The Annals of Iowa

Review of: "The Relentless Business of Treaties: How Indigenous Land Became U.S. Property," by Martin Case

Nichols, David A

87 
Book Reviews and Notices 
The Relentless Business of Treaties: How Indigenous Land Became U.S. Prop-
erty, by Martin Case. Saint Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 
2018. 215 pp. Sidebars, notes, bibliography, index. $17.95 paperback. 
Reviewer David A. Nichols is professor of history at Indiana State University. 
He is the author of Peoples of the Inland Sea: Native Americans and Newcomers 
in the Great Lakes Region, 1600–1870 (2018) and Engines of Diplomacy: Indian 
Trading Factories and the Negotiation of American Empire (2016). 
Francis Paul Prucha, the dean of U.S. Indian policy historians, once re-
ferred to American Indian treaties as “a political anomaly.” When one 
looks at these agreements in an international context, it becomes clear 
that he had a point. From the eighteenth century to the twentieth, 
European settler societies rarely used this formal legal device to extract 
land cessions from indigenous peoples. Colonial officials in Australia 
signed no treaties with Aboriginal nations, New Zealanders made only 
one with the Maoris, Boers in South Africa concluded about half a 
dozen treaty-like agreements with their African neighbors, and officials 
in Canada negotiated a couple of dozen accords with First Nations 
there. The United States was the great exception: its officials signed 
nearly 400 treaties with American Indians between 1778 and 1871. The 
sheer scope of American treaty making, at a time when other empires 
considered indigenous treaties obsolescent, demands some explanation, 
some answer to the question, “Why?” 
 Martin Case thinks that the best way to explain the why of treaties 
is to start with the who of them. He has spent the past decade pursuing 
what he calls the Treaty Signers Project, an effort to identify and classify 
all of the 2,300 men who signed treaties with American Indians on be-
half of the United States. Those signatories did not make laws or write 
high-level policy directives, but they did directly negotiate with, cajole, 
bribe, and threaten the Indian chiefs and councilors who signed treaties 
on their nations’ behalf. They also drafted or significantly modified the 
documents that the U.S. Senate eventually ratified. They effectively 
served as the foot soldiers of federal policy and American Indian dis-
possession. Some were actual soldiers, or rather U.S. Army officers who 
had once fought alongside or against their indigenous counterparts. 
The majority of commissioners (75 percent) were private traders, men 
who had both business and family relationships with the Native peo-
ples whose lands the United States sought. They themselves frequently 
benefited from treaty clauses that gave them individual land grants or 
set aside annuity money to pay Indians’ commercial debts. Traders and 
88      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
army officers also exploited their personal knowledge of the territories 
that Native Americans ceded, using that knowledge and their own cap-
ital to speculate in newly ceded lands or market their resources: timber, 
mines, mill seats, railroad thoroughfares. Henry Dodge, for example, a 
militia officer who negotiated Sauk and Meskwaki land cessions (in-
cluding eastern Iowa), made part of his fortune as a lead miner in those 
nations’ old homeland.  
 Land cession treaties thus had almost magical properties: they 
helped transform fur traders and down-at-the-heels officers into wealthy 
real-estate tycoons, mining barons, bankers, and financiers. With wealth 
came a desire for respectability, which some treaty signatories manu-
factured by founding state historical societies and writing histories. 
They cast themselves as heroic champions of Manifest Destiny and de-
scribed the Native Americans they impoverished and displaced as ata-
visms, doomed to retreat before the advancing fire of white civilization. 
Their self-serving narrative of American land acquisition became the 
dominant one in the United States until the late twentieth century. 
 Case’s database on this giant pack of land pirates remains a work 
in progress, but within the pages of Relentless Business the author gives 
us more than enough names, professions, and personal details to sup-
port his conclusions. Like all good craftworkers, Case defines and justi-
fies his book as much by what he leaves out as by what he includes. 
Preferring to start a conversation rather than join a pre-existing one, he 
does not engage much with prior scholarship on American Indian trea-
ties, resting his study’s significance instead on the scholarly spadework 
that went into it. He also moves to the background the 8,300 American 
Indian men who signed or marked treaties on their peoples’ behalf. That 
is a justifiable position, since those signatories belonged to dozens of 
different nations with different agendas, whereas the American cohort 
represented a single nation-state and a coherent set of interests and were, 
despite their numbers, a group with strong interpersonal connections. 
Indeed, as the author notes, “at least one-third” of the U.S. signatories 
“were related by blood or marriage to other treaty signers” (102). That 
some of these marital and blood alliances actually ran through Amer-
ican Indian families, a point Case mentions briefly (109), suggests one 
path that later scholars might follow if they choose to analyze the larger 
and more diffuse group of American Indian treaty signatories—namely, 
they can look at the family connections that treaty commissioners used 
to win their Indian counterparts’ trust and that those counterparts 
used to share resistance strategies with leaders in other nations, or (as 
the Meskwakis did in Iowa) recruit white allies to their struggle to retain 
their homelands.  


English

The Relentless Business of Treaties: How Indigenous Land Became U.S. Property

Review of: "Walking Home Ground: In the Footsteps of Muir, Leopold, and Derleth," by Robert Root

Dean, Thomas K

Book Reviews and Notices      111 
methods and consumer habits, and the place of such phenomena within 
global patterns of trade and consumption. Some connections are sug-
gested, but few receive sustained analysis, leaving readers with an 
impression of American soy as a quirky sideshow, an impression anti-
thetical to soy’s pervasive reach across the countryside, into diets, and 
around the world.  
 Magic Bean succeeds on several levels. Most importantly, Roth pulls 
soy from obscurity and places it center stage. Historians have paid soy 
strikingly little heed, and this study does critical work in rectifying that 
oversight. To do so, Roth has admirably woven many different threads 
into a single piece, making space for discussion of technological inno-
vations, environmental concerns, commodity price fluctuations, federal 
and state soy promotional schemes, debates about GMOs and the 
nutritional value of soy, and biographical sketches of business leaders. 
Readers will enjoy Roth’s compelling presentation of his actors and the 
consistent inclusion of the variegated perspectives and hopes they 
brought to their work with soy. While consistent with Roth’s emphasis 
on consumption, among the voices that are less perceptible in Magic 
Bean are those of the farmers who took up soybean cultivation; there are 
surely important insights, experiences, and contributions to be found in 
their stories as well. Magic Bean is an enjoyable read, and anyone inter-
ested in the cultures, science, and economics of American foodways will 
find much of interest between its covers. 
 
