Americans have long recognized the central importance of the nineteenth-century Republican party in preserving the Union, ending slavery, and opening the way for industrial capitalism. On the surface, the story seems straightforward -- the party's “free labor” ethos, embracing the opportunity that free soil presented for social and economic mobility, and condemning the danger that slavery in the territories posed for that mobility, foreshadowed the GOP's later devotion to unfettered enterprise and industrial capitalism. In reality, however, the narrative thread is not so linear. This work examines the contradiction that lay at the heart of the supremely influential ideology of the early Republican party. The Paradox of Progress explores one of the most profound changes in American history -- the transition from the anti-market, anti-monopoly, and democratic ideology of Jacksonian America to the business-dominated politics and unregulated excesses of Gilded Age capitalism.

Guiding this transformation was the nineteenth-century Republican party. Drawing heavily from both the pro-market commitments of the early Whig party and the anti-capitalist culture of Jackson's Democratic party, the early Republican party found itself torn between these competing values. Nowhere was this contested process more obvious or more absorbing than in Civil War-era Michigan, the birthplace of the Republican party.

In The Paradox of Progress, a fascinating look at the central factors underlying the history of the GOP, Martin Hershock reveals how in their determination to resolve their ideological dilemma, Republicans of the Civil War era struggled to contrive a formula that wo uld enable them to win popular elections and to model America's acceptance of Gilded Age capitalism.

Through an in-depth study of Ann Arbor politics, Party Conflict and Community Development addresses fundamental questions of the relationship between partisan politics and municipal government. Since a large majority of middle-sized American cities operate with nonpartisan government, Ann Arbor's fiercely competitive, two-party system provides an essential counterpoint to other urban studies. Moreover, political activity at this local level gives unique insight into the relative strength and performance of American political parties. Samuel J. Eldersveld examines in detail how this increasingly competitive system has led to innovative policy change. Finally, he offers comparisons to other American and European cities.

There’s no more breathtaking signal of summer’s onset than the blooming of peonies. Stunningly beautiful and relatively easy to grow, peonies are a favorite flower everywhere they can be cultivated and for good reason: the heady fragrances and enchanting colors of a peony-rich display create an immersive experience that has enamored generations of garden lovers across the world. This passion is on full display each June at the historic Peony Garden of the University of Michigan’s Nichols Arboretum.

Originally planted in 1922, the Nichols Arboretum Peony Garden now boasts North America’s largest public collection of heirloom herbaceous peonies. The Peony Garden has become a sacred space for the Ann Arbor community, a not-to-be-missed sensation when it erupts each season, as the Ann Arbor Observer once wrote, in “a riot of color, of crimson, rose and shell pink intermingled with fluffy pompoms of creamy white.” The rather short period of peak bloom—about two fleeting weeks each year—only seems to intensify the garden’s appeal, drawing thousands of visitors annually to this spectacular “living museum” on campus that showcases upwards of 10,000 blossoms.

Richly illustrated with hundreds of striking color photos, Passion for Peonies collects twenty short essays that celebrate the story of the Nichols Arboretum Peony Garden as well as the rich social history of peony gardening that it is an integral part of. Together these pieces comprise a love letter both to a magical public space at the University of Michigan and to the broader history and culture of peony gardening. The book will appeal to readers interested in the University of Michigan, the history of public gardens, and of course peonies!
 

Payoffs in the Cloakroom is a spellbinding follow-up to Rubenstein and Ziewacz's critically acclaimed Three Bullets Sealed His Lips. Three Bullets brought to life new evidence on the 1945 murder of Michigan Senator Warren Hooper. Payoffs in the Cloakroom takes up where Three Bullets left off, unraveling a complex web of political corruption and dirty state politics. In the process, the authors demonstrate that Senator Hooper was murdered to prevent his grand jury testimony against republican boss Frank McKay, who was facing bribery charges. 
     Making use of actual court proceeding, personal interviews, and newspaper accounts, and even a re-evaluation of police evidence, Rubenstein and Ziewacz tell a story that contains all the ingredients of first-class detective fiction—only in this instance, the story is based on fact. With chapter titles such as "Charlie and His Little Black Book," "I Never Dreamed Murder," and "Them Bones, Them Bones," the authors have, once again, provided a stimulating and absorbing account of one of the darker chapters of Michigan's political history.

W. B. Hinsdale and Emerson F. Greenman here report on the discovery of perforated crania at sites in southeastern Michigan. Contains 5 black and white photographs of the perforated crania.

A retrospective survey of Bruce Harkness’s striking social documentary photographs and an invaluable historical record that bears witness to irrevocably lost swaths of Detroit’s social and urban fabric.

