The Annals of Iowa

Orejel, Keith

English

The Origins of the Iowa Development Commission: Agricultural Transformation and Industrial Development in Mid-Twentieth-Century Iowa

Review of: From America to Norway: Norwegian-American Immigrant Letters, 1838–1914, volume 3, 1893–1914, edited and translated by Orm Øverlan

Olson, Daron W.

446      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
victory while urging his readers to “stop for a minute and look at the 
other side. Yes, we feel sorry for the Spaniards. They fought bravely, 
and think of their homecoming” (102). 
 Such observations help make The News from Lone Rock an interest-
ing, occasionally moving, work, but readers may well find themselves 
longing for background about the events of the period. The deluge of 
anecdotes and observations, offered without any context, is frequently 
overwhelming and, except perhaps for students of Richland County 
history, occasionally tiresome. Even so, this volume represents a fasci-
nating compilation of small-town journalism that sheds light on atti-
tudes about progress, economic development, and journalism that pre-
vailed at the turn of the twentieth century. 
 
 
From America to Norway: Norwegian-American Immigrant Letters, 1838–
1914, volume 3, 1893–1914, edited and translated by Orm Øverland. 
Northfield, MN: Norwegian-American Historical Association, 2016. 
630 pp. References. $60.00 hardcover. 
Reviewer Daron W. Olson is associate professor of European and world history 
at Indiana University East. He is associate editor of the Swedish-American Histor-
ical Quarterly and author of Vikings across the Atlantic: Emigration and the Building 
of a Greater Norway, 1860–1945 (2013). 
The letters in this third volume of From America to Norway focus on the 
years of the last great exodus of Norwegians to the United States, 
providing translations of more than 300 immigrant letters. Orm Øver-
land’s superb introduction places these letters in appropriate context by 
noting what the letters often do not say or speak to. He notes how Nor-
wegian immigrants played their role in the long struggle between de-
fenders of land (Native Americans) and takers of land (who were often 
immigrants). The evidence is loud in its silence. As Øverland succinctly 
puts it, “The most important point to be made about the attention paid 
to Native Americans in immigrant letters is that they were rarely paid 
any attention at all” (28).  
 Yet it is certain that Norwegian immigrants had encounters with 
indigenous people, so why are the writers so silent on the topic? Ac-
cording to Øverland, there were several reasons, among them the high 
cost of postage that limited the amount of information the immigrants 
could provide. As such, Norwegian immigrants tended to focus on 
practical information, such as family holidays, weather, or steamship 
ticket prices. In addition, the Norwegian immigrants possessed little 
formal education and had poor writing skills. He also concedes that for 
the Norwegian immigrants Native Americans often had no practical 
Book Reviews and Notices      447 
importance in their lives: “Native Americans were reminders of the 
past; immigrant Americans looked to the future” (33). The most im-
portant reason, however, may have been that for the Norwegian immi-
grants it “was best not to think much about them [Native Americans] 
or even not to notice them in order to live with an untroubled con-
science in the land that had once been theirs” (33). In this regard, Nor-
wegian immigrants were partners in the larger American effort of what 
Jean O’Brien has termed “writing Indians out of existence.” 
 Concepts of race and whiteness also affected how Norwegian im-
migrants came to view themselves. Øverland uses the example of Jacob 
Hilton, who emigrated in 1877, first living among relatives in Iowa and 
then moving westward until he finally settled in present-day New Mex-
ico in the spring of 1881. In a letter to his father, Jacob mentions that he 
lives among Indians, Mexicans, and Spaniards. Later, he acknowledges 
that “these mountains and valleys, that once were inhabited by these 
lazy and useless people that live like wild animals, are now filling up 
with white people” (41). As Øverland observes about Hilton, “In Iowa 
he had been a Norwegian in the land of Americans; now he is a white 
man in a white man’s land. He feels a sense of belonging as he had once 
belonged in Norway” (41). 
 Placed in appropriate historical context, the letters in this volume 
offer valuable material for researchers as well as for a broader audience 
interested in the world of Norwegian immigrants. It is not surprising 
that the majority of the letters are from Norwegians who lived in the 
upper midwestern states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota 
as well as South Dakota and Iowa (with a scattering of letters from the 
Northwest, including Alaska, as well as New York and even Florida). 
One also finds familiar topics, such as talk of holidays, the weather, visits 
to relatives (including some back to Norway), and nostalgia for Norway. 
A surprising number of letters visit political themes, both in America 
and Norway. One of the most enduring topics is illness, perhaps a 
reminder of the precarious nature of immigrant life at the time. Certain 
authors contribute multiple letters to the volume; that perspective is val-
uable, allowing us to see how life changed over time for Norwegian 
immigrants. 
 Orm Øverland has once again been of great service to the scholar-
ship on Norwegian American history. This volume of From America to 
Norway reveals an immigrant landscape that is coming of age in an 
America that is transforming into a powerful nation. At the same time, 
the numerous references to Norway indicate that Norwegian immi-
grants still held a place in their hearts and minds for the Old Country. 
The letters also benefit from Øverland’s numerous editorial comments 
448      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
that help clarify things for readers. This impressive volume makes a sig-
nificant contribution to furthering our understanding of the Norwegian 
American experience. 
 