 
Walking Home Ground: In the Footsteps of Muir, Leopold, and Derleth, by 
Robert Root. Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2017. xv, 250 
pp. Illustrations, bibliography, index. $22.95 hardcover and paperback. 
Reviewer Thomas K. Dean is senior presidential writer/editor and adjunct 
assistant professor at the University of Iowa. His extensive writings about 
the importance of place include Under a Midland Sky (2008). 
A central question of what is sometimes called “place studies” is how 
one becomes as deeply connected to place as possible. Robert Root pro-
poses that physical connection is essential: thus his project of “walking 
home ground” as he seeks to become a more intentional resident of the 
Wisconsin landscape he has moved to. Root does not merely hike the 
trails of his local environment, however. He chooses to make a deeper 
connection by retracing the footsteps of three essential writers of this 
land—John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and August Derleth—literally walk-
ing the same ground those figures trod and opening his informed 
112      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
awareness as much as possible. Following those expeditions, Root re-
counts his detailed, intentional hikes along Wisconsin’s Ice Age Trail 
and other areas of his new home of Waukesha County. 
 For the historian seeking information, the book’s greatest value 
comes from its rich account of the natural history of the region as well 
as the perspectives on Muir, Leopold, and Derleth. In well-written and 
sharp-eyed detail, Root effectively engages our attention through his 
personal observations of the land. Among the authors chosen—all 
whose Wisconsin locations were within about 30 miles of one another—
the most valuable information comes from the discussion of Derleth, 
the least-known figure and the one about whom less has been written. 
Readers may glean new insights into Muir if they are unfamiliar with his 
Wisconsin boyhood. Root’s explorations of Leopold’s Shack and envi-
rons provide engaging personal perspective, but he does not offer much 
new insight into this well-known and widely written-about figure. 
Regarding all the authors, though, Root draws perceptive distinctions 
between the land as the writers saw and lived on it and the contempo-
rary landscape Root traverses, contributing cogent observations on the 
human impact on the natural world over time. 
 Perhaps the book’s greatest contribution is an idea—that deep per-
sonal connection to a place and its natural history comes from attentive 
physical exploration combined with knowledge of its past, including its 
human chroniclers. One might argue by extension that personal explo-
ration of any historical site brings new understandings and insights as 
well. Even so, the book would benefit from a more systematic and de-
tailed discussion of exactly what “walking home ground” might entail. 
Although Root suggests much by his empirical example, his analysis of 
what he is doing is rather thin. Most of the book comprises minutely de-
tailed descriptions (sometimes to a fault) of the author’s hikes through 
the subject landscapes. He mostly just briefly asserts such general ideas 
as “being willing to learn what [nature] had to tell” (40), his need to 
“figure out where I was” (28), and “connecting to the land” or “home 
ground” (xiv, 143), seeking not to “simply dwell upon this terrain but 
truly inhabit it” (223). Merely uttering these goals does little to guide 
readers to a deeper understanding of what “dwelling in” or “inhabiting” 
a place might mean, or to provide theories or methodologies by which 
such ambitions can be achieved. Those seeking a new approach to 
understanding history and/or place—natural or otherwise—will likely 
come away with only a general notion about walking as a way to “con-
nect to place” rather than with unique insights into a deliberate practice.  
 Although Root’s overt purpose was likely not to explicate a detailed 
methodology or theory, the prospect is tantalizing. For historians and 
Book Reviews and Notices      113 
those interested in the practice of place, a deeper understanding of how 
to “figure out where I am” and what it means to “inhabit” a place in 
addition to the chronicles of Root’s attentive hikes, engaging as they are, 
would have been welcome. 
 
 
Awakening: How Gays and Lesbians Brought Marriage Equality to America, 
by Nathaniel Frank. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 2017. xii, 441 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. $35.00 hardcover. 
Reviewer Christopher Hommerding is an independent scholar. His article, 
“ ‘As Gay as Any Gypsy Caravan’: Grant Wood and the Queer Pastoral at 
the Stone City Art Colony” appeared in the Annals of Iowa (2015). 
Nathaniel Frank’s Awakening adds an interesting perspective to the 
growing body of work on the gay marriage movement in the United 
States. Frank sets out to tell the story of the fight for marriage equality 
from within the LGBTQ movement, arguing that “divisions within what 
we now call the LGBTQ movement shaped the quest for same-sex mar-
riage as much as, if not more than, clashes with social conservatives” (2). 
Using organizational documents, activist interviews, and personal rec-
ollections, Frank shows how intramovement politics shaped the speed, 
trajectory, and overall strategy of the fight for marriage equality. 
 In the first part of the text, Frank examines the broader sweep of 
twentieth-century LGBTQ history, showing how, in the 1970s and 
1980s, battles over sodomy laws and protections for people living with 
HIV and AIDS meant that the LGBTQ movement, which was largely 
not interested in marriage, began to shift from a negative view of the 
state to a positive one—that is, from a desire to push the government 
out of LGBTQ lives to a request for protection, aid, and recognition from 
government entities. This, Frank suggests, established a legal infra-
structure for the movement, including the formation of national LGBTQ 
organizations like Lambda Legal (1973), the Human Rights Campaign 
Fund (1980, later the Human Rights Campaign), and the Gay Rights 
Litigators’ Roundtable (1985).  
 The Roundtable is of particular interest to Frank, as its collection of 
lawyers represent for him the nucleus of what became the marriage 
equality movement. The remainder of the book explores the interplay 
between these lawyers and individuals he refers to as “accidental activ-
ists”—those who, starting with Hawaii in 1991, took legal action against 
the advice of movement lawyers and/or otherwise pressured the Round-
table and other organizations into action. In contrast to accidental activists, 
who often filed federal cases or advocated for immediate change, the 
Roundtable was skeptical of prioritizing the fight for marriage equality 


Walking Home Ground: In the Footsteps of Muir, Leopold, and Derleth

Review of: Born Criminal: Matilda Joslyn Gage, Radical Suffragist, by Angelica Shirley Carpenter

Egge, Sara

Book Reviews and Notices      407 
this rule comes when Carmichael discusses how the two sides reacted 
to defeat. In their letters home, Union soldiers displayed an ability to 
acknowledge their military failures while maintaining their belief that 
their cause would eventually prevail. Confederates, on the other hand, 
rarely admitted to a defeat, no matter how significant a setback they 
had experienced. Moreover, while Union soldiers could usually give 
their enemy grudging praise for their fighting prowess, up to the end 
of the war Confederates usually disparaged the martial skills of the Fed-
erals. Carmichael suggests that this may have stemmed from Southern 
white males having to preserve a sense of superiority over others that 
allowed them to justify their subjugation of people of color. 
 The War for the Common Soldier is a thought-provoking work, but it 
will undoubtedly fail to impress every Civil War enthusiast. Some, for 
example, will feel that any book that tells the story of only 20 Civil War 
soldiers cannot serve as a valid interpretation of “the common soldier.” 
Others—especially those who feel that Civil War historians often over-
look the vital contribution to the eventual Union victory played by Fed-
eral forces operating west of the Appalachians—may find fault with 
Carmichael’s choice to look only at soldiers who fought in the Eastern 
theater. Finally, even though by the end of the conflict the Army of the 
Potomac included thousands of immigrants and African Americans, 
none of their stories appear in The War for the Common Soldier. Still, Car-
michael deserves high marks for producing a thought-provoking book 
on the mental machinations of combatants caught up in our nation’s 
bloodiest conflict. One can only hope that similar in-depth analyses of 
those groups not included in his book will soon appear. 
  
