blacks. If any black man ever achieved anything or got
   ahead in any way white supremacy out ranked him every time. Voting remained the main objective for blacks for many years. They continued to have many obstacles in which to overcome in order to just get registered. The state kept the difficult tests in place and violence was EVERYWHERE.
   
   By the early 1960's outsiders began to infiltrate the state. Freedom rides began, college students began protesting in different ways, sit-ins and demonstrations started; and during this time President Kennedy's only goal was to avoid violence. Voter registration came to a standstill after the murder of Herbert Lee, a member of the Mississippi state legislature. His murder was sending a message to the black population which was standing up for your rights in southwest Mississippi could get you killed (109). Organizers came to the realization that no progress could be made unless someone was willing to die.
   
   The activist decide to go to the Delta which was the most oppressed and poor area of Mississippi. There they find that the poorest people are the most willing to act because they have nothing to lose. Violence follows them everywhere but patience begins to subside with the black population and they start to fight back.
   
   James Meredith applied to Ole Miss after serving in the military and enrolling in Jackson State in 1960. His main goal was to desegregate Ole Miss. After many appeals, Meredith was admitted and the governor, Ross Barnett, had been in secret negotiations with the Kennedy' son how to keep Ole Miss from becoming integrated. The Kennedy's had trusted Barnett to keep the peace with this matter; however, on September 30, 1962 the Ole Miss riot took place when Meredith entered Oxford with federal Marshalls. When it was over two men were dead and 160 marshals were injured (140).
   
   Hunger, illiteracy and voting were concerns that needed to be addressed immediately. The SNCC(Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee) forced the Kennedys to do what they did not want to do, to "be on somebody's side" (153). The black community became excited. They got involved. The Greenwood movement, as it was known, survived the repression it experienced and the SNCC workers returned to their projects once again. However, the federal indifference and the white narrow-mindedness did not put an end to the fight for civil rights. At the same time in Jackson they were getting ready for a campaign against segregated facilities and discriminatory employment practices. They were insisting on the use of courtesy titles, equality in hiring and promotion, and an end to Jim Crow practices (157). After gaining some momentum in their quest the NAACP decided to reverse their direction which is still unclear. In Jackson, the Kennedys' primary objective was to bring an end to violence, which meant getting black people off the streets. They preferred order to justice (169).
   
   Violence, hunger, and hatred continued to ensue throughout the state. Pastors of black churches finally opened their doors to organizations so they would have somewhere to meet. Voting rights were still a primary goal. With more organizations in the middle of things conflicting strategies became a problem. They all wanted the same end result but the ideologies were not the same. Therefore, they each had a different opinion on how things should be done.
   
   Willie Dillon a COFO (Council of Federated Organizations) participant and parent of children, who went to Freedom Schools, had his house bombed in McComb. The police blamed him and arrested him for operating a garage without a license. He pleaded guilty after intimidation and without the guidance of an attorney and was fired from his job. McComb's blacks were consistently bombed by the KKK, if the blacks were active. McComb's white leadership was silent. Black principals and ministers who had not been active in the COFO movement were bombed. Black residents went to the justice department, but to no avail. Eventually the government heard rumors of marshal law and white bombers were eventually arrested and the KKK terror stopped. The bombers were let off with a stern warning. With nationwide media watching, McComb desegregated for the cameras; but returned to the old way of life once the media was gone. Black activists decimated the Klan's authority and won some small battles; and some white moderate voices were beginning to be heard.
   
   In 1964 COFO emerged as a powerful force in the election by trying to get blacks registered and voting. COFO was expanding. Some people returned to school. CORE(Congress of Racial Equality) and SNCC had low morale and few activists signed up in 1964. Women were discriminated against in SNCC as secretaries when they were qualified for much more. The Freedom Democratic Party would be an independent force, the successor to both COFO and SNCC.
   
   Freedom Democrats contested the Mississippi elections of five House representatives. More than a third of the House membership voted to bar the Mississippi members. National publicity and lawyers came to Mississippi because of the contention. COFO and the NAACP could not agree on anything and were increasingly hostile towards each other. COFO was abolished and SNCC went under the FOP. SNCC activists were alienated from mainstream politics. White terror made it so blacks did not want to vote. Natchez was a town of the "Old South". Charles Evers emerged as that section of Mississippi's main leader and played the organizations against each other. The Natchez blacks demanded equality in the police force, government and business or the blacks would boycott white stores. FOP did not agree with Evers, but Evers won with popularity. He was cautious and did not march when the other organizations thought they should. Evers went against FOP thought and ended the boycott to white stores that had compromised. FOP was on the major decline, defeated in Natchez. FOP
   money was running tight. New strategies would have to be employed.
   
