In the early decades of the twentieth century, Iowans all across the Hawkeye State succumbed to the nationwide craze for exchanging photographic postcards, mailing each other thousands of images—serious and whimsical—of Uncle Bob and Baby Dora, the Sunday school outing, train wrecks, the Fourth of July celebration, the merchants' carnival, the record-setting blizzard following the bin-busting harvest, the new courthouse, Ackley's Sauer-Kraut Band. Now, thanks to the generosity of David A. Wilson, whose ample collection of photographic cards would be the envy of those early Iowans, Lyell Henry has organized more than two hundred postcards into eight reflective chapters that create a beguiling collective portrait of Iowa life and culture from 1905 to 1919.
Alfred W. Lawson (1869–1954) was a professional baseball player, inventor of the airliner, leader of a movement in the 1930s calling for the abolition of banks and interest, and founder of a utopian community, the so-called Des Moines University of Lawsonomy. This unusual institution, constantly embroiled in controversy in the 1940s and early 1950s, was dedicated not only to teaching Lawson’s novel religious and scientific ideas but also to initiating a reform of human nature.
Throughout this multifaceted and colorful biography Henry gives special attention to Lawson’s development as a utopian thinker and reformer, providing a thorough treatment of the poignant saga of the controversial and doomed community in Des Moines. Every phase of Lawson’s incredible career is linked to main currents of American life and culture, resulting in an entertaining and sympathetic account that reveals how the self-styled Magic Man of Baseball, Columbus of the Air, Wizard of Reason, and First Knowledgian, for all his claimed and actual uniqueness, was nonetheless a product clearly “Made in America.”
READERS
Browse our collection.
PUBLISHERS
See BiblioVault's publisher services.
STUDENT SERVICES
Files for college accessibility offices.
UChicago Accessibility Resources
home | accessibility | search | about | contact us
BiblioVault ® 2001 - 2024
The University of Chicago Press