 
Born Criminal: Matilda Joslyn Gage, Radical Suffragist, by Angelica Shirley 
Carpenter. Pierre: South Dakota Historical Society Press, 2018. xiv, 
284 pp. Maps, illustrations, family tree, notes, bibliography, appendix. 
$19.95 hardcover. 
Reviewer Sara Egge is Claude D. Pottinger Professor of History at Centre 
College. She is the author of Woman Suffrage and Citizenship in the Midwest, 
1870–1920 (2018). 
According to Angelica Shirley Carpenter, Matilda Joslyn Gage ought 
to have a marble bust in the U.S. Capitol alongside those of Susan B. 
Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. That trio worked diligently for 
woman suffrage, yet Anthony and Stanton receive praise as the primary 
national leaders of the nineteenth century. Yet, as Carpenter reveals, 
Gage was a principal figure whose work and legacy her so-called 
friends actively wrote out of history. Carpenter tackles the curious 
408      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
questions about why they did so in her biography of Gage titled Born 
Criminal: Matilda Joslyn Gage, Radical Suffragist.  
 The title is important as it signals two key tenets of Gage’s self-
identity. First, Gage argued that women had the same rights as crimi-
nals did. Their only offense was their birth as women. The notion of 
being born criminal made agitation for women’s rights an inherent part 
of her life; imprisonment was inescapable without concerted activism 
that swelled deep from her core. Gage thrived under attack, and she 
pursued the right to vote, among other causes, with an unrivaled zeal. 
Second, Gage was radical, a label that cost her historical immortality. 
Her radical indictment of the Christian church was especially noteworthy. 
In her early teens Gage rejected Christianity’s view that women were 
dependent on and subservient to men. Instead, she pursued spiritual-
ism and theosophy later in life. Her radicalism became both an essential 
part of her character and one of the major reasons why so few people 
know her story. Anthony in particular recognized that claiming her as 
central to the woman suffrage narrative was too dangerous, and she ac-
tively downplayed Gage’s contributions to the cause. As one of the co-
editors of the multivolume History of Woman Suffrage, Anthony heavily 
edited or cut entire sections that Gage had contributed. 
 Carpenter chose her subject wisely. Gage’s story, from growing up 
in a house on the Underground Railroad to her quest to become a doctor, 
which ultimately failed when no medical school would admit a woman, 
to her burst into public life at age 26 at the first women’s rights meeting 
in 1852, is remarkable. Gage also raised four children, served promi-
nently in the National Woman Suffrage Association, and created a 
public profile as a prolific writer and lecturer who believed fervently in 
women’s equality to men in all respects. When her adult children 
moved to Dakota Territory in the 1880s, Gage became a frequent visitor. 
Her family’s life reflected the lives of many white New Englanders who 
moved to the Midwest after the Civil War, and Carpenter does not 
cover up the difficulties her family faced. Economic misfortune, ill 
health, and racial inequalities are as central to Gage’s story as are her 
efforts to achieve rights for women. It is a compelling narrative for any-
one interested in understanding how people responded to the massive 
transformations that defined the nineteenth-century United States.  
 Carpenter’s aim was to write a compelling biographical narrative 
for young adult readers, and she accomplishes that task by employing 
lucid prose, including many helpful images, and dividing her story into 
27 easy-to-consume chapters. There are also sections with reader ques-
tions, suggested activities, and an author interview. High school stu-
dents or introductory-level undergraduate students would appreciate 
Book Reviews and Notices      409 
Carpenter’s tone and accessibility. Gage helped in her own way by leav-
ing a rich collection of attention-grabbing quotes. Carpenter’s appreci-
ation of Gage is apparent, and Born Criminal is both an interesting his-
torical account and a tribute to her unflappable spirit. 
 
 
Dakota in Exile: The Untold Stories of Captives in the Aftermath of the U.S.-
Dakota War, by Linda M. Clemmons. Iowa and the Midwest Experience 
Series. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2019. xvii, 260 pp. Map, 
illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $27.50 paperback. 
Reviewer Gwen N. Westerman is professor of English and Humanities at 
Minnesota State University, Mankato. She is a coauthor of Mni Sota Makoce: 
The Land of the Dakota (2012). 
Many works published about Dakota history concentrate on the 1862 war 
in Minnesota, often with minimal attention to its complicated causes 
and even less to the devastating effects on the Dakota people afterward. 
In Dakota in Exile, Linda Clemmons introduces multiple different points 
of view to broaden the analysis of these events through letters, news-
paper articles, and reports written by people during that time. What dis-
tinguishes her work is the inclusion of letters written by imprisoned and 
exiled Dakota men and women, including Caskedaŋ Robert Hopkins, 
who grew up reading and writing in his native Dakota language. A 
Christian convert, he taught other Dakota people to read and write and 
served as a church elder throughout his life. The historic and cultural 
legacy of Hopkins and his family is presented in the context of the 
broader impact of the U.S.-Dakota war on the history of Iowa and 
the Midwest. 
 Clemmons provides readers with context for events leading up to 
the war, including the exponential settlement of the state after the 1851 
treaty was signed with the Dakota bands: “In 1850, Minnesota had only 
157 farms; by 1860, that number had jumped to 18,081” (20). Although 
she rightly includes land loss and reservation confinement, corrupt offi-
cials, proselytizing missionaries, steamboat tourists, and limited food 
and supplies among the many factors affecting Dakota people, the au-
thor overlooks the years of drought, grasshopper and locust infesta-
tions, and financial woes that left not only Dakota families starving by 
1862, but also many of the newly established farmers in rural counties 
as well. (See Mary Lethert Wingerd, North Country: The Making of Min-
nesota [2012]). It is a colossal task to condense a complex history. The 
growing resentment of Minnesotans toward Dakota communities be-
fore the outbreak of war was, however, a major factor in the subsequent 
backlash against them, including the role of newspapers in fueling post-
war hysteria.  


Born Criminal: Matilda Joslyn Gage, Radical Suffragist

Review of: Mrs. Ambassador: The Life and Politics of Eugenie Anderson, by Mary Dupont

Delton, Jennifer

Book Reviews and Notices      419 
Two Homelands is a highly readable account of historian Odd Lovoll’s 
career, set against the backdrop of the twentieth-century Norwegian 
migrations. This is more than a memoir; the subtitle might well have 
been “a historian considers how his life fits into his work.” It gives a 
portrait of Norwegian and Norwegian American history in which the 
Lovoll family’s experience as immigrants and his own career provide 
the organizing framework. Beginning in 1946, Lovoll’s life and career 
took him back and forth from western Norway to America, notably the 
Pacific Northwest and Midwest.  
 The initial chapters set the stage for understanding the immigrant 
communities as well as the repatriates to Norway in their mid-century 
context (1930s and ’40s). The section on the Norwegian and Norwegian 
American experience of World War II is particularly engaging. The 
value of this section, and the memoir overall, is that it fills a need for 
historiography of more recent immigrant history; by contrast, much 
past Scandinavian immigration history has focused on the nineteenth 
century. 
 The direct connection with Iowa history is that the author’s research 
and professional contacts have frequently included Luther College in 
Decorah. Yet the broad impression a reader will gain from reading this 
memoir is to understand how highly interconnected ethnic groups like 
the Scandinavians have been across state lines. There is a fluidity in 
Lovoll’s account that demonstrates how his research brought him to all 
the major places in the Norwegian American community, giving him a 
holistic view of its parts. This St. Olaf College history professor was a 
significant ambassador to and for the Norwegian community, and the 
vastness of his network of professional relationships and friendships is 
on full display here.  
 