   In early April 1965 the Mississippi Freedom Labor Union (MFLU) and the Child Development Group of Mississippi (CDGM) were created to organize black farm and domestic workers in the Delta region. The MFLU efforts failed not only because the traditional hostility of white Mississippians toward all labor unions, but also because farm workers had no leverage to use against the planters. Efforts to form farmers cooperatives in the region barely made a dent in the problems of black unemployment and poverty. CDGM was one of the nation's pioneer Head Start programs, providing poor children with preschool training, medical care, and two hot meals a day. It also provided employment at decent wages for hundreds of local teachers and paraprofessionals at Head Start centers.
   
   On June 4, 1966, James Meredith began his 220 mile walk from Memphis to Mississippi's state capital of Jackson to challenge the fear that was still dominant among black Mississippians and to convince them it was now safe to register and vote in the Magnolia State. On the second day, Meredith was shot, but while he was recuperating leaders of the national civil rights organizations continued the march. During the first week of the Meredith march there were few white hecklers. Local officials were eager to avoid incidents of violence and the march itself had an informal and relaxed quality. That all changed during the final ten days with familiar tactics of repression and mob violence; but it also became more militant as the ideological and philosophical divisions among its leaders became more apparent (395 & 396). When the march ended anticlimactically on June 26th, and the national civil rights leadership left the state - fighting over who would pay the march's bills - Mississippi was still segregated, black poverty was still getting worse, and local black Mississippians were still left to pick up the pieces.
   
   SNCC as an organization had little impact on the Mississippi movement after 1966; it had become preoccupied with internal problems centering on the definition and implications of black power and it had voted to expel all whites from the organization in December 1966. The local people, who had been the backbone of the old COFO coalition and the Freedom Democratic Party (FOP), faced challenges from black and white political moderates. FOP leaders agreed that the 1967 state and local elections would make or break their party (410). In the face of urban race riots in the North, and calls for revolution among black nationalists, FOP continued to work within the political system and welcomed support from all people who identified with its theme of black empowerment. State legislative strategies conspired to dilute black voting strength(gerrymandering congressional districts, creating multimember legislative districts requiring at-large voting, and increased filing requirements for independent candidates); this, combined with black political infighting and white intimidation limited FOP's achievements (411-415).
   
   Recommended reading for anyone interested in American history, civil rights history.



5. John Dittmer's study of the Mississippi truly reaches the level of factual study that presents the reader with all the information needed to see the Mississippi civil rights movement on the ground. It provides the facts of the 1940's and 1950's, pointing out the 83,000 Mississippi African Americans who served in the armed forces in World War II and in those who returned to Mississippi as those who were important in no small part to the student civil rights movement that blossomed there in the 1960's.
   
   To study the Mississippi movement without reading Dittmer's work is to fail to get a true picture as to what happened there. Taken together with Charles Payne's I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Stuggle, one is able to understand the Mississippi student civil movement of the 1960's to a large degree.

5 comments about Division Street: America.

1. "Division Street: America" isn't the first title that would pop into most people's minds when they think of Terkel, but I think it should be. I'll admit, I'm totally biased being in Chicago, but maybe that's the best way to read this book.
   There is a lot of upheaval and suffering throughout the city due partly to the constantly changing demographics of the neighborhoods, and many of the ethnic pockets and pyschological ghettoes that Terkel talked to people in during 1967 were in the middle of those changes. From the near north area, tight in the protective grip of Mayor Daley to the old Eastern European neighborhoods of the north and west sides which would soon become almost purely Puerto Rican, Cuban and Mexican.
   You can really see firsthand, how stupid, how intelligent, how altruistic and how mean people can be in a big city. That's the best part of this whole book: you're left at every page feeling that something monumental is taking place in urban America while the interviews are happening. Civil rights, white flight, Latin immigration, the decline of the manual labor factory job, Viet Nam, etc.
   Reading this in 1967 must have been interesting, but knowing what we know about Chicago today and how it's still in a state of flux (and maybe always will be) is really a reason to go back. The problems, the people and the strange mix still exists throughout Division Street today; but thanks to Terkel, we have a little hindsight.



2. As I have done on other occasion when I am reviewing more than one work by an author I am using some of the same comments, where they are pertinent, here as I did in earlier reviews. In this series the first Studs Terkel book reviewed was that of his "The Good War": an Oral History of World War II.
   
