BiblioVault - Books about Iowa

Union Must Stand

Civil War Diaries John Quincy Adams Campbell

Mark Grimsley

University of Tennessee Press, 2000

Only rarely does a Civil War diarist combine detailed observations of events with an intelligent understanding of their significance. John Campbell, a newspaperman before the war, left such a legacy. A politically aware Union soldier with strong moral and abolitionist beliefs, Campbell recorded not only his own reflections on wartime matters but also those of his comrades and the southerners—soldiers, civilians, and slaves—that he encountered.

Campbell served in the Fifth Iowa Volunteer Infantry from 1861 to 1864. He participated in the war's major theaters and saw early action at Island No. 10, Iuka, and Corinth. His diary is especially valuable because he viewed the war as both a field-commissioned officer able to make intelligent comments about combat and as a former enlisted man with a feel for the soldier's life. He was present during Grant's campaign at Vicksburg and depicted the bloody failure of the May 22 storming of Confederate fortifications in unsparing terms; he then went on to fight at Chattanooga and took Gen. William T. Sherman to task for his poor leadership at Missionary Ridge.

The Union Must Stand contains more than Campbell's journal. Editors Mark Grimsley and Todd Miller have written an introduction that provides background information and places the diary in the context of current debate over the ideological commitments of Civil War soldiers. An appendix reproduces fifteen of Campbell's letters to his hometown newspaper, in which he shared his impressions of both war and slavery.
With its unique point of view, valuable insights into the conduct of various campaigns, and some of the most vivid depictions of Civil War combat ever set to paper, Campbell's diary offers both a wealth of new primary material for historians and exciting reading for enthusiasts. Combining a journalist's accuracy with a zealot's idealism, it makes a forceful statement about why one man went to war.

The Editors: Mark Grimsley is an associate professor of history at the Ohio State University and the author of The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians, 1861-1865.

Todd D. Miller is a history teacher and an independent researcher for Time-Life Books' Civil War series. He lives in Ashland, Ohio.

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The University of Iowa Guide to Campus Architecture

John Beldon Scott

University of Iowa Press, 2006

The University of Iowa boasts an outstanding ensemble of buildings whose stylistic diversity reflects the breadth of Iowa’s contributions to research, education, and creative activities. In this first comprehensive guide to the university’s architecture, authors John Scott and Rodney Lehnertz reveal the artistic integrity, intellectual inspiration, and cutting-edge function of the campus buildings.Scott and Lehnertz highlight seventy-eight buildings that they consider architecturally significant, from the Greek Revival style of Old Capitol at the center of the Pentacrest, designed by John Francis Rague of Springfield, Illinois, to Art Building West, a work of art in itself designed by Steven Holl of New York City. The buildings are arranged in eleven campus zones, each illustrated with a map: Pentacrest, Iowa Avenue Campus, Main Campus North, Main Campus South, River Valley Campus, Arts Campus, Near West Campus, Medical Campus, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics Campus, Athletics Campus, and Oakdale Research Campus. Each building is presented with one or two pages of text, giving its architectural history and its noteworthy features, and one to three photographs, most of which were taken especially for this publication. The introductory essays provide both personal recollections and historical information about the diverse styles of campus architecture. Particularly valuable are the lists of all the extant campus buildings that the authors considered worthy of inclusion organized by building names, the names of their principal and project architects, and the date completed or occupied; another list contains information about notable campus sculptures. Also included are an essay about long-time campus architect George Horner and a highly useful glossary.Current students and their parents, alumni, and professional and amateur architecture enthusiasts will appreciate this copiously illustrated, accessible, and informative tour of the University of Iowa’s distinctive campus.

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The University of Iowa Guide to Campus Architecture, Second Edition

John Beldon Scott and Rodney P. Lehnertz

University of Iowa Press, 2016

In this guide to the University of Iowa’s architecture, revised and updated to reflect the numerous changes following the 2008 flood, John Beldon Scott and Rodney P. Lehnertz discuss and illustrate an ensemble of buildings whose stylistic diversity reflects the breadth of Iowa’s contributions to research, education, and creative activities. Current students and their parents, alumni, and professional and amateur architecture enthusiasts will appreciate this informative tour of the university’s distinctive campus.

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The University of Iowa in the Twentieth Century

An Institutional History

Stow Persons

University of Iowa Press, 1990

In order to write this exhaustive history, Persons focused his research on the extensive university archive of personal correspondence and reminiscences. The result is a study rich in personality, character, and insight, complete with political and economic drama. The definitive analytical history of the school, this volume captures the vigor and color of the people it chronicles.