 
Mrs. Ambassador: The Life and Politics of Eugenie Anderson, by Mary Dupont. 
St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 2019. 290 pp. Illustrations, notes, 
bibliography, index. $22.95 paperback, $9.99 ebook. 
Reviewer Jennifer Delton is professor of history at Skidmore College. She 
is the author of Rethinking the 1950s: How Anticommunism and the Cold War 
Made America Liberal (2014) and Making Minnesota Liberal: Civil Rights and 
the Transformation of the Democratic Party (2002). 
Born in Adair, Iowa, Eugenie Moore Anderson went on to play a signif-
icant role in Minnesota politics, which led to her historic appointment as 
the first woman ambassador for the United States (to Denmark) in 1949. 
Committed to civil rights, human dignity, and democratic politics, An-
420      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
derson was also a fierce anticommunist, a founding member of Ameri-
cans for Democratic Action (ADA), and friend and adviser to Minnesota 
Senator and Vice-President Hubert Humphrey. She ran for the U.S. 
Senate in 1958 and also served the United States as diplomat to Bulgaria 
and the United Nations. This is her biography, written by her grand-
daughter Mary Dupont. Based on Anderson’s papers, oral histories, au-
thor interviews, and a thorough scouring of the historical literature on 
women and politics, this is a well-researched book that provides a solid 
historical context for understanding Anderson’s life and politics.  
 The author struggles (in a good way) with how to understand An-
derson’s “feminism” in the me-too age. Anderson was a mid–twentieth-
century liberal who downplayed her identity as a woman even as she 
was constrained by sex discrimination and gendered political norms 
that pinholed her as a “lady-politician.” In such a male-dominated world, 
downplaying gender and eschewing feminism was, as the author shows, 
a strategy in its own right, a ploy by women to get a seat at the political 
table; they were welcome as long as they weren’t too disruptive or too 
focused on women’s rights. Anderson was perfect in this role. Elegant 
and beautiful, she was smart, well read, and always impeccably attired. 
The press may have focused on what she wore because she was a 
woman, but maybe it was also because she was super-stylish. The fashion-
plate photographs are one of the best parts of the book. 
 Anderson’s manner was conservative. She came, after all, from a 
family of genteel Iowa Republicans before defecting to the Democratic-
Farmer-Labor Party (DFL). She detested the media’s tendency to por-
tray her as a simple housewife from Red Wing, Minnesota, but she al-
ways publicly affirmed her roles as mother and wife. (Indeed, it seems 
what she resented most was being typecast as a small-town midwest-
erner.) What is more perturbing to the author, however, is Anderson’s 
refusal in her later years to align herself with the second-wave feminism 
of the 1970s, especially since she was acutely aware (in private) of how 
gender discrimination frustrated her political ambitions. Like so many 
mid-century liberals, Anderson was turned off by the movements of the 
1960s and ’70s, even as she played a pioneering role in them. 
 What is most interesting about her story, however, is how very un-
conventional she really was, especially in terms of her own personal re-
lationships. I won’t go into detail, but let’s just say she wasn’t one to be 
tied to her husband’s side. Even before her political commitments took 
her away from family (and they did), she was given to traveling alone 
(that is, without her husband) and exploring the world. She was, in fact, 
the consummate liberal individualist, unbound by family ties and social 
expectations, a characteristic mostly available only to males at that time. 
Book Reviews and Notices      421 
She was not at all brainwashed by what Betty Friedan called “the femi-
nine mystique,” which was the puzzle her granddaughter set out to de-
cipher by writing this excellent book. 
 
 
Proxmire: Bulldog of the Senate, by Jonathan Kasparek. Madison: Wiscon-
sin Historical Society Press, 2019. 378 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. 
$28.95 hardcover. 
Reviewer Robert David Johnson is professor of history at Brooklyn College. 
His books include “All the Way with LBJ”: The 1964 Presidential Election (2009) 
and The Peace Progressives and American Foreign Relations (1995). 
In the post–civil rights era Senate, Wisconsin’s Gaylord Nelson and then 
Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold joined such Iowa senators as Dick Clark, 
John Culver, and Tom Harkin in championing an expanded welfare state 
and a foreign policy that promoted human rights. They also focused on 
otherwise ignored social, environmental, and good-government issues. 
 In Iowa, Harold Hughes previewed the liberalism exhibited by the 
state’s subsequent Democratic trio of senators. The pioneer of Wiscon-
sin’s postwar Democratic resurgence, however, sports a different legacy. 
By his career’s conclusion, William Proxmire was best known for his 
skepticism about government spending—whether on domestic pro-
grams or the military. His ideological tradition, all but extinguished in 
the modern Democratic Party, makes it seem inconceivable that Prox-
mire could even be nominated today. 
 Jonathan Kasparek’s fine study is the first comprehensive biog-
raphy of the Wisconsin senator. Although mostly based on published 
sources, especially material from the Wisconsin media, the book recon-
structs Proxmire’s fascinating career as a senator whose ethical ap-
proach to politics ensured that he “made a difference” (7). 
 Political observers might remember Proxmire for eschewing mod-
ern campaigning; in his final re-election bids (1976 and 1982), he had no 
staff, fundraising apparatus, or campaign ads. Yet the Proxmire of Bull-
dog of the Senate was an indefatigable campaigner who helped create the 
modern Wisconsin Democratic Party. Although he grew up in a Repub-
lican household, he admired FDR and drifted to the left while in grad-
uate school after World War II. Proxmire had scant interest in the acad-
emy, however. He applied for jobs in journalism, hoping to use his time 
as a reporter as a springboard to a political career. Wisconsin provided 
an appealing opportunity. An opening existed for the moribund Dem-
ocratic Party, given that the traditional ideological contest within the 
Republican Party had been extinguished when Joe McCarthy ousted 
Robert La Follette Jr. in the 1946 primary. Proxmire “quickly made a 


Mrs. Ambassador: The Life and Politics of Eugenie Anderson

Review of: Proxmire: Bulldog of the Senate, by Jonathan Kasparek

Johnson, Robert David

Book Reviews and Notices      421 
She was not at all brainwashed by what Betty Friedan called “the femi-
nine mystique,” which was the puzzle her granddaughter set out to de-
cipher by writing this excellent book. 
 