   Strangely, as I found out about the recent death of long time pro-working class journalist and general truth-teller "Studs" Terkel I was just beginning to read his "The Good War", about the lives and experiences of, mainly, ordinary people during World War II in America and elsewhere, for review in this space. As with other authors once I get started I tend to like to review several works that are relevant to see where their work goes. In the present case the review, his first serious effort at plebian oral history, Division Street: America, despite the metaphorically nature of that title, focuses on a serves a narrower milieu, his "Sweet Home, Chicago" and more local concerns than his later works.
   
   Mainly, this oral history is Studs' effort to reflect on the lives of working people (circa 1970 here but the relevant points could be articulated, as well, in 2008) from Studs' own generation who survived that event, fought World War II and did or did not benefit from the fact of American military victory and world economic preeminence, including those blacks and mountain whites who made the internal migratory trek from the South to the North. Moreover, this book presents the first telltale signs that those defining events for that generation were not unalloyed gold. As channeled through the most important interviewee in this book, Frances Scala, who led an unsuccessful but important 1960's fight against indiscriminate "urban renewal" of her neighborhood (the old Hull House of Jane Addams fame area) Studs make his argument that the sense of social solidarity, in many cases virtually necessary for survival, was eroding.
   
   Studs includes other stories of those , including the lumpen proletarian extraordinaire Kid Pharaoh who will be met later in Hard Times and the atypical Chicago character who gladly joins the John Birch Society in order to assert his manhood, who do not easily fit into any of those patterns but who nevertheless have stories to tell. And grievances, just, unjust or whimsical, to spill.
   
   One thing that I noticed immediately after reading this book, and as is true of the majority of Terkel's interview books, is that he is not the dominant presence but is a rather light, if intensely interested, interloper in these stories. For better or worse the interviewees get to tell their stories, unchained. In this age of 24/7 media coverage with every half-baked journalist or wannabe interjecting his or her personality into somebody else's story this was, and is, rather refreshing. Of course this journalistic virtue does not mean that Studs did not have control over who got to tell their stories and who didn't to fit his preoccupations and sense of order. He has a point he wants to make and that is that although most "ordinary" people do not make the history books they certainly make history, if not always of their own accord or to their own liking. Again, kudos and adieu Studs.



3. I just reread this book as a kind of wake to Terkel after his passing. I first read it in my mid-twenties and was completely absorbed. Now, almost twenty years later, I've just finished it alongside Joseph P. Lash's "Franklin and Eleanor" and I'm fascinated by how topical both books seem as Obama prepares to take office amid economic catastrophe, internal homeland strife, and war. The '30s, the late '60s, and our times seem like stepping-stones in history, so similar in revolutionary content: forward-thinking, transformative and yet violent and painful. Yet the differences are clear, too. Depression-era policies focused just to establish social programs; civil rights had to wait 'til another day. That day emerged during the time covered by "Division Street," which reveals how far from black-and-white those issues were even to people who felt strongly about them. Time and again as I read I thought, this book was written forty years ago...some of these people must still be alive. What do they think now? And that question begged another: What will we think in forty years? If for no other questions than these, "Division Street" is abundantly worth reading. It's a true American classic--the voice of her people.



4. Division Street is Studs Terkel's attempt to make sense of Chicago. Terkel constructs Division Street in the "oral-history" style that he used in so many of his other works; specifically, he went out into Chicago, recorded a group of interviews with people who represented a cross section of 1960s Chicago, and then included verbatim quotes from his interviewees in Division Street.
   
   Perhaps the best part of the book is the candor with which Terkel's subjects speak. I am not certain how Terkel got his interview subjects to drop their guards, but it seems that no subject is taboo. After reading the book, you do have the feeling that you "know" each of the interviewees on a fairly-deep level.
   
   If I have a criticism of Division Street, it is that the book is something of a downer. Terkel's books focus on the disappointments and frustrations of life. In Division Street he is particularly concerned with race relations and The Bomb. Though I liked the book, prospective readers should be aware that it is by no means uplifting.
   
   Each reader will come away with a feeling that he or she knows something of Chicago. In the end, Terkel leaves the conclusions up to the reader. I suspect, therefore, that different readers will interpret Division Street in different ways. For those readers who want to learn something about Chicagoans, the effort will be worthwhile.