In 1980, the cities of Detroit and Hamtramck, Michigan, exercised eminent domain to develop nearly five hundred acres of land for a new industrial park and General Motors assembly plant. But the land was not vacant. Some thirty-five hundred people lived there in Poletown—some of them for their entire lives. They attended neighborhood schools and churches, worked for and patronized small businesses, walked the sidewalks, drove the streets, and tended to lawns and gardens. Harkness began photographing the area in February 1981. He recorded street scenes, intersections, panoramic views, homes, businesses, churches, and people. Ten months, ninety visits, and six hundred photographs later, it all disappeared forever.

The Poletown series established Harkness as a major Detroit documentarian. It came on the heels of late-1970s projects located in and around the city’s skid row: Cass Corridor. The images include gritty streetscapes, a portrait series depicting residents living in a crumbling apartment building, and the lively cultural milieu of a local gay and transgender bar. Most of this old portion of inner-city Detroit since has been supplanted by urban redevelopment and gentrification.

During the late 1980s, Harkness collaborated with urban historian John J. Bukowczyk on a major documentary project, Urban Interiors. While the Poletown project had documented the exteriors of buildings and streetscapes on Detroit’s East Side, Urban Interiors captured the insides of inner-city Detroit homes and businesses and included extended oral history interviews.

While Harkness has always found human dignity and resilience in his subjects, the tone of his work brightened in the 1990s alongside Detroit’s revival. Photographs from this era include blues musicians performing in clubs and at outdoor concerts and the distinctive, robust youth culture that flourished in Dearborn’s now-defunct Zone Coffee House.

Featuring images from these and other projects, Photographs from Detroit, 1975–2019 includes Harkness’s extensive notes, which describe and contextualize the encounters he shared with the people and places he photographed, and offer insight into his working methods and equipment. The volume and quality of Harkness’s work merits him recognition as one of Detroit’s most important documentary photographers during this pivotal, transitional era in the city’s history.

Harkness’s images depict the struggles and resilience of ordinary individuals and families in working-class communities who together have indelibly shaped the spirit of Detroit. This book is a must-have for Detroiters past and present as well as historians, anthropologists, social documentary advocates, and photobook collectors everywhere.

The long awaited new edition of a classic offers memories, myths, and meanings of the largest contiguous piece of wild land in Michigan's Lower Peninsula.

This updated edition explores more deeply why and how the outdoors moves and compels us. It’s a book about mice who sing, elk who wear collars, deer who kiss, and birds who could dictate their compositions to Mozart. It's about the human species interacting in generous and sometimes misguided ways with the rest of life. It's about men trying to ripen pinecones into pineapples and women taking better aim with a revolver than expected. It's about poetry—from Mary Oliver, Lao Tzu, and Theodore Roethke—and seeing hawks dive in a night sky or feeling oil geologists shake the earth below. It's about finding fish dead in the river by the thousands and crouching behind a stump to watch beaver build a dwelling. While this book considers life beyond the boundaries of Pigeon River Country, it is steeped in the specifics of a place that lives mostly on its own, instead of human, terms.

The Pigeon River Country is a remote northern forest, ecologically distinct from most of the United States. Laced with waterways, it has a storied past. Dale Clarke Franz has collected personal accounts from various people intrigued with the Pigeon River Country—including loggers, conservationists, mill workers, campers, even the young Ernest Hemingway, who said he loved the forest "better than anything in the world." There are comprehensive discussions of the area's flora and fauna, guides to trails and camping sites, and photos showcasing the changing face of this hidden national treasure.

Before Franklin Roosevelt declared December 7 to be a “date which will live in infamy”; before American soldiers landed on D-Day; before the B-17s, B-24s, and B-29s roared over Europe and Asia, there was Willow Run. Located twenty-five miles west of Detroit, the bomber plant at Willow Run and the community that grew up around it attracted tens of thousands of workers from across the United States during World War II. Together, they helped build the nation’s “Arsenal of Democracy,” but Willow Run also became the site of repeated political conflicts over how to build suburbia while mobilizing for total war.

The highly toxic PBB poisoning of Michigan remains the most widespread chemical contamination known in U.S. history. The Poisoning of Michigan is an investigative journalist's account of the contamination of Michigan's dairy cattle with the highly toxic chemical PBB (polybrominated biphenyl) in 1973. A near relation of PCB, this now-banned substance, designed as a fire retardant, was mistaken for a nutritional supplement at a chemical plant. It ended up in cattle feed that was distributed to farms throughout the state. By the time the error was discovered, virtually all nine million residents of Michigan had been ingesting contaminated milk and meat for almost a year.
     A new introduction by the author and an afterword by three distinguished environmental scientists explain how the legacy of Michigan's poisoning lives on—and how equally toxic substitutes for PBB still invade our homes and lives. This new edition of Egginton's environmental classic—first published in 1980 and long out of print—tells how the tragedy affected both the farm community and the wider populace, and how federal and state authorities failed to respond. "We were mired in a swamp of ignorance," one state official admitted.