 
Proxmire: Bulldog of the Senate, by Jonathan Kasparek. Madison: Wiscon-
sin Historical Society Press, 2019. 378 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. 
$28.95 hardcover. 
Reviewer Robert David Johnson is professor of history at Brooklyn College. 
His books include “All the Way with LBJ”: The 1964 Presidential Election (2009) 
and The Peace Progressives and American Foreign Relations (1995). 
In the post–civil rights era Senate, Wisconsin’s Gaylord Nelson and then 
Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold joined such Iowa senators as Dick Clark, 
John Culver, and Tom Harkin in championing an expanded welfare state 
and a foreign policy that promoted human rights. They also focused on 
otherwise ignored social, environmental, and good-government issues. 
 In Iowa, Harold Hughes previewed the liberalism exhibited by the 
state’s subsequent Democratic trio of senators. The pioneer of Wiscon-
sin’s postwar Democratic resurgence, however, sports a different legacy. 
By his career’s conclusion, William Proxmire was best known for his 
skepticism about government spending—whether on domestic pro-
grams or the military. His ideological tradition, all but extinguished in 
the modern Democratic Party, makes it seem inconceivable that Prox-
mire could even be nominated today. 
 Jonathan Kasparek’s fine study is the first comprehensive biog-
raphy of the Wisconsin senator. Although mostly based on published 
sources, especially material from the Wisconsin media, the book recon-
structs Proxmire’s fascinating career as a senator whose ethical ap-
proach to politics ensured that he “made a difference” (7). 
 Political observers might remember Proxmire for eschewing mod-
ern campaigning; in his final re-election bids (1976 and 1982), he had no 
staff, fundraising apparatus, or campaign ads. Yet the Proxmire of Bull-
dog of the Senate was an indefatigable campaigner who helped create the 
modern Wisconsin Democratic Party. Although he grew up in a Repub-
lican household, he admired FDR and drifted to the left while in grad-
uate school after World War II. Proxmire had scant interest in the acad-
emy, however. He applied for jobs in journalism, hoping to use his time 
as a reporter as a springboard to a political career. Wisconsin provided 
an appealing opportunity. An opening existed for the moribund Dem-
ocratic Party, given that the traditional ideological contest within the 
Republican Party had been extinguished when Joe McCarthy ousted 
Robert La Follette Jr. in the 1946 primary. Proxmire “quickly made a 
422      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
name for himself as a liberal journalist,” and by the early 1950s em-
barked on a political career (28). He thrice received the Democratic gu-
bernatorial nomination—losing badly in 1952 but capturing 48 percent 
in both 1954 and 1956 (the best showing for a Democrat since 1932). 
When McCarthy’s death triggered a special Senate election, Proxmire 
ran and easily won. He had only one tough race—in 1964, when LBJ’s 
coattails probably saved him—for the remainder of his career. 
 In his early Senate career, Proxmire was an outspoken liberal Dem-
ocrat who distinguished himself supporting civil rights. He criticized 
Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson as insufficiently aggressive on civil 
rights and faulted Minority Leader Everett Dirksen’s efforts to get 
around the Supreme Court’s one-person/one-vote decisions. Although 
he initially supported the Vietnam War, this “senator of substance” 
(189) soon used his chairmanship of the Joint Economic Committee to 
challenge Pentagon spending. 
 As the 1970s progressed, however, Proxmire’s budget concerns led 
him to challenge first the foreign aid program and then wasteful do-
mestic spending, often putting him “at odds with his own party” (247). 
That effort, Kasparek contends, helped to establish Proxmire’s legacy, 
culminating in his famous Golden Fleece awards and his principled 
willingness to confront pork-barrel projects promoted by either party. 
 This is an admiring biography. Kasparek acknowledges but down-
plays the contradiction between Proxmire’s budget priorities and his 
championing of federal dairy supports. The book might have engaged 
more extensively with the question of what makes an effective senator—
a case could be made, for instance, that Gaylord Nelson was the more 
effective of the longtime Wisconsin duo. But these are quibbles about 
what will likely remain the definitive study of Proxmire’s life and career. 
 
 
When Republicans Were Progressive, by Dave Durenberger, with Lori 
Sturdevant. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2018. xx, 279 pp. 
Illustrations, notes, index. $19.95 paperback. 
Reviewer Gregory L. Schneider is professor of history at Emporia State 
University. He has written four books on the history of conservatism.  
Where have all the progressive (moderate) Republicans gone? It is a 
question former U.S. Senator Dave Durenberger attempts to address in 
his memoir/history of the Minnesota Independent Republican Party 
from its development in the 1930s to the end of Durenberger’s tenure as 
a senator in 1994. He has produced a very good analysis of Minnesota 
politics in this era but one that lacks the historical analysis to explain 
why progressivism is dead within the GOP. 


Proxmire: Bulldog of the Senate

Review of: The Girl in Building C: The True Story of a Teenage Tuberculosis Patient, edited by Mary Krugerud

Lykins, Lisa D.

Book Reviews and Notices      319 
a large, urban water works to monitor public health in the absence of 
state, federal, or regional oversight, particularly as it relates to the city 
of Des Moines. 
 
 
The Girl in Building C: The True Story of a Teenage Tuberculosis Patient, 
edited by Mary Krugerud. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 
2018. 227 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. $17.95 paperback. 
Reviewer Lisa D. Lykins is associate professor of history at Georgetown 
College. Her primary research interest is the history of tuberculosis sanatoria.  
Sixteen-year-old Marilyn Barnes entered Ah-Gwah-Ching sanatorium 
near Walker, Minnesota, in 1943. She had traveled hundreds of miles 
from her home, similar to the journey made by thousands before her, 
seeking treatment for mycobacterium tuberculosis (TB) infection prior to 
effective drug therapy. Marilyn would be one of the lucky sojourners; 
she was able to resume her life as a 19-year-old high school junior in 
1946 and lived to see her story published more than 70 years later. While 
at the sanatorium, she wrote more than 300 missives, which she donated 
to the Minnesota Historical Society in 2010. For The Girl in Building C, 
independent researcher Mary Krugerud excerpted the letters, arranged 
them chronologically within thematic chapters, and provided context 
“to illustrate the daily life of a sanatorium” (5). 
 The excerpts reveal that Marilyn’s interests were similar to those of 
other white, small-town, middle-class teenagers in the 1940s. She com-
ments on the war, listens to favorite radio programs, writes to her Child 
Life pen pals, asks her parents for money, has “parties” with her friends, 
and even primps to “dazzle” one of her “crushes” (87) among the pa-
tients. Her desire for normalcy is understandable; Marilyn was seriously 
ill and literally surrounded by death. During her three years at Ah-
Gwah-Ching 162 patients died, including both of her romantic interests. 
 Her letters reveal how the unfamiliar experience becomes normal 
and the commonplace becomes extraordinary. Marilyn’s references to 
procedures such as aspiration, artificial pneumothorax, and thoroco-
plasty seem almost casual. Patient deaths are sad but routine. On the 
other hand, she is jubilant when her doctor gives her permission to walk 
to the bathroom once daily. She titles the letter detailing this event “MY 
LUCKY DAY!!” and enthuses, “Oh gosh, it’s such a thrill. . . . I’m so happy 
I feel just like getting up and shouting” (141). She concludes the letter 
with reactions to the previous night’s news that World War II was over. 
Patients celebrated with an “‘illegal’ open house” and listened to “band 
music and patriotic programs on the radio” (142); her own victory day 
was still 13 months away. 
320      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
 This is Marilyn’s story, but it touches on issues social historians 
have explored through patient letters from other times and other sana-
toria: the limits of medical authority; institutional culture; ways that 
patients operate within and upon an institution; the effect of disease 
stigma on the social identity of an individual or group; the degree of 
boundary permeability between institution and outside world. Kru-
gerud does not address these issues explicitly, and the context and occa-
sional interpretation of Marilyn’s excerpts at times seem to be assumed 
knowledge rather than researched. That this book is not intended for an 
academic readership is evident from the seven endnotes, none of which 
reference the archival material or denote page location. The missing re-
search trail and lack of historiographical context notwithstanding, Mary 
Krugerud introduces an important source to which future scholars will 
add analysis. Ultimately, Marilyn Barnes’s letters are engaging, eliciting 
a vanished cultural and institutional era to be appreciated by generalists 
and specialists alike. 
 