5. This early effort stands with the best oral histories by author/radio host Stud's Terkel. In the mid-1960's Terkel took his tape recorder and let dozens of ordinary Chicagoans open up. Showing our City's diversity and divisions, we hear from executives, laborers, teachers, factory hands, social workers, rich, poor, and middle-class. Many are white, others are black ("Negro") or Latino, and they range from young swingers, to stressed-out parents, to aged retirees. Nearly all offer engaging tales, views, and outlooks. Among the major issues are life in Chicago, work, racial tensions, Vietnam, worship, Martin Luther King, the Bomb, opportunity, and (President) Lyndon Johnson. Anton Faber describes tool-and-die making in The Kaiser's Germany and then Chicago after arriving in 1912. Eva Barnes recalls coal miners, teen marriages, and bootlegging in her small town, plus working in Chicago's once-vast stockyards. Janice Majewski and her colleagues describe teaching at Marshall High School, then as now one of our city's more troubled facilities. Luci Jefferson arrived seeking work in the Great Migration of Southern Blacks, while activist Florence Scala fought City Hall. Many support the elusive goal of racial reconciliation, others nervously sense the decline of the traditional factory economy (replaced by white-collar services). As with many later Terkel efforts, the interviewees lean more left than right, with definite strains of anti-establshment sentiment - even among some we'd labed as distinctly "establishment."
   
   Studs Terkel (1912-2008) made his mark by letting his subjects do the talking, and readers are better off for it. I'd have liked to hear from even more persons, plus those then fleeing to suburbia due to racial fears - what greater division existed both then and today? Still, this stellar book is as worth reading as many later Terkel efforts like HARD TIMES, WORKING, AMERICAN DREAMS, COMING OF AGE, etc.

5 comments about Chicago: A Biography.

1. Dominic Pacyga's book starts with the first colonial white men, Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet, who navigated the Chicago River in the early 17th century, and covers the early days of this settlement (whose name means little onions in the language of its pre-colonial natives). Chicago became a city on the Western border of the new world, facing several Indian tribes that were at times friendly, and at other times hostile.
   According to Pacyga, Chicago's boom came largely due to its location both as a frontier, therefore receiving the attention of the federal government that stationed Fort Dearborn on the mouth of the Chicago River, and as a port connecting the Atlantic to the Mississippi after the opening of the Erie Canal in New York, followed by the Illinois and Michigan Canal.
   With the natives moving further west, the frontier moved with them and federal attention declined. Yet Chicago kept on booming as a transportation hub, a role that America's third-largest city still plays until today thanks to its always busy O'Hare Airport.
   Pacyga argues that Chicago was to a great extent the "daughter of New York city." He highlights the international character of Chicago, and the history of its immigrant communities. Even though the book does not follow a strict chronological order, it generally flows from one decade to another.
   The book covers, extensively, Chicago during the civil war, and the boom it witnessed being away from the front, but still servicing the federal government's war needs. The book also covers the events leading to and the consequences of the fire of 1871, and that of 1874.
   It follows divisions amongst Chicagoans in the buildup to and during World War I, with German-Americans openly siding against the US government for entering the war on the side of Britain and France. After WWI, Chicago became the gangland - during prohibition - for the likes of Al Capone. Then like during the civil war and WWI, Chicago prospered once more during WWII by servicing the government's war needs.
   After each war, Chicago's economy would slow down, pushing the city's mayors to look to Washington for assistance: Enter Mayor Richard Daley the father, whose political machine left a mark on the city and its political culture and who succeeded in nation-wide winning attention for the city. After the death of the strong Daley, who served as mayor between the mid 50s and mid 70s, divisions marred Chicago's politics to the extent that it was called "Beirut on the Lake," after the civil-war-battered capital of Lebanon.
   Chicago saw the election of the first woman mayor, Jane Byrne, in 1979, and the first African-American mayor Howard Washington in 1983. In 1989, Richard Daley, the son of the legendary Daley, became mayor, a post that he occupies until today.
   The book is a very entertaining read and has a lot of priceless old pictures. However, a few drawbacks should be noted.
   First, Pacyga exhausts topics that might be of interest to him alone, such as the history of the labor movement in Chicago. This topic could have been covered in a briefer manner. Second, Pacyga also covers the history of construction of Chicago's neighborhoods in a manner that might be interesting to Chicagoans only. Third, the book sometimes reads like a chronicle, whereas as a historian, Pacyga should have been more selective and briefer. Fourth, it reads like a propaganda leaflet when the author prints his own wishes that Chicago win its bid to host Olympics, which Chicago actually lost. Such piece of information cannot possibly be part of history as it was still pending when the book went to print.
   Overall, the book is a very good scholarly work and one wish there were many of its kind covering more American cities.