Organized by president, this history follows the school’s struggle to establish a major public university in an agricultural state. Persons shows how George MacLean introduced the institutional forms of the modern university and oriented it toward the major state university of the upper Midwest. Walter Jessup was successful in strengthening the faculty and laying the foundations of the modern physical plant. Howard Bowne’s attempt to revivify the school was cut short by the campus uprisings of 1968 to 1970. Since no part of the university has undergone more striking changes than the College of Medicine, Persons has devoted a chapter to the efforts to find an effective organizational pattern for that college. And, in the area of undergraduate education, he outlines the struggle to define and implement a successful general education program.

More than just a recounting of past issues and accomplishments, The University of Iowa in the Twentieth Century also serves to identify a pattern of historical development which will provide a context in which the present issues facing the school can be most fruitfully addressed. This book should be read by everyone interested in the development of the university, educators, higher education administrators, and all those captivated by Iowa history.

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The Unlikely Celebrity

Bill Sackter's Triumph over Disability

Thomas Walz. Foreword by Barry Morrow

Southern Illinois University Press, 1998

Thomas Walz tells the story of Bill Sackter, a man who spent nearly half a century in a Minnesota mental institution and emerged to blossom into a most unlikely celebrity. Bill Sackter was committed to the Faribault State Hospital at the age of seven, there to remain until he was in his fifties. At the time of his commitment, Bill’s father had recently died; thus his sole contact with his family came through rare letters from his mother.

Some years after his discharge from Faribault as a result of the movement to deinstitutionalize the mentally ill in the 1960s, Bill enjoyed a serendipitous encounter with a young college student and part-time musician, Barry Morrow. Bill became part of the Morrow family and a regular in Morrow’s music group. When Morrow accepted a job at the School of Social Work at the University of Iowa, Bill followed him to Iowa City and was put in charge of a small coffee service.

Bill became an important part of the University of Iowa community, and Wild Bill’s Coffeeshop developed into an institution. A cheerful man of great good will who was a harmonica virtuoso, Bill began to inspire affectionate legends, and his life as a celebrity began in earnest. He was named Iowa’s Handicapped Person of the Year in 1977, and two television movies were made about his life—Bill, which earned Emmy awards for cowriter Barry Morrow and Mickey Rooney (as Bill) in 1981, and Bill on His Own in 1983. Years later, Morrow would earn an Oscar for his script of Rain Man.

Through vignettes ranging from hilarious to near tragic. Walz reveals a remarkable human being. An account of Bill's life in an institution is necessarily part of the story, but there is much more: Bill’s role in helping a young child recover from a coma, his menagerie of friends, his love for a pet parakeet, his late-life Bar Mitzvah, his failure as a woodworker, his success as Santa, and his dignified death at the age of seventy.

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Up a Country Lane Cookbook

Evelyn Birkby

University of Iowa Press, 1993

What can Evelyn Birkby possibly do to follow up the success of Neighboring on the Air: Cooking with the KMA Radio Homemakers? She can do what she has done in writing Up a Country Lane Cookbook. For forty-three years she has written a column entitled "Up a Country Lane" for the Shenandoah Evening Sentinel. Now she has chosen the best recipes from her column and interspersed them with a wealth of stories of rural life in the 1940s and 1950s, supplemented by a generous offering of vintage photographs. She has created a book that encompasses lost time.

With chapters on "The Garden," "Grocery Stores and Lockers," "Planting," and "Saturday Night in Town," to name a few, Up a Country Lane Cookbook recalls the noble simplicity of a life that has all but vanished. This is not to say that farm life in the forties and fifties was idyllic. As Birkby writes, "Underneath the pastoral exterior were threats of storms, droughts, ruined crops, low prices, sickness, and accidents."

Following the Second World War, many soldiers returned to mid-America and a life of farming. From her vantage point as a farm wife living in Mill Creek Valley in southwestern Iowa, Birkby observed the changes that accompanied improved roads, telephone service, and the easy availability of electricity. Her observations have been carefully recorded in her newspaper column, read by thousands of rural Iowans.

Up a Country Lane Cookbook is, then, much more than a cookbook. It is an evocation of a time in all its wonder and complexity which should be read by everyone from Evelyn Birkby's nearest neighbor in Mill Creek Valley to the city slicker seeking an education. Cook a meal of Plum-Glazed Baked Chicken, Elegant Peas, Creamed Cabbage, and Seven-Grain Bread, then finish it off with Frosted Ginger Creams with Fluffy Frosting. While the chicken is baking, read Evelyn's stories and think about the world the way it was.

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