 
Women against Abortion: Inside the Largest Moral Reform Movement of the 
Twentieth Century, by Karissa Haugeberg. Women, Gender, and Sexu-
ality in American History. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017. 
viii, 220 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $95 hardcover, 
$24.95 paperback. 
Reviewer Alicia Gutierrez-Romine is assistant professor of history at La Si-
erra University. She is the author of From Back Alley to the Border: Criminal 
Abortion in California, 1920–1969 (forthcoming). 
In Women Against Abortion, Karissa Haugeberg unearths the history of 
the pro-life movement from its beginnings in grassroots movements 
throughout the Midwest, and the women who made the movement 
possible. Haugeberg argues that while we may today associate aggres-
sive anti-abortion strategies with evangelical Protestant men, conservative 
white women developed these strategies as early as the 1960s, forming 
their own grassroots organizations—characterized by less formal struc-
tures and hierarchies—when national anti-abortion movements were too 
“slow-moving” or prioritized fetal rights over women’s interests (7).  
 Focusing on a number of high-profile women in the early anti-abor-
tion movement, including Marjory Mecklenburg, Dr. Mildred Jefferson, 
July Loesch, Joan Andrews, and Shelley Shannon, Haugeberg seeks to 
answer two questions: Why did these women participate in a move-
ment dedicated to ending abortion, and how did they find fulfillment 
and empowerment in this work? These women came to the anti-abortion 
movement through diverse avenues—religion, conservative ideologies, 


The Girl in Building C: The True Story of a Teenage Tuberculosis Patient

Review of: Naegele’s Guide to the Only Good Architecture in Iowa, by Daniel Naegele

Sadowsky, Laura

Naegele's Guide to the Only Good Architecture in Iowa

Review of: Radicals in the Heartland: The 1960s Student Protest Movement at the University of Illinois, by Michael V. Metz

Lieberman, Robbie

424      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
 One can lament, as Durenberger does, the decline of civility in pol-
itics. But his book does not adequately address the historical reasons for 
that change. Durenberger has axes to grind against conservatism, it 
seems, and wants to reclaim the mantle of progressivism for the GOP. 
But that label is now lost to the Left, and it is unlikely that the politics 
of consensus and cooperation will be returning anytime soon.  
 
 
Radicals in the Heartland: The 1960s Student Protest Movement at the Uni-
versity of Illinois, by Michael V. Metz. Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield: 
University of Illinois Press, 2019. xix, 269 pp. Timeline, map, illustra-
tions, notes, bibliography, index. $110 hardcover, $26.95 paperback. 
Reviewer Robbie Lieberman is professor of American Studies and chair of 
the Interdisciplinary Studies Department at Kennesaw State University. She 
is the author of Prairie Power:  Voices of 1960s Midwestern Student Protest (2004). 
Many Americans still think of the 1960s student movement as some-
thing that happened only at elite schools on the coasts and in the upper 
Midwest: Berkeley, Columbia, Ann Arbor, Madison. Michael Metz’s 
Radicals in the Heartland is a welcome addition to the literature, which 
needs more accounts of activism in the Midwest. Metz tells the important 
and little-known story of the movement at the University of Illinois at 
Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), in which he participated, and he tells it 
well. At the same time, his journalistic approach—“how and why, 
where and when this unlikely movement happened”—ignores historio-
graphical trends and debates, and he misses opportunities to highlight 
the book’s contributions to the voluminous literature on 1960s protest. 
 Metz tells a chronological story, 1960–1970, in a number of short 
chapters. He seems unaware of the concept of “the long sixties” that 
many scholars now take as their starting point. Instead, we get a rise- and-
fall arc, taking us back to the “declension” narrative of 1960s protest. That 
narrative, like Metz’s book, draws heavily on contemporary coverage of 
events and the accounts of (some) movement veterans to tell a story of 
how idealism and nonviolence gave way to frustration and senseless 
violence. Scholars have forcefully challenged this framework, not least 
because it privileges the perspective of white male leaders, with women 
and people of color appearing mainly as the movement starts to fragment 
and turn to more confrontational tactics. Perhaps inadvertently, then, 
Radicals in the Heartland continues the challenge to scholars to develop a 
more inclusive and integrated narrative of the student movement.  
 The Cold War context is critical for understanding the roots of sixties 
activism, and Metz wisely begins with the impact of anticommunism 
on the university’s flagship campus. The University of Illinois had the 
Book Reviews and Notices      425 
distinction of being singled out by state legislators in the 1947 Clabaugh 
Act, which prohibited the use of its resources for “any subversive, sedi-
tious, and un-American organization, or its representatives” (13). The 
act planted the seed for the student protest movement and made free 
speech a popular rallying point. In part one Metz sets up the conserva-
tive climate that helped spark the movement, and he gives us a good 
sense of the conflicting forces campus administrators had to face. 
 During “The Free Speech Era, 1965–67,” students at Illinois, as on 
other midwestern campuses, engaged in polite protests, formed broad 
coalitions, and tried out tactics such as vigils, sit-ins, and rallies. Metz 
explains that concerns about civil rights, student rights, and the Viet-
nam War overlapped, but he focuses on the rebellion against the 
Clabaugh Act and students’ success in “defanging” it, bringing a Com-
munist speaker to campus. 
 In part three, “The Vietnam War Era, 1967–69,” we learn about an 
anti–Dow Chemical sit-in, draft card burnings, and Project 500, the uni-
versity’s plan to bring in hundreds of black students in order to meet 
demands to make the student population more closely mirror that of 
the state. In the chapter called “Women Rising,” we also learn that 
UIUC elected its first female student body president in 1967—this is one 
of several places where it would have been helpful to see comparisons 
with other campuses. 
 In part four, “The Violent Time, 1969–70,” Metz suggests that the 
movement came to an end in a shower of violence, both nationally and 
locally. The Illinois campus was one of hundreds that shut down in the 
wake of the killings of four students by the National Guard at Kent 
State. Local concerns sparked protests as well, including Illiac IV, a 
supercomputer widely seen as part of the military-industrial complex, 
General Electric’s campus recruiting (GE was a Vietnam War defense 
contractor), and the police killing of a young black man, shot in the back 
behind his family home. An odd chapter called “Black and White 
Together” is not about black and white activists working together but 
about the way authorities lumped them together as repression increased.  
 The book ends with seemingly contradictory “lessons” we should 
take away from the student movement. The author claims that students 
won the struggle against the war, but “failed” at political revolution, 
bringing on the “unintended consequences” of an ongoing conservative 
reaction. Yet he also offers more nuanced ways to think about success 
and failure. If the sixties movement lives on in the shared memory of 
participants, then, in the words of a former Illinois activist, “The struggle 
continues . . . participation in the struggle is the most important thing.” 
As Metz concludes, “It can happen again” (230). 