 
Lost Buxton, by Rachelle Chase. Images of America Series. Charleston: 
Arcadia Publishing, 2017. 127 pp. Illustrations, bibliography, index. 
$21.99 paperback. 
Reviewer Pam Stek recently received her Ph.D. in history from the University 
of Iowa. Her publications include “Muchakinock: African Americans and the 
Making of an Iowa Coal Town” (Annals of Iowa, 2009).  
Imagining a community that no longer exists is a difficult task, especially 
when that community was, in many ways, unlike any that had come be-
fore or followed after. The coal-mining town of Buxton, Iowa, is one such 
place, but one that is made more accessible by the photographs and oral 
histories presented in Rachelle Chase’s Lost Buxton. Chase’s work sheds 
light on the lost world of Buxton, with its integrated workplaces, schools, 
and neighborhoods, and on the hope it offered to its residents.  
 Much has been written about Buxton, a south-central Iowa coal 
town that was home to a large number of African American miners 
and their families. In 1900 the Consolidation Coal Company moved its 
mining operations from nearby Muchakinock to the new community of 
Buxton. The town offered black residents, many of whom had migrated 
from Virginia, the chance to work and live relatively free from discrim-
ination and segregation, a rare opportunity in the early twentieth cen-
tury. In Buxton black and white residents resided next to each other, 
black and white miners earned the same wages, and black and white 
children attended the same schools. In addition to coal miners and their 
families, numerous African American business owners and profession-
als, including doctors, dentists, lawyers, teachers, and pharmacists, 
made the town their home. As with many coal-mining communities, 
Buxton’s star rose and fell rapidly. The mines were almost completely 
played out by 1918, and Buxton soon became a ghost town. 
 Lost Buxton contributes to the existing literature on Buxton by pre-
senting a visual representation of the community and its residents. A 
number of the images in Lost Buxton have been previously published in 
other works. Many, however, have not. Chase provides an original and 
compelling grouping of the photographs and matches them with ex-
cerpts from former residents’ memories of the community, in the pro-
cess illuminating topics such as daily life in Buxton, the backgrounds 
and accomplishments of local leaders, and race relations in the town. 
The photographs in Lost Buxton convey the dignity, sense of hope, and 


From America to Norway: Norwegian-American Immigrant Letters, 1838–1914, volume 3, 1893–1914.

Review of: "Kearny’s Dragoons Out West: The Birth of the U.S. Cavalry", by Will Goren-feld and John Gorenfeld

Whittaker, William

Kearny's Dragoons Out West: The Birth of the U.S. Cavalry

Review of: "Grenville Mellen Dodge in the Civil War: Union Spymaster, Railroad Builder and Organizer of the Fourth Iowa Volunteer Infantry", by James Patrick Morgans

Kehrberg, Richard F.

226      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
who were the numerical heart of the period’s middling sorts—as Ma-
honey focuses instead on the very cream of the bench and bar. 
 Also less than convincing is Mahoney’s contention that his charac-
ters thought of themselves as citizens of a “Great West.” Despite his 
concern for his subjects’ “spatial mapping,” he unfortunately presents 
little evidence of such a regional consciousness, which is important for 
a book where that event of ultimate sectionalism—the Civil War—
plays such a substantial role. Indeed, more broadly, Mahoney pays 
little attention to the ideology of his protagonists. We see them get 
very intensely involved in the Civil War, for instance, but we don’t 
really know why they cared so passionately about that cause other 
than that they were fighting for each other and for their home towns. 
This is an important insight, but it leaves politics stranded. What did 
the people of Galena think about slavery, or the Dred Scott decision, or 
the slave power? What did those in Dubuque think about John Brown, 
or abolitionism, or Abraham Lincoln’s economic policies? 
 These limitations and issues aside, we should be grateful that 
Timothy Mahoney has worked so hard to reveal a world that at times 
seems like our own—but is, in fact, decisively on the other side of a 
historical divide. 
 A final note: although Mahoney’s own writing is sure and solid 
(one is tempted to say classically midwestern), the copyediting done 
by Cambridge University Press shows signs of the general deteriora-
tion in that fine art upon which just a little bit of civilization depends. 
One would hope that a $120 price tag would inspire more care. Make 
Copyediting Great Again!  
 
 
Grenville Mellen Dodge in the Civil War: Union Spymaster, Railroad Builder 
and Organizer of the Fourth Iowa Volunteer Infantry, by James Patrick 
Morgans. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2016. vii, 196 pp. 
Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95 paperback. 
Reviewer Richard F. Kehrberg lives in Ames, Iowa. His research and writing 
have focused on U.S. military history. 
Over the course of the American Civil War 66 Iowans became generals 
in the Union Army. Arguably the most famous of these was Grenville 
M. Dodge, who rose from colonel of the Fourth Iowa Infantry to major 
general and became a close associate of U. S. Grant and William T. 
Sherman. Dodge went on to be a prominent railroad engineer, suc-
cessful businessman, and respected politician, but it is the Civil War 
years that form the heart of James Patrick Morgans’s biography of this 
famous Iowan.  
Book Reviews and Notices      227 
 Born in Massachusetts and educated in Vermont, Dodge was work-
ing as a railroad surveyor when he arrived in western Iowa in 1853. 
The ambitious young man was soon involved in the region’s economic 
life and Republican politics. At the beginning of the Civil War he 
worked with Governor Samuel J. Kirkwood to secure arms for the 
new Iowa regiments, and the governor rewarded Dodge’s efforts by 
commissioning him as colonel of the Fourth Iowa Infantry. The new 
colonel took his men to Missouri, where he had to simultaneously or-
ganize, equip, and train his new regiment and deal with the confused 
military situation. Dodge was given command of a brigade in January 
1862; that unit played an important role in the Battle of Pea Ridge, 
where Dodge’s quick thinking and his men’s hard fighting helped 
blunt the Confederate attempt to envelop the Union Army’s right 
flank. 
 Following Pea Ridge, the army assigned Dodge the task of re-
building the Mobile and Ohio Railroad from Columbus, Kentucky, into 
northern Mississippi. That assignment marked a new phase in Dodge’s 
military career. He became closely associated with building and main-
taining the Union Army’s railway system in the Cis-Mississippi Thea-
ter. Defending this large, vulnerable network proved to be especially 
challenging. Dodge created a body of spies and informants to help 
thwart the Confederate raiders. Dodge’s men were never able to stop 
the marauders completely, but their intelligence allowed them to score 
some significant successes and keep the Union trains moving. The 
army praised Dodge for his accomplishments and raised him to com-
mand of an army corps. Nevertheless, the ambitious officer was frus-
trated by the failure to promote him to major general despite his 
growing responsibilities. 
 In June 1864, Dodge finally received his coveted promotion as his 
corps took to the field for the Atlanta campaign. Wounded during the 
siege of Atlanta, Dodge subsequently led the Department of Missouri 
and the Department of Kansas. Both of those commands required him 
to fight guerrillas—Southern sympathizers in one and Native Ameri-
cans in the other—while navigating a complex political environment. 
Railroad work was never far behind, however. In 1866 Dodge resigned 
from the army to become chief engineer for the Union Pacific Railroad. 
 Morgans builds his account on published sources and firmly inter-
twines his portrait of Grenville M. Dodge with the history of the 
Fourth Iowa Infantry. This approach works well in the beginning 
when Dodge has immediate command of the regiment, but it becomes 
increasingly problematic as Dodge moves on to new responsibilities 
and the Fourth begins to operate farther and farther away from its old 
228      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
commander. The author’s penchant for asides on minor characters or 
ephemeral details amplifies the organizational problems presented by 
these twin narratives. For example, after noting that Dodge’s chief of 
scouts in 1863 was from the Seventh Kansas Cavalry, Morgans sets off 
on a page-long excursion on the Seventh’s history that manages to 
encompass “Bleeding Kansas,” William “Buffalo Bill” Cody, future 
Kansas governor Edmund Needham Morrill, and Susan B. Anthony 
(110–11). Dodge often gets lost in these details. The result is an inter-
esting but at times exasperating study of Iowa’s most famous Civil 
War general. 
 
 
Engineering Victory: The Union Siege of Vicksburg, by Justin S. Solonick. 
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2015. ix, 289 pp. Illus-
trations, maps, diagrams, table, appendix, notes, bibliography, index. 
$37.50 hardcover. 
Reviewer Mark Barloon is senior lecturer of history at Central College. His Ph.D. 
dissertation (University of North Texas, 2001) was “Combat Reconsidered: A 
Statistical Analysis of Small-Unit Actions during the American Civil War.” 
The Vicksburg Campaign was the critical moment of the American 
Civil War. Federal success depended on the intelligence and improvi-
sational skill of the midwesterners who filled the ranks of Major Gen-
eral Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the Tennessee. Because they had only 
three professional engineers to guide them, Grant’s soldiers were forced 
to apply their own creativity and common sense to the problem of 
besieging the enemy. Consequently, Confederate Lieutenant General 
John C. Pemberton was forced to surrender his army. He did not sur-
render because his men had depleted their supplies but rather because 
their defensive works had been compromised by Grant’s crafty, self-
educated, soldiers-turned-engineers. Although the soldiers performed 
exceptionally, their siege tactics were not exceptional; they resembled 
the siegecraft of seventeenth-century French Marshal Vauban more than 
the modern trench warfare of World War I. 
 These are the arguments made by historian Justin Solonick, who 
received his Ph.D. in 2013 under the tutelage of Steven Woodworth at 
Texas Christian University. In this book, Solonick enters into three 
separate scholarly debates regarding Vicksburg and the Civil War. 
First, he reinforces his mentor’s belief that the West was the critical 
theater of the war and that westerners made better soldiers than east-
erners. Second, he advances Michael Ballard’s suggestion that the 
Confederates did not surrender because of a lack of supplies. Instead, 
it was the Federals’ relentless advancement of their trenches that forced 


Grenville Mellen Dodge in the Civil War: Union Spymaster, Railroad Builder and Organizer of the Fourth Iowa Volunteer Infantry

Review of: Never Curse the Rain: A Farm Boy’s Reflections on Water, by Jerry App

Otto, Joseph

Book Reviews and Notices      459 
several white, male professors and coaches, including Philip G. Clapp, 
Grant Wood, and Francis Cretzmeyer, created opportunities for a larger 
black presence on campus. Lena Hill notes in the introduction, “Invisible 
Hawkeyes . . . not only reinforces Iowa’s leadership in educating creative 
artists and athletes but also illustrates how local cases of black faces in 
white spaces anticipated and echoed national scenes of interracial striv-
ing and accomplishment. . . . By looking at UI and a smaller college 
town like Iowa City, we unearth how fraught moments of interracial 
collaboration, meritocratic advancement, and institutional insensitivity 
deepen our understanding of the painful conversion of the United States 
into a diverse republic committed to racial equality” (2). 
 These moments are collected in five essays about the arts and ath-
letics interspersed with five testimonials from former University of Iowa 
students. Through these essays, the book reminds us of the quotidian 
experiences of the civil rights struggle—those with a regional resonance 
spearheaded by local players. The chapters also serve as informative 
local history. The testimonials contribute to our understanding of daily, 
lived experience. Personal testimonials that were more directly related 
to the subjects of the other essays would have facilitated a greater com-
prehension of the “painful conversion” at this precise locale. 
 This is but a small critique. Overall, Invisible Hawkeyes is a valuable 
addition to midwestern cultural studies. It is also an asset to scholarship 
about the role of the Midwest in the civil rights movement. Each con-
tributor has a connection to the University of Iowa, thereby ensuring an 
investment in illuminating aspects of its history and continuing conver-
sations about race and the community. 
 
 
Never Curse the Rain: A Farm Boy’s Reflections on Water, by Jerry Apps. 
Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2017. xii, 141 pp. $22.95 
hardcover and e-book. 
Reviewer Joseph Otto is a doctoral candidate in history at the University of 
Oklahoma. His dissertation is an environmental history of drainage in Iowa.  
Jerry Apps’s Never Curse the Rain is a memoir about rural life in Wiscon-
sin, but with a twist—it is all about water and how water shaped not 
only his life, but the lives of his parents, his children, and his grandchil-
dren. From his earliest memories of baptisms and drought on the farm 
to his days as a young man sitting by the lake with his sweetheart, to 
middle age and canoe trips in the north woods, Apps reminds readers 
that water is a precious resource shared and cared for by all. “Those 
things we take for granted are often in the most danger. I grew up 
460      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
understanding water’s importance in the lives of my family and neigh-
bors and learning to conserve it” (138–39). 
 Apps is known for his many works on Wisconsin history and cul-
ture, but his stories have relevance beyond the places he so artfully 
describes. Each chapter is a quick, stand-alone story that will stir kindred 
memories of water use in readers’ minds. With prose appealing to local 
historians and weekend warriors alike, Never Curse the Rain will reso-
nate with any rural Iowan who ever fished from a truss bridge, camped 
on a sand bar, floated a river, or took their family to the lake.  
 
 
The Baseball Whisperer: A Small-Town Coach Who Shaped Big League Dreams, 
by Michael Tackett. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016. xvi, 255 pp. 
Illustrations, index. $26.00 hardcover.  
Reviewer Corey Seeman is the director of Kresge Library Services at the Ross 
School of Business of the University of Michigan. He previously was the direc-
tor of technical services of the National Baseball Library of the National Baseball 
Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown and has focused his sports research 
on minor league baseball.  
When you tune into a Cardinals or Cubs game over the summer, you 
see the best baseball has to offer. Yet the participants in those games 
represent only a tiny percentage of those who pick up a bat, ball, and 
glove over the summer. So many players dream of being a Royal or 
Yankee as they toil in the minor leagues, independent leagues, semipro 
baseball, collegiate summer leagues, and youth summer traveling teams 
year in and year out. The dreams of playing in the Major Leagues has 
led many players to Clarinda, a city of just over 5,000 in southwestern 
Iowa. You didn’t go to Clarinda just to play baseball. You went to 
change your life, though not all of the players knew that at the time.  
 In 1969 Merl Eberly, a 35-year-old former minor league ballplayer, 
took over the Clarinda A’s as field manager. Under his guidance, the 
community team became a collegiate league team. Collegiate leagues 
enable athletes with college eligibility left to continue playing over the 
summer and enhance their skills to get a better shot at the minor leagues. 
Eberly could not have known how successful his endeavor would be. 
He rallied the Clarinda community to support this summer league 
baseball team that won a championship and produced scores of Major 
League baseball players in what might be the least likely of stops. 
Clarinda alumni who made it to the Major Leagues include Bud Black, 
José Álvarez, Von Hayes, Scott Brosius, and many others. Clarinda had 
one special alumna in Ozzie Smith, the great shortstop from the San Diego 
Padres and Saint Louis Cardinals who was inducted into the National 


Never Curse the Rain: A Farm Boy’s Reflections on Water

Review of: "The Suburban Church: Modernism and Community in Postwar America", by Gretchen Buggeln

Bains, David R.

368      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
legacy. These passages will be of value primarily to readers who have 
not visited the Hoover Library. 
 Overall, this book will be of interest to cultural anthropologists and 
scholars of theater and performance, but it will have little appeal to 
presidential scholars or casual visitors to presidential libraries. There is 
no doubting the sincerity of Kanter’s effort, but most citizens who use 
or visit these libraries will not comprehend her “lens of performance.” 
As they have done since the first presidential library opened in 1941, 
the American people will come to these institutions to study and learn 
about the presidents and their administrations. They will not over-think 
the experience. 
 
 
The Suburban Church: Modernism and Community in Postwar America, 
by Gretchen Buggeln. Architecture, Landscape, and American Culture 
Series. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015. xxix, 345 pp. 
Illustrations, appendixes, notes, bibliography, index. $40.00 paperback. 
Reviewer David R. Bains is professor of religion at Samford University. His re-
search interests include American Protestant liturgical thought and church ar-
chitecture. 
Gretchen Buggeln’s The Suburban Church is a masterful account of the 
most prolific era in American church building. Buggeln rigorously, but 
often lovingly, details the creation and use of suburban churches in the 
Midwest in the two decades following World War II, a period that wit-
nessed a major transition from historic styles to modern forms. Buggeln 
describes how church members and architects sought to creates spaces 
that would unite the “family of God” (167) and show that a faith in the 
transcendent was alive in the present. 
 In her first chapter, Buggeln traces the international development 
of a movement for modern church architecture through the 1960s, 
showing that the Midwest played a leading role. Several midwestern 
churches, including the innovative and economical Methodist church 
in Plainfield, Iowa (22–23), garnered national attention. Buggeln’s book 
is based in part on onsite architectural and historical studies of this and 
95 other churches. Only a handful are in Iowa, but much of what she 
says about churches in Minnesota, Illinois, and other states also applies 
to Iowa. 
 In chapter two, Buggeln introduces three architects who are the 
focus of her study. Edward Dart and Charles Stade were based in the 
Chicago area; Edward Sövik’s office was near Minneapolis. Stade and 
Sövik were Lutherans, and churches were their main area of practice. 
Dart, an Episcopalian, was also known for his houses and Chicago’s 
Book Reviews and Notices      369 
Water Tower Place. Each was celebrated in his own time for his churches. 
Their different inclinations enable Buggeln to explore the diversity of 
modern churches. These architects designed churches for many denom-
inations, but they received a substantial number of commissions through 
their own denominational connections. Accordingly, Lutherans figure 
prominently. Buggeln focuses her discussion primarily on Protestant 
buildings. That enables her to investigate various ways architects gave 
form to a common program. She also highlights denominational varia-
tions and significant transitions in design during the 1950s and ‘60s. 
 In chapter three, Buggeln examines the role of church members in 
the building process. Here and elsewhere she draws on more than 60 
oral history interviews and careful study of congregational archives to 
uncover the role church building played in the lives of young suburban-
ites. Discussion of specific congregations and photos of children lined 
up with shovels for a groundbreaking make the building process come 
alive. Buggeln helps us see these spaces as their builders saw them: “fresh 
and new and clean” modern spaces for vibrant religious communities 
(36). 
 Buggeln identifies three major types of modern sanctuaries: tall rec-
tangular buildings pioneered in America by Eliel Saarinen’s Christ 
Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, the A-frame, and the more centrally 
planned spaces of the 1960s that often had fortress-like exteriors. The A-
frame was the most iconic of the three. In chapter four, Buggeln provides 
a definitive account of this ubiquitous sanctuary form. She focuses on 
the three architects’ midwestern churches, but she also discusses the 
A-frame’s regional variation and global appeal. She argues that it was 
popular because its steep vertical lines made it “look like a church” yet 
in an economical and modern way. 
 In the next two chapters, Buggeln explores sanctuaries and spaces 
for education and fellowship. She shows how architects used simple, 
common materials and forms to bring beauty and functionality to their 
buildings and, as Sövik said, to display that the value of Christianity 
was “not that it is old but that it is alive” (136). She emphasizes the ways 
architects sought to realize their clients’ desire for buildings that would 
facilitate a sense of “family at worship” by minimizing barriers between 
leaders and worshipers. Chapter seven focuses on Park Forest, Illinois, 
a famous planned community that William Whyte described in his 
widely read Organization Man. Buggeln highlights how similar styles 
were adapted to different denominational identities. She also empha-
sizes the role of these buildings in facilitating community for families 
experiencing physical and social dislocation. 
370      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
 In the final chapter, Buggeln describes the fates of these churches 
since the 1960s. Some are treasured “historic” parts of larger church 
complexes; others, such as Messiah Lutheran Church in Burlington, Iowa, 
have undergone extensive restoration; still others, such as St. Augustine 
Episcopal Church in Gary, Indiana, are now included on the National 
Register of Historic Places. 
 Buggeln’s previous book, Temples of Grace, is the definitive work on 
the iconic New England meetinghouse. This exhaustively researched 
book is likely to become the go-to work on postwar churches, and not 
only modernist ones. Mark Torgerson’s Architecture of Immanence and 
Jay Price’s Temples for a Modern God are still important supplements, but 
Buggeln’s work stands out for its detailed analysis of specific church 
buildings, richly illustrated pages, and consideration of the buildings’ 
place in the culture of the suburb. Her case studies give substance to the 
movement and help us see how these churches came alive. Preserva-
tionists, church members, historians, and students of suburbs should all 
rely on this essential work. 
 
 
The Most Famous Writer Who Ever Lived: A True Story of My Family, by 
Tom Shroder. New York: Blue Rider Press, 2016. 402 pp. Family tree, 
photographs, index. $28.00 hardcover. 
Reviewer Marcia Noe is professor of English and director of women’s studies at 
the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. She is a senior editor of The Diction-
ary of Midwestern Literature, volumes one and two, and is editor of MidAmerica, 
an annual publication of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature.  
The reader who glances at the title of this very readable book and as-
sumes that it must be about Shakespeare is in for a rude awakening. Its 
subject is actually Iowa native MacKinlay Kantor, who wrote the New 
York Times best-selling and Pulitzer Prize–winning novel Andersonville. 
But once immersed in the book, the reader comes to understand that 
the title reflects Kantor’s conception of himself rather than any critical 
or popular consensus, and that outsized self-image and its consequences 
function as a thematic emphasis of the book. 
 Born in 1904 in Webster City, Iowa, Kantor was abandoned by a 
sociopathic father and raised by an impoverished single mother. A high 
school dropout, he worked as a reporter for the Webster City Daily News 
and the Cedar Rapids Republican, as a columnist for the Des Moines Tribune, 
and as a war correspondent, screenwriter, and novelist, publishing 40 
books, including the aforementioned Civil War novel and Glory for Me, 
on which the Academy Award–winning film The Best Years of Our Lives 
was based. For the better part of four decades, Kantor hobnobbed with 


The Suburban Church: Modernism and Community in Postwar America

Review of: "Varmints and Victims: Predator Control in the American West", by Frank Van Nuys

Carr Childers, Leisl

Book Reviews and Notices      357 
stand. Finally, two photos that Wetzel believes are actually of the same 
person are reprinted in his book. Readers can draw their own conclu-
sions, but to me the two men do not look remotely like each other. 
 In the late nineteenth century, people could still disappear for months 
and even years. Despite the proliferation of newspapers and government 
records, there is often limited information for reconstructing biographies, 
with available sources often containing inaccuracies. Add to this delib-
erate disambiguation, as many people changed important details in their 
identities. Ambiguities in Schlatter’s biography resemble those sur-
rounding chiropractic’s founder, Daniel David Palmer, whose life also 
presents a tantalizing but broken paper trail. In fact, several aspects of 
Schlatter’s story resonate with the early chiropractic movement, where 
boosters of the profession interwove themes of health, commerce, and 
entertainment. 
 I enjoyed reading The Vanishing Messiah, for the narrative style is 
engaging. And, in fact, I enjoyed the interpretive questions presented 
by the task of reviewing it. Although he probably has not definitively 
solved the Schlatter mystery, David Wetzel effectively shares the joy of 
intellectual discovery. 
 
 
Varmints and Victims: Predator Control in the American West, by Frank 
Van Nuys. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2015. xiv, 338 pp. 
Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95 hardcover.  
Reviewer Leisl Carr Childers is assistant professor of history at the University 
of Northern Iowa. She is the author of The Size of the Risk: Histories of Multiple 
Use in the Great Basin (2015). 
Iowans are not used to thinking of themselves in relation to wolves, 
bears, cougars, and even coyotes, but as author Frank Van Nuys ex-
plains in Varmints and Victims: Predator Control in the American West, the 
history of those animals’ extirpation and their recent recovery reflects the 
process of western settlement, especially in the Midwest. Van Nuys’s 
study, an update of Thomas R. Dunlap’s Saving America’s Wildlife: Ecology 
and the American Mind, provides a deep look at the transformation of 
wildlife management through predator control that is as “vital to the 
region’s incorporation into the American mainstream of ideologies, eco-
nomics, politics, and culture as any other phenomenon” (4). 
 Drawing on a wide array of source material, particularly the man-
uscript collections of key wildlife biologists, including Stokely J. Ligon, 
Olaus J. Murie, Sigurd Olson, and Stanley P. Young, and state and fed-
eral wildlife agency records, Van Nuys narrates the history of predator 
control in the region west of the Mississippi River in seven chapters that 
358      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
predominately focus on the twentieth century. Local and state efforts in 
the nineteenth century to eradicate predators, specifically wolves, griz-
zly bears, cougars, and coyotes, that threatened the economic produc-
tion of livestock, gave way to more effective systematic federally funded 
and federally managed cooperative efforts. Between 1915 and 1930, the 
era Van Nuys terms the “‘golden age’ of predator control,” the Bureau 
of Biological Survey policed predators as killers bereft of moral and eco-
nomic value (52). So essential was the bureau’s work to the economic 
and environmental interests of early conservationists that even Aldo 
Leopold “strongly supported the federal government’s approach to ro-
bust predator control as a vital tool in realizing his goal of saving deer 
and other popular game animals” (57).  
 By the mid-twentieth century, however, the use of poisons such as 
strychnine, cyanide, and Compound 1080 generated increasing concern 
about the “biologically unsound and exceedingly dangerous” effects of 
total eradication (129). In addition, the emerging field of ecology im-
proved scientists’ understanding of the trophic relationship predators 
had within ecosystems. New concepts such as Paul Errington’s “econ-
omy of nature” along with the Department of the Interior’s report on 
wildlife, known as the Leopold Report, highlighted the importance of 
predation within natural systems and sparked a reform movement that 
generated sweeping wildlife protections culminating in the Endan-
gered Species Act of 1973. But, as with the rest of the environmental 
legislation passed in the 1970s, the Sagebrush Rebellion and subsequent 
Wise Use Movement during the Reagan Administration polarized 
predator control and wildlife restoration, especially wolf reintroduction, 
grizzly bear preservation, cougar expansion, and coyote tolerance.  
 Van Nuys reminds readers that although most Americans do not 
have to think about these predators, “passionate minorities, whether 
committed to ensuring that the ‘beast gods’ will always be around or 
wishing to do all in their power to visit destruction on the damned ‘var-
mints’” keep predator control at the forefront (256). His words are 
timely, considering that in the last decade, wolves, bears, cougars, and 
the ever-present coyote have been the subject of news stories through-
out Iowa and the Midwest. Predator control continues to require our 
attention, and Van Nuys’s work is a timely reminder of the history of 
our relationship with these animals. 
 
 
Farmers Helping Famers: The Rise of the Farm and Home Bureaus, 1914–1935, 
by Nancy K. Berlage. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 
2016. ix, 308 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $48.00 hardcover. 


Varmints and Victims: Predator Control in the American West

Announcement and Back Matter, The Annals of Iowa, v. 76 no. 2 Spring 2017

Review of: "The Iron Road in the Prairie State: The Story of Illinois Railroading," by Simon Cordery

Randolph, Scott E.

Book Reviews and Notices      135 
main line slicing through the county on an east-west axis. The Peoria, 
Illinois, stem of the Minneapolis & St. Louis also served the northern part 
of the county. But as early as the 1930s line abandonments began, re-
sulting from increasing highway competition, eventually leaving only 
the high-density Burlington main line to serve the county with freight 
and Amtrak service. 
 Resembling water transport, aviation never gained much local im-
portance. There were early balloon ascensions and aerial “barnstormers,” 
entertainment that morphed into pleasure flights and commercial agri-
cultural services. Landing strips appeared, the most notable being devel-
opment of a small, modern airport in Mount Pleasant after World War II.  
 The historic preservation commission has created an unusual type 
of localized transportation work. Readers should enjoy its efforts. Per-
haps this approach will inspire others to consider a similar study of 
their county’s transportation heritage. 
 
 
The Iron Road in the Prairie State: The Story of Illinois Railroading, by Simon 
Cordery. Railroads Past and Present Series. Bloomington: Indiana Uni-
versity Press, 2016. xvii, 216 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, 
index. $60.00 hardcover. 
Reviewer Scott E. Randolph is assistant professor of business administration at 
the University of Redlands in southern California. His research and writing 
have focused on railroads during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. 
Much like its prairie neighbors to the west, railroads made Illinois. Chi-
cago remains the most important railroad hub in North America, and 
the railroads that traversed the state provided the critical infrastructure 
that linked the commodity crops of the Great Plains; the coal, dairy, and 
manufacturing of the Midwest; the timber and international trade of the 
Pacific Coast; and the cotton and timber of the South with the markets, 
specialty manufacturing, ports, and capital of the Northeast and New 
England. Simon Cordery chronicles this relationship from the 1830s to 
the present with an emphasis on the period prior to 1945. Readers fa-
miliar with the two volumes on Iowa railroads in the Railroads Past and 
Present series produced by Indiana University Press will find much to 
enjoy in this volume on railroading in Illinois. Like other books in the 
series, The Iron Road in the Prairie State is intended for railroad enthusi-
asts and general readers rather than for an academic audience. The book 
is well documented, but the author does not attempt to break new 
ground in his analysis, concentrating instead on providing a concise 
and eminently readable survey of the topic. 
136      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
 This is a solid example of traditional, institutional railroad history. 
Author Simon Cordery possesses a detailed command of the extensive 
literature on the subject, as his endnotes reveal, and has a particular tal-
ent for concise and effective descriptions of the complex financial and 
organizational histories of the many railroads that served Illinois. Par- 
ticularly well executed is his narration of the early twentieth-century 
financial manipulations of the Rock Island lines by the Reid-Moore 
syndicate, perhaps the most egregious of the stock-watering, “robber 
baron” stories. Cordery lays out clearly the effects of this chicanery on 
the company’s long-term well-being. Likewise, his extended discussion 
of the life cycle of passenger service in the state, spread throughout the 
book, is detailed and sympathetic. He does not neglect the state’s many 
interurban railways and smaller carriers, such as the Chicago Great 
Western, but devotes the majority of the book to the largest regional and 
transcontinental systems.  
 The experiences of the passengers, investors, shippers, and citizens 
whose lives the railroads touched are largely absent from this institu-
tional history. Cordery does dedicate one chapter to railroad labor, but 
the discussion focuses entirely on the nineteenth century and is gener-
ally sympathetic to the viewpoint of management. There are passing 
references in later chapters but no substantive development of the ex-
perience of railroad workers after 1900 aside from a discussion of the 
1922 shop workers’ strike. In a state where by 1900 some 5 percent of 
workers labored for the railroads, more attention to their experience 
would have broadened the book’s usefulness. For instance, a discussion 
of the massive reduction in the state’s railroad labor force that began 
after 1960 as a consequence of mergers and the rapid demise of passen-
ger services and branch lines would have provided important local con-
text for the larger tapestry of railroading nationally. 
 Given the otherwise even-handed chronological coverage of the 
period through 1945, the dizzying changes faced by the railroads in 
subsequent decades receive comparatively little discussion. The rapid 
changes in Illinois railroading after the Penn Central and Rock Island 
bankruptcies receive only a few pages despite being, in turn, the largest 
corporate bankruptcy to that date and the largest railroad liquidation of 
all time. There is no discussion of the emergence of new regional and 
short-line railroads in the wake of those bankruptcies, or of the Staggers 
Rail Act, the creation of Conrail, or the merger wave of the 1980s and 
1990s. A more robust discussion of those changes and the resulting line 
abandonments that ensued would round out the book’s usefulness for 
those interested in the contemporary railroad industry. Railroad history 
in general desperately needs a more contemporary emphasis. 
Book Reviews and Notices      137 
 The volume contains a fine selection of black-and-white illustrations, 
although the photo reproductions are generally too light. The images 
favor less well-known photographs from the collections of institutions 
such as the Library of Congress, Lake Forest College, and the Center for 
Railroad Photography and Art. Maps are interspersed throughout, an 
important visual aid in a state with a bewildering number of railroads 
and routes, especially at the turn of the twentieth century. A follow-up 
map showing the remaining routes at the time of publication would 
have been a nice addition. 
 Overall, these minor complaints notwithstanding, this is a useful 
addition to the series. It will be of interest to those who possess even a 
passing interest in the railway industry. 
 
 
The Jefferson Highway: Blazing the Way from Winnipeg to New Orleans, by 
Lyell D. Henry Jr. Iowa and the Midwest Experience Series. Iowa City: 
University of Iowa Press, 2016. ix, 213 pp. Maps, illustrations, notes, in-
dex. $29.95 paperback. 
Reviewer Thomas Gubbels is associate professor at Lincoln University. He is a 
former senior historic preservation specialist with the Missouri Department of 
Transportation who has written extensively on Missouri’s highway system. 
Travelers along Interstate 35 through Iowa rarely slow down enough to 
notice the landscape around them. However, if drivers left the interstate 
and instead traveled along U.S. Highways 65 and 69, they would en-
counter a roadside that still has much in common with early to mid–
twentieth-century Iowa. The first true “inter-state” highways were not 
established in 1956 by the National Defense Highway Act or in 1926 by 
the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads. As Lyell Henry vividly recounts in The 
Jefferson Highway: Blazing the Way from Winnipeg to New Orleans, begin-
ning in 1915 local Iowa officials and business leaders began to map out, 
mark, and create an all-weather highway across the state and the entire 
nation. Their creation, the Jefferson Highway, transformed the country-
side and represented the achievement of a uniquely progressive vision 
that helped Iowa move forward into the twentieth century. 
 Henry begins his book by analyzing the core values shared by the 
men who created the Jefferson Highway Association (JHA), the organ-
ization responsible for the creation of this early twentieth-century trail 
system. Good roads advocates such as Edwin Meredith and Thomas 
McDonald called on Iowans to join them in an effort to improve the 
state’s roads and connect them to the outside world. Although some 
highway advocates may have been motivated by personal profit, most 
Iowa supporters of the Jefferson Highway, Henry argues, shared a 


The Iron Road in the Prairie State: The Story of Illinois Railroading

Review of: "We Are What We Drink: The Temperance Battle in Minnesota," by Sabine N. Meyer

Klein, James E.

126      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
that the middle is never the complete picture? At the very least, this 
examination of French Canadians in northern Illinois reminds us to be 
wary of painting with too broad of a brush. 
 
 
We Are What We Drink: The Temperance Battle in Minnesota, by Sabine N. 
Meyer. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2015. xiv, 269 pp. 
Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $55.00 hardcover. 
Reviewer James E. Klein is associate professor of history at Del Mar College in 
Corpus Christi, Texas. He is the author of Grappling with Demon Rum: The Cul-
tural Struggle over Liquor in Early Oklahoma (2008). 
In We Are What We Drink, Sabine N. Meyer provides a nuanced exami-
nation of the campaign to ban alcohol in early Minnesota. The stance 
individuals took on the liquor question was determined by religion, 
economic class, ethnicity, gender, and civic identity. The latter, she ar-
gues, is a product of the former factors, but also of place, citing St. Paul 
as an example—that city’s civic identity influenced residents’ stance 
on liquor. She also studies the staunchly dry position of Bishop John 
Ireland and the split that created between Irish and German Catholics. 
While the temperance issue shaped Irish and German ethnic identities 
in Minnesota, it also created a public identity for Minnesota women, 
who previously had been relegated to the home. 
 Meyer begins with the early European settlement of Minnesota by 
fur traders and the raucous reputation earned by early St. Paul, origi-
nally named Pig’s Eye after a local liquor dealer. The 1850s temperance 
movement saw middle-class reformers, relocated from New England, 
attempting to civilize the Minnesota wilderness. They failed to curb St. 
Paul’s liquor industry because it was a part of residents’ civic and mas-
culine identity.  
 By the late nineteenth century, Irish Americans, aspiring to middle-
class status, remade their ethnic identity by adopting abstinence as a 
badge of respectability. German immigrants, from the distinct regions 
of Prussia, Saxony, Westphalia, Bavaria, and others, instead used oppo-
sition to temperance (based on a devotion to the concept of personal 
liberty) as a shared trait to create a unified German American culture. 
As their initial social standing was higher than that of Irish Americans, 
they saw no need to emulate the middle-class expression of respectability 
—opposition to alcohol. Rather, they viewed the temperance movement 
as an attack on German American culture. 
 St. Paul, influenced by the prominent position of German American 
brewers and by residents’ devotion to the notion of joie de vivre, op-
posed and resisted liquor regulations, pitting the city against the state 
Book Reviews and Notices      127 
government and contrasting that city with its twin settlement, the more 
refined Minneapolis. Residents of the Twin Cities internalized these dif-
ferent identities, thwarting effective liquor regulation in St. Paul and 
further differentiating the two municipalities.  
 The temperance campaign provided women with a rare oppor-
tunity to enter the previously male public sphere of society. Minnesota’s 
Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, the vehicle for this entrance 
into public affairs, redefined gender roles and emboldened women for 
the subsequent woman suffrage campaign. Irish American men, notably 
Bishop Ireland, accepted women into the temperance campaign as they 
gained middle-class status.  
 Minnesota received mixed results from a high license campaign in 
the 1890s and adopted county option in 1915. As a result, 51 of 86 coun-
ties went dry. American entrance into the Great War branded the Ger-
man American liquor stance as unpatriotic, dooming efforts to stave off 
the growing prohibition campaign. The war, specifically women’s ex-
tensive work in support of it, also convinced male officeholders to sup-
port woman suffrage.  
 Sabine extensively cites a rich temperance literature yet charts her 
own course in explaining dry success and wet failures in Minnesota. 
She builds on Joseph Gusfield’s work on status anxiety in explaining 
the Irish abstinence campaign. Her discussion of local civic identity as 
shaping and being shaped by the temperance campaign represents a 
new direction in liquor studies, one that warrants further examination. 
She asserts that ethnicity, religion, and place shaped the civic identity 
of St. Paul as much or more than economic class, although she accepts 
Roy Rosenzweig’s characterization of the saloon as a working man’s 
club. She notes that Irish Americans of all economic classes joined ab-
stinence organizations, although social elites typically led these groups. 
She also notes that German American businessmen organized the wet 
opposition to temperance but gives little attention to the working-class 
culture that formed in saloons. Her acknowledgment that temperance 
leaders typically were middle class also suggests that economic class 
factored into the liquor issue in addition to ethnicity, religion, and place. 
She asserts that Minnesotans’ varied stances on liquor shaped their 
identities. Building on Claude Fischer’s contention that the food we eat 
shapes our sense of self, Sabine argues convincingly that we are what 
we drink (or choose not to drink).  
 
 
  


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