This year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of my service as editor of the Indiana Historical Society’s quarterly popular history magazine Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History. Since its debut in 1989, Traces has featured nonfiction, narrative articles that are solidly researched, attractively written, and amenable to illustration. In shepherding nearly 100 issues to print, I […]
Once his photographer brother introduced him to the sand dunes of Indiana and vicinity in 1911, Frank Virgil Dudley devoted the rest of his creative life to painting landscapes of the area’s stunning scenery and unique diversity, becoming one of the state’s preeminent artists. His well-earned titles of “Seer of the Dunes” and “Painter of […]
Bob and Luella McBride had been married two months when twenty-year-old Bob was thrust into a global war as a medic with the Seventeenth Airborne Division, including becoming part of the last-gasp German offensive at the Battle of the Bulge. Luella Hart, nineteen when she married, relied on her sisters and Bob’s parents for support […]
How does a historian whose work focused on those “boring railroad presidents” end up collaborating on a memoir of a living Hoosier businessman, philanthropist, and politician? Some would say the answer was dumb luck. Others would argue it was fate. But it surely was both memorable and invaluable to my development as a historian, writer, […]
Each year the Indiana Historical Society accepts nominations for several awards to be given to individuals and organizations throughout the state that are working in the fields of history. The emphasis is on excellent scholarship presented in engaging, public-facing ways. As managing editor of the IHS Press, I have enjoyed the honor of reviewing the […]
A century ago an Indianapolis publishing firm, Bobbs-Merrill Company, released a volume that it publicized as the “most talked of book of the day.” Anton Scherrer, a columnist for the Indianapolis Times, said that nothing “rocked the foundations of Indianapolis quite as much” as had the appearance of the publication, titled Neither Dead nor Sleeping. […]
From America’s post-World War II crusade to democratize Japan, the Korean War, nuclear standoffs with the Soviet Union, the Bay of Pigs, the Vietnam War, and Watergate, Benjamin C. Evans Jr. of Crawfordsville, Indiana, participated in the events that shaped his country’s and the world’s history. In the IHS Press book “Gentleman in the Shadows,” […]
I am an avid reader, and always have been. The summer between high school and college I read War and Peace…for fun. A couple of years ago, PBS came out with the Great American Read list of 100 books. Since then I have been reading my way through the list, and I’m about half-way there. […]
Prohibiting states and the federal government from denying citizens the right to vote based on sex, the Nineteenth Amendment was passed by Congress on June 4, 1919, and formally ratified on August 26, 1920. To commemorate the centennial of women winning the right to vote, the IHS Press recently published “We Must Be Fearless”: The […]
History Matters is a blog series where we’ll be talking about the things you’re not supposed to discuss at the dinner table – things that may make some people uncomfortable. These pieces of our history are there if you look but might not be top of mind or in a textbook. We often think of history on a larger scale, […]