Radicals in the Heartland: The 1960s Student Protest Movement at the University of Illinois

Review of: Let Us Make Men: The Twentieth-Century Black Press and a Manly Vision for Racial Advancement, by D’Weston Haywood

Hallstoos, Brian

314      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
America. We should all be wary of romanticizing a world “without res-
ervations,” lest we forget the terrible consequences of an era, not so long 
ago, when that dangerous rhetoric became reality.  
 
 
Let Us Make Men: The Twentieth-Century Black Press and a Manly Vision 
for Racial Advancement, by D’Weston Haywood. Chapel Hill: University 
of North Carolina Press, 2018. x, 340 pp. Notes, bibliography, index. 
$34.95 paperback. 
Reviewer Brian Hallstoos is associate professor of history at the University 
of Dubuque. His research and writing have focused on African American 
music, drama, and sports in the Midwest. 
On the cover of D’Weston Haywood’s Let Us Make Men appears a photo-
graph of three carefully groomed, impeccably attired young black men 
absorbed in reading. The image hints at the connections the author makes 
among print media, masculinity, and race leadership but belies his rig-
orous attention to seven central figures—Robert Abbott, W. E. B. Du Bois, 
Marcus Garvey, John Sengstacke, Robert F. Williams, Elijah Muhammad, 
and Malcolm X—who address these connections through the black press 
(that is, newspapers produced by and for African Americans). Relying 
heavily on recently digitized (thus easily searched) newspapers and 
four archival collections, Haywood argues that these black publishers 
addressed moments of racial crisis and change “in masculine terms, a 
lens they applied in their papers and intended to appeal to readers’ own 
gendered subjectivities in hopes that readers would embrace a proper 
black manhood for the benefit of the race” (6). 
 The five chapters trace the rise and decline of the mainstream black 
press and its related shift from crusading for African American civil 
rights to adopting a more cautious role as chroniclers of others’ efforts 
toward such progressive ends. In chapter one the author addresses the 
role Robert Abbott and W. E. B. Du Bois played in shaping black leader-
ship and masculinity through their highly influential newspapers dur-
ing the mass migration of African Americans from the rural South to 
northern cities around World War I. Abbott’s Chicago Defender receives 
greater attention than Du Bois’s The Crisis in demonstrating that “news-
papers could be effective tools in shaping black people’s social move-
ments and gender ideologies, as well as effective tools in helping black 
men assert a public voice and manly racial leadership” (56). The second 
chapter focuses on Marcus Garvey and his radical newspaper, Negro 
World, which capitalized on a flourishing, postwar black consciousness 
that gave rise to the Harlem Renaissance. In particular, Haywood ex-
amines how the black press first elevated and later condemned Garvey 
Book Reviews and Notices      315 
and how he tried to use masculinized rhetoric to overcome his critics, 
in particular Du Bois. Chapter three again focuses on the Chicago De-
fender, this time as Abbott passed his leadership of the paper on to his 
nephew John Sengstacke. Haywood explores Abbott’s attempts to shape 
Sengstacke into a man capable of navigating their newspaper through 
the Great Depression, how the elder man’s efforts conflicted with his 
cherished notion of the self-made man, and how the nephew accommo-
dated his uncle’s training before making the newspaper his own. The 
fourth chapter marks the important conservative shift of large-market 
black newspapers from crusaders to chroniclers by focusing on the 
militant activism and newspaper publishing of Robert F. Williams. As a 
working-class editor of a small-circulation newspaper in North Carolina, 
The Crusader, Williams “promoted an explicitly gendered advancement 
strategy that elevated a black manhood rooted in self-defense” (153), a 
stance the black press criticized or ignored in favor of Dr. Martin Luther 
King’s nonviolent approach. The final chapter explores how the news-
paper Muhammad Speaks promoted Nation of Islam leader Elijah Mu-
hammad’s agenda for racial advancement and the organization’s media 
campaign to display redeemed black manhood. Focusing on subscrip-
tion drives and salesmen, tensions between Muhammad and Malcolm 
X (who formed and later lost control of Muhammad Speaks), and the chal-
lenge television posed to newspapers in influencing African American 
communities, Haywood emphasizes the masculine rhetoric that shaped 
the rise of a radical black press. 
 Let Us Make Men covers new ground on the twentieth-century Afri-
can American struggle for civil rights to make important, well-crafted 
points about gender, race, and the media. Through sustained attention 
to how the black press shaped gender identity, the book offers new in-
sight on well-known figures such as Robert Abbott and Malcolm X and 
on the central role newspapers played in their leadership. Readers will 
find a series of lively, interconnected stories that draw on a rich array 
of sources (most intimately woven into the account on Sengstacke’s 
tutelage). The chapter on Marcus Garvey provides a provocative point 
of comparison with President Trump vis-à-vis his contentious relation-
ship with the media. Haywood’s two-chapter focus on the nationally 
influential Chicago Defender most obviously connects with Iowa history 
and provides a lens through which to consider the efforts of John L. 
Thompson and later James B. Morris in shaping black masculinity and 
male leadership through their Iowa Bystander. Scholarly attention to the 
way women received and responded to the masculinizing dynamics of 
this black newspaper out of Des Moines would push Haywood’s re-
search in a welcome and regionally specific direction. 


Let Us Make Men: The Twentieth-Century Black Press and a Manly Vision for Racial Advancement

Review of: "Crusader for Democracy: The Political Life of William Allen White," by Charles Delgadillo

Wells, Jeff

Book Reviews and Notices      223 
Twin Cities and made up of women of Swedish, Norwegian, and Dan-
ish descent, comprehended citizenship and suffrage through the lens of 
their experiences as immigrants. Focusing on just three counties limits 
our appreciation of the movement’s diversity in these three states and 
of the ways different groups of midwestern women understood and 
worked for political equality.  
 Despite these limitations of scope, Woman Suffrage and Citizenship 
in the Midwest offers valuable insight into midwestern women’s long, 
difficult struggle for the ballot and provides compelling analysis of 
what their suffrage activism can tell us about gender, citizenship, and 
national belonging. 
 
 
Crusader for Democracy: The Political Life of William Allen White, by 
Charles Delgadillo. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2018. vii, 315 
pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $34.95 hardcover. 
Reviewer Jeff Wells is associate professor of history at the University of 
Nebraska at Kearney. His current research focuses on the journalists of the 
Farmers’ Alliance and the People’s Party. 
William Allen White gained widespread attention with his 1896 anti-
Populist editorial, “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” He continued to 
influence national politics for more than four decades. Other biog-
raphers emphasize White’s midwestern values and relationship with 
his home town of Emporia, Kansas; in Crusader for Democracy Charles 
Delgadillo explores how White applied his regional small-town ideol-
ogy during his career as a national political figure. 
 Throughout the early twentieth century, White (1868–1944) was 
the voice of the midwestern middle class. He bought the Emporia Ga-
zette in 1896 but cultivated an audience far beyond Kansas as a writer 
for influential progressive magazines, as a novelist, and as a syndicated 
correspondent at major events such as the Versailles Peace Conference 
and the Washington Naval Conference. He broke from the influence 
of a political boss to become an independent voice for reform within 
the Republican Party, which dominated Kansas politics. He admired 
and befriended Theodore Roosevelt and forged relationships with his 
successors. His extensive international travel informed his commentary. 
In the Soviet Union, White observed that the Russians had exchanged 
liberty for security and peace. His tours of fascist countries convinced 
him that social justice was a national security issue. He was a liberal 
internationalist during the 1920s, when the GOP was defined by conser-
vatives and isolationists, yet he remained loyal to the party throughout 
his career, with the notable exceptions of his support for his hero Theo-
224      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
dore Roosevelt’s 1912 Bull Moose presidential campaign and his own 
1924 bid for governor as an anti–Ku Klux Klan independent. 
 Delgadillo’s political biography arrives with White’s strand of 
liberal Republicanism extinct and its memory fading. Fortunately, 
however, the book’s release coincides with renewed interest in the 
study of the Midwest as a region and its ideology. White’s career coin-
cided with the peak of the Midwest’s political and cultural influence. 
Delgadillo relies heavily on White’s correspondence with politicians to 
demonstrate how White employed “midwestern ideals of community 
and neighborliness” to shape policy (2). White’s midwestern liberalism 
combined calls for political and economic justice with cultural con-
servatism. He believed in using the government to advance the gen-
eral welfare. He did not, however, view government as a way to ad-
vance major social change. 
 Delgadillo’s work is not a hagiography; he readily acknowledges 
White’s flaws and many contradictions. White supported unions but 
sought ways to settle labor disputes without strikes. The Great De-
pression and the drought of 1930 caused many of White’s neighbors to 
lose faith in the American system. In response, White wanted the fed-
eral government to provide relief, but he refused to endorse Franklin 
Delano Roosevelt. White attacked the Klan but helped fuel anti-
Catholic attacks against 1928 Democratic presidential nominee Al Smith. 
Delgadillo explains, “Like many midwesterners, White’s cultural ide-
ology during the decade centered on two basic concepts: the Midwest 
was the heart of American civilization and it was under attack by out-
side forces” (168). To White, Smith’s urban and immigrant constituency 
represented a threat to the midwestern culture forged by native-born 
white Anglo-Saxon Protestant men. 
 Students of Iowa political history will be interested in Delgadillo’s 
exploration of how White’s midwestern worldview shaped his politics. 
The book also mentions White’s relationship with two prominent Iowa 
politicians. White shared information with Albert B. Cummins during 
the progressive phase of the career of the Iowa governor and U.S. sen-
ator. White gave active support to Herbert Hoover’s 1928 presidential 
campaign. He boosted the businessman he described as “a farm boy” 
with more zeal than he had given any presidential candidate since 
1912. Hoover, however, failed to seek White’s advice as other presi-
dents had done, and White was frustrated by Hoover’s slow response 
to the onset of the Great Depression. His administration’s efforts to 
orchestrate opposition to progressive Republicans seeking reelection 
to Congress troubled the editor even more. But personal relationships 
and loyalty mattered to White, and, despite meeting with Franklin Dela-
Book Reviews and Notices      225 
no Roosevelt, he felt obligated to endorse Hoover’s reelection despite 
knowing that he would not win. 
 Delgadillo’s epilogue notes how Hoover tried to use a 1950 speech 
to portray White as a conservative. White’s long political career pro-
vides plenty of fodder for agreement and disagreement for readers on 
all points of the political spectrum. Delgadillo’s balanced account avoids 
passing an overall judgment on White’s politics and provides an ac-
cessible reminder of a bygone political tradition—one worthy of addi-
tional research. 
 
 
Swift as an Arrow: The Story of Thomas Benoist, Pioneer American Aviator, 
by Melody Davis and Gary R. Liming. Chesterfield, MO: Mindwings 
Press, 2017. vi, 306 pp. Illustrations, bibliography, notes, index. $26.95 
paperback. 
Reviewer Janet R. Bednarek is professor of history at the University of 
Dayton. She is the author of Dreams of Flight: A History of General Aviation 
(2003) and America’s Airports: A History of Municipal Airports in the United 
States, 1918–1947 (2001). 
Thomas Benoist was one of numerous young men, many from the 
Midwest, enthralled with the new technology of the airplane and de-
termined to make it his life’s work. Unlike most, Benoist actually found 
a way to make something of a living as an aircraft builder, parts sup-
plier, and exhibition pilot/manager. Authors Melody Davis and Gary R. 
Liming trace the history of Benoist’s company from its origins in 1909 
in St. Louis, Missouri, to its end following the founder’s untimely death 
in 1917 in Sandusky, Ohio. Benoist is perhaps most remembered for his 
role in establishing the first passenger-carrying airline in the United 
States, which operated for about three months between St. Petersburg 
and Tampa, Florida, in 1914. 
 This work would appeal mostly to those interested in the very early 
years of the aircraft industry in the Midwest. Benoist’s story could 
offer some broader context to demonstrate just how wide open aviation 
was in its pioneering years. One early history of aviation in Iowa, for 
example, names a dozen or more young men who also sought to find 
fame and fortune in the pioneering years of aviation.  
 Swift as an Arrow also shows how midwestern cities, such as St. 
Louis and Sandusky, figured prominently in early aviation history. It 
could have benefited from a larger comparative context—for example, 
comparing Benoist (born in Missouri in 1874) with Glenn Martin (born 
in Iowa in 1886), both of whom started in aviation at roughly the same 
time, yet with vastly different levels of success. 


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