2. I read a lot of history and will be in Chicago in July. So, naturally, I went searching for a book to give me a grounding on what makes the city special, hoping to get a feel for back story, neighborhoods and people. This dull, overly scholarly tomb is a difficult read with little juicy detail to hold my interest. Worst of all, it doesn't motivate me to get excited about going to Chicago. This is an expensive book, but doesn't deliver. So, I'm looking for more interesting reads.



3. $19.25 for the Kindle edition. Nope. I wont pay that much for any Kindle book. Wanted to read this, but will have to go to the Library.



4. This book is largely a synthesis of previous literature on Chicago, which is not in itself a problem. What IS a problem is the fact that the author has failed to incorporate almost anything written within the last decade or so. This is a major weakness that limits the value of the book for anyone who is familiar with Chicago history.



5. I agree with the other reviewer who commented on the book not being current in its use of the recent literature on Chicago. I was shocked at how many important books recently written about Chicago that Pacyga has overlooked. This book is alright as a very basic guide to Chicago history, but the author misses every opportunity to enrich and complicate the story. Why no use of such fine new books on Chicago by authors like Adam Green, Sudhir Venkatesh, Nicholas De Genova, Ana Ramos-Zayas, Eric Klinenberg, Andrew Diamond, Richard Lloyd, Chad Heap, Mary Patillo, etc.? Granted these are academic studies and Pacyga seems to want to attract a more general audience, but their insights would have made this a much better book.

5 comments about Twenty Years at Hull-House (Signet Classics).

1. I enjoy reading about strong women with great vision. I also enjoy this particular period in history, so this was a perfect match for me. I would love to have been part of the Plato club, or study cooking, or sewing, or heard concerts throughout the week. I sometimes think we have so much going on in our lives right now that we don't take the time to slow down and cherish the simple things. This book did that for me. It made me want to study and focus on things. I know we have tons of technology available to us, but I wish we would still discuss philosophy, and I wish more people would read - I mean, really read. Not just the top twenty things out there. But times are different...



2. I am doing a History Fair project on the Hull House. I thought that I would just be quickly skimming over the book, but in fact i really enjoyed it and I ended up reading with a lot of intrest.



3. In 1911 Addams helped found the National Foundation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers, and she was its first president. She was also a leader in women's suffrage and pacifist movements. In 1915 she helped found the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. She received the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize (shared with American educator Nicholas Murray Butler).
   
   The Hull House could boast a group of about 2,000 people a week. It had facilities including: a night school for adults, kindergarten classes, clubs for older children, a public kitchen, an art gallery, a coffeehouse, a gymnasium, a girls club, a swimming pool, a book bindery, a music school, a drama group, a library, and labor related divisions.
   
   The Hull House also served as a women's institution of sociology and Addams was a friend and colleague to the early men of the Chicago School of Sociology influencing their social thought of the time through her work in applied sociology, which became defined as social work by academic sociologists of the time. Addams did not, however, consider herself a social worker. She co-authored the Hull-House Maps and Papers in 1893 that came to define the interests and methodologies of Chicago Sociology. She worked with George H. Mead on social reform issues including women's rights and the 1910 Garment Workers' Strike. Addams combined the central concepts of symbolic interactionism with the theories of cultural feminism and pragmatism to form her sociological ideas.



4. Along with Addams herself, "Twenty Years At Hull-House" inspired generations of US social and political activists. For decades a Hull House sojourn, or at least a visit, was virtually a pilgrimage for all kinds of progressive reformers. Jane Addams came from a conventional Middle American milieu, but was radicalized by seeing the ravages of the Industrial Revolution both in Britain and Chicago. This timeless memoir of the years 1889-1909 documents her wide-ranging concerns, embracing public health, pacifism and feminism as well as philanthropy, working-class education and poverty alleviation. Nationalist hysteria damaged Addams's reputation as a result of her antiwar stance during World War I, but it recovered enough for her to win the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize. Students had mixed views of book and author. To some she is a revelation, but others see her as rather sanctimonious (a fair criticism to some extent). Her prose is accessible but a little archaic now, sometimes appearing flowery or pompous, which deters some readers. While I respect and admire Addams, I waited in vain for the epiphany felt by thousands inspired by her life's work. People who find their own way to "Hull-House" will probably appreciate her more than those required to read her book---but such unsought exposure lies at the heart of liberal education, and brings many rewards.



5. A well written book but a littany of "look at what I did for the less fortunate" Jane Adams clearly brings out the fact that she was of the upper class and so much better than those she sought to help. Her goal it seems was to bring high society upper middle class values to the poor. She rarely talks about others who had to be involved. If it did not include her she was not interested in reporting. She also failed to show that she actually helped anyone better thier lives. She just crows about how she brought literature and art to the poor masses.