Life Along the Illinois River


Book Description

A panoramic collection of ninety photographs captures the spirit of people at work and play along the Illinois River, as well as the quiet beauty of the flora and fauna that make the river a natural retreat.




Illinois Waterway Guidebook


Book Description




In the Spirit of Wetlands


Book Description




Lansing to LeClaire Travel Guide


Book Description




Mississippi Solo


Book Description

The true story of a young black man's quest: to canoe the length of the Mississippi River from Minnesota to New Orleans.




Spoon River America


Book Description

From Main Street to Stranger Things, how poetry changed our idea of small town life A literary and cultural milestone, Spoon River Anthology captured an idea of the rural Midwest that became a bedrock myth of life in small-town America. Jason Stacy places the book within the atmosphere of its time and follows its progress as the poetry took root and thrived. Published by Edgar Lee Masters in 1915, Spoon River Anthology won praise from modernists while becoming an ongoing touchstone for American popular culture. Stacy charts the ways readers embraced, debated, and reshaped Masters's work in literary controversies and culture war skirmishes; in films and other media that over time saw the small town as idyllic then conflicted then surreal; and as the source of three archetypes—populist, elite, and exile—that endure across the landscape of American culture in the twenty-first century. A wide-ranging reconsideration of a literary landmark, Spoon River America tells the story of how a Midwesterner's poetry helped change a nation's conception of itself.




The Land of Milk and Uncle Honey


Book Description

"The river was in God's hands, the cows in ours." So passed the days on Indian Farm, a dairy operation on 700 acres of rich Illinois bottomland. In this collection, Alan Guebert and his daughter-editor Mary Grace Foxwell recall Guebert's years on the land working as part of that all-consuming collaborative effort known as the family farm. Here are Guebert's tireless parents, measuring the year not in months but in seasons for sewing, haying, and doing the books; Jackie the farmhand, needing ninety minutes to do sixty minutes' work and cussing the entire time; Hoard the dairyman, sore fingers wrapped in electrician's tape, sharing wine and the prettiest Christmas tree ever; and the unflappable Uncle Honey, spreading mayhem via mistreated machinery, flipped wagons, and the careless union of diesel fuel and fire. Guebert's heartfelt and humorous reminiscences depict the hard labor and simple pleasures to be found in ennobling work, and show that in life, as in farming, Uncle Honey had it right with his succinct philosophy for overcoming adversity: "the secret's not to stop." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DooGQqUlXI4&index=1&list=FLPxtuez-lmHxi5zpooYEnBg




Riverine


Book Description

Angela Palm grew up in a place not marked on the map, her house set on the banks of a river that had been straightened to make way for farmland. Every year, the Kankakee River in rural Indiana flooded and returned to its old course while the residents sandbagged their homes against the rising water. From her bedroom window, Palm watched the neighbor boy and loved him in secret, imagining a life with him even as she longed for a future that held more than a job at the neighborhood bar. For Palm, caught in this landscape of flood and drought, escape was a continually receding hope. Though she did escape, as an adult Palm finds herself drawn back, like the river, to her origins. But this means more than just recalling vibrant, complicated memories of the place that shaped her, or trying to understand the family that raised her. It means visiting the prison where the boy that she loved is serving a life sentence for a brutal murder. It means trying to chart, through the mesmerizing, interconnected essays of Riverine, what happens when a single event forces the path of her life off course.




My Life on the Mississippi


Book Description

A skillful, and frequently hilarious, comparison of Mark Twain and the author, Richard Bissell. Part commentary and part autobiography, Bissell deftly interweaves family history, anecdotes, and career paths into an unforgettable linking of two outstanding authors and river boat buffs living almost a century apart.




Land Between the Rivers


Book Description

Situated between the Wabash, Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, the Southern Illinois country is rich in history, folk­lore, scenery, and natural resources. At about the latitude of southern Virginia, and extending from the flat prairie farm­land of central Illinois to the rugged Illinois Ozarks, the area is the natural terminal boundary for hundreds of plant species reaching out to all points of the compass. It is also the oldest and most sparsely populated part of Illinois, a region of small towns and independent people. Surveying the area in words and pic­tures, the authors sensitively and appre­ciatively portray the region's special qualities. Land Between the Rivers, a perennial classic since it was first published in 1973, provides an uncommon portrayal of American life in a distinct region, a memorable journey in both time and place.