Corn Kings and One-Horse Thieves
Odds & ends
Illinois past and present, as seen by James Krohe Jr.
The Corn Latitudes
Tourism and travel
Here you will find articles about popular tourist destinations in Illinois, guide books about Chicago, and pleasure-based transportation in Illinois, as published mainly in Illinois Times, Chicago's Reader, and the American Automobile Association's Adventure Road and Americana magazines.
Every journalist is a travel writer in a way, insofar as she introduces readers to unfamiliar realms and exotic people. That was especially true about my Illinois work. My first article that deserved to be called journalism and which appeared in a publication that deserved to be called a newspaper was a travel piece—an introduction to the daytripper of my birthplace, Beardstown, Illinois.
Having spent enough time in each to at least pose as an expert, I spent much of my career trying to explain Downstate to Chicago and vice versa. Most of what I wrote on the broader topic was about the economic and cultural aspects of tourism, but now and then I did actually visit Illinois places that people like to go to. Some of the results appear below.
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The Presidential Museum Turns Five
Is the world growing bored with rubber Lincolns?
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times April 29, 2010
The Lincoln home for the automobile tourist
Adventure Road September/October 1985
Authenticity and the tourist’s Lincoln
"Prejudices" Illinois Times February 10, 1983
The Old Capitol: The Higher Vaudeville
They built it; they didn’t come
"Prejudices" Illinois Times February 6, 1981
Spring, when the crocus and the tourist bloom
“Prejudices” Illinois Times April 8, 1977
Illinois tries to run its landmarks on the cheap
"Prejudices" Illinois Times April 2, 1992
When does restoring become destroying?
"Prejudices" Illinois Times December 14, 1979
Public statuary on the Illinois statehouse grounds
"Prejudices" Illinois Times ca 1991
That toddlin' town
A guide to guidebook Chicago
Reader March 25, 1988
How to Run Out of Town on a Rail
Weekending from Chicago on board Amtrak
Reader May 31, 1991
Union Station dresses up for company
“Prejudices” Illinois Times September 23, 1993
Taking the anthropological view in Chicago
“Prejudices” Illinois Times May 3, 1990
Historic Bishop Hill Looks to the Future
Restoring a Swedish town without embalming it
Illinois Times October 13, 1978
Will tourists arrive where Lincoln departed?
Illinois Times August 4, 1978
A show bringing Lincoln's capitol to life dies at the box office
“Prejudices” Illinois Times February 10, 1978
The seed that grew into a Lincoln Presidential library
“Prejudices” Illinois Times ca 1990
Seeking the eternal Indian in northern Illinois
See Illinois (unpublished) 2002
Visiting the statehouse complex in Springfield
See Illinois (unpublished) 2006
Some Books About Illinois the Place
Guidebooks, geographies, gazeteers, and reference books
See Illinois (unpublished) 2016
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SITES
OF
INTEREST
Essential for anyone interested in Illinois history and literature. Hallwas deservedly won the 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Illinois State Historical Society.
One of Illinois’s best, and least-known, writers of his generation. Take note in particular of The Distancers and Road to Nowhere.
See Home Page/Learn/
Resources for a marvelous building database, architecture dictionary, even a city planning graphic novel. Handsome, useful—every Illinois culture website should be so good.
The online version of The Encyclopedia of Chicago. Crammed with thousands of topic entries, biographical sketches, maps and images, it is a reference work unmatched in Illinois.
The Illinois chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 2018 selected 200 Great Places in Illinois that illustrate our shared architectural culture across the entire period of human settlement in Illinois.
A nationally accredited, award-winning project of the McLean County Historical Society whose holdings include more than 20,000 objects, more than 15,000 books on local history and genealogy, and boxes and boxes of historical papers and images.
Mr. Lincoln, Route 66, and Other Highlights of Lincoln, Illinois
Every Illinois town ought to have a chronicler like D. Leigh Henson, Ph.D. Not only Lincoln and the Mother road—the author’s curiosity ranges from cattle baron John Dean Gillett to novelist William Maxwell. An Illinois State Historical Society "Best Web Site of the Year."
Created in 2000, the IDA is a repository for the digital collections of the Illinois State Library and other Illinois libraries and cultural institutions. The holdings include photographs, slides, and glass negatives, oral histories, newspapers, maps, and documents from manuscripts and letters to postcards, posters, and videos.
The people's museum is a treasure house of science and the arts. A research institution of national reputation, the museum maintains four facilities across the state. Their collections in anthropology, fine and decorative arts, botany, zoology, geology, and history are described here. A few museum publications can be obtained here.
“Chronicling Illinois” showcases some of the collections—mostly some 6,000 photographs—from the Illinois history holdings of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library.
I will leave it to the authors of this interesting site to describe it. "Chicagology is a study of Chicago history with a focus on the period prior to the Second World War. The purpose of the site is to document common and not so common stories about the City of Chicago as they are discovered."
Illinois Labor History Society
The Illinois Labor History Society seeks to encourage the preservation and study of labor history materials of the Illinois region, and to arouse public interest in the profound significance of the past to the present. Offers books reviews, podcasts, research guides, and the like.
Illinois Migration History 1850-2017
The University of Washington’s America’s Great Migrations Project has compiled migration histories (mostly from the published and unpublished work by UW Professor of History James Gregory) for several states, including Illinois. The site also includes maps and charts and essays about the Great Migration of African Americans to the north, in which Illinois figured importantly.
An interesting resource about the history of one of Illinois’s more interesting places, the Fox Valley of Kendall County. History on the Fox is the work of Roger Matile, an amateur historian of the best sort. Matile’s site is a couple of cuts above the typical buff’s blog. (An entry on the French attempt to cash in on the trade in bison pelts runs more than
2,000 words.)
BOOKS
OF INTEREST
Southern Illinois University Press 2017
A work of solid history, entertainingly told.
Michael Burlingame,
author of Abraham
Lincoln: A Life
One of the ten best books on Illinois history I have read in a decade.
Superior Achievement Award citation, ISHS Awards, 2018
A lively and engaging study . . . an enthralling narrative.
James Edstrom
The Annals of Iowa
A book that merits the attention of all Illinois historians
as well as local historians generally.
John Hoffman
Journal of Illinois HIstory
A model for the kind of detailed and honest history other states and regions could use.
Harold Henderson
Midwestern Microhistory
A fine example of a resurgence of Midwest historical scholarship.
Greg Hall
Journal of the Illinois
State Historical Society
Click here
to buy the book
Southern Illinois University Press
SIU Press is one of the four major university publishing houses in Illinois. Its catalog offers much of local interest, including biographies of Illinois political figures, the history (human and natural) and folklore of southern Illinois, the Civil War and Lincoln, and quality reprints in the Shawnee Classics series.
The U of I Press was founded in 1918. A search of the online catalog (Books/Browse by subject/Illinois) will reveal more than 150 Illinois titles, books on history mostly but also butteflies, nature , painting, poetry and fiction, and more. Of particular note are its Prairie State Books, quality new paