New Books and Old Manuscripts

The Indiana Historical Society acquired many items in June and July. Three that caught my eye:

* James Joseph Buss, Winning the West with Words: Language and Conquest in the Lower Great Lakes. One chapter reportedly focuses on squatters in the Michigan City and La Porte area of Indiana, but the large theme has to do with the erasure of the "wrong people" from popular history.

* Civil War and other letters and papers of James H. Guy, who served in the 35th Indiana Volunteers (organized in Indianapolis in 1864).

* Civil war diary and documents of Selar Mead, who served in the 93rd Indiana (organized in Indianapolis, Madison, and New Albany in 1862).

Reviewed in the current American Historical Review:

* Peter C. Baldwin, In the Watches of the Night: Life in the Nocturnal City, 1820-1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012). "Among the topics woven into the argument are the impact of variations in daytime workers' quitting times; bad behavior on trolleys or 'owl cars'; the growth of countercyclical nocturnal labor for sanitation, industrial, bakery, dock, and newspaper workers; the effect of crime-ridden early taxis, known as 'night hawks'; and efforts by reformers to combat delinquency after ark with boys' clubs." (p. 1236)

* James W. Feldman, A Storied Wilderness: Rewilding the Apostle Islands (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012). "The author argues that officialdom would do better to recognize that 'wilderness' contains human stories" that do not need to be erased. "In the early nineteenth century, productive uses were not assumed to be incompatible with tourism, and . . . fishermen provided summer tourists with food, and local landowners augmented their incomes by building tourist lodgings and restaurants." (pp. 1265-66)



"New in Collections and Library," Indiana Historical Society INPerspective, vol. 19, no. 2 (November-December 2012): 13.

Harold Henderson, "New Books and Old Manuscripts," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 29 October 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]