One of the most vibrant and influential ethnic groups in Michigan, Poles have a long history of migration and settlement in the Great Lakes State. From Michigan’s earliest Polish marriage (in 1762) to the most recent post-Cold War migrations, each successive wave of settlement has enriched and enlivened Michigan culture. Yet, Paczki Day and Polish festivals represent a relatively small portion of the Polish experience. Commitments both to religious and ethnic identity, and a belief in the American vision of landownership and success, have combined to create a mainstream ethnic community abundant in ethnic pride. Poles’ success in Michigan continues to attract Polish immigrants from Europe, just as Polonia continues to make its mark on Michigan’s culture.

More than 4,200 residents of Detroit's "Poletown" community lost their homes in the 1980s when the neighborhood was razed to accommodate construction of a Cadillac plant on land where generations of Polish immigrants had lived, worked, and worshipped. Poletown is the story of the only group in Detroit to oppose the construction plan: the Poles and blacks who fought side by side to save their neighborhood, one of the city's oldest integrated communities.
"This book is about the ramifications of raw corporate power going unchecked." -- John Conyers, Michigan congressman
"Racial class is a fundamental problem in America. But Poletown demonstrates that economic class is even more fundamental." -- Rev. Jesse Jackson
 

Sarah E. Van De Vort Emery, a Michigan woman transplanted from the Finger Lakes region of New York, was for many years a voice for Populism in the late 19th century. Emery was a woman who believed and acted on her beliefs that freedom and the flowering of the human potential should not five way to the demands of the "money power."

When the 2011 municipal takeover in Flint, Michigan placed the city under state control, some supported the intervention while others saw it as an affront to democracy. Still others were ambivalent about what was supposed to be a temporary disruption. However, the city’s fiscal emergency soon became a public health emergency—the Flint Water Crisis—that captured international attention.

But how did Flint’s municipal takeovers, which suspended local representational government, alter the local political system? In Power, Participation, and Protest in Flint, Michigan, Ashley Nickels addresses the ways residents, groups, and organizations were able to participate politically—or not—during the city’s municipal takeovers in 2002 and 2011. She explains how new politics were created as organizations developed, new coalitions emerged and evolved, and people’s understanding of municipal takeovers changed.

Inwalking readers through the policy history of, implementation of, and reaction to Flint’s two municipal takeovers, Nickels highlights how the ostensibly apolitical policy is, in fact, highly political.

In a pathbreaking study of a major state prison, Michigan's Jackson State Penitentiary during the middle years of this century, Charles Bright addresses several aspects of the history and theory of punishment. The study is an institutional history of an American penitentiary, concerned with how a carceral regime was organized and maintained, how prisoners were treated and involved in the creation of a regime of order and how penal practices were explained and defended in public. In addition, it is a meditation upon punishment in modern society and a critical engagement with prevailing theories of punishment coming out of liberal, Marxist and post structuralist traditions. Deploying theory critically in a historic narrative, it applies new, relational theories of power to political institutions and practices. Finally, in studying the history of the Jackson prison, Bright provides a rich account, full of villains and a few heroes, of state politics in Michigan during a period of rapid transition between the 1920s to the 1950s.

The book will be of direct relevance to criminologists and scholars of punishment, and to historians concerned with the history of punishment and prisons in the United States. It will also be useful to political scientists and historians concerned with exploring new approaches to the study of power and with the transformation of state politics in the 1930s and 1940s. Finally Bright tells a story which will fascinate students of modern Michigan history.

Charles Bright is a historian and Lecturer at the Residential College of the University of Michigan.

Isle Royale and the counties that line the northwest coast of Michigan's Upper Peninsula are called Copper Country because of the rich deposits of native copper there. In the nineteenth century, explorers and miners discovered evidence of prehistoric copper mining in this region. They used those "ancient diggings" as a guide to establishing their own, much larger mines, and in the process, destroyed the archaeological record left by the prehistoric miners. Using mining reports, newspaper accounts, personal letters, and other sources, this book reconstructs what these nineteenth-century discoverers found, how they interpreted the material remains of prehistoric activity, and what they did with the stone, wood, and copper tools they found at the prehistoric sites.   "This volume represents an exhaustive compilation of the early written and published accounts of mines and mining in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. It will prove a valuable resource to current and future scholars. Through these early historic accounts of prospectors and miners, Halsey provides a vivid picture of what once could be seen." —John M. O'Shea, curator of Great Lakes Archaeology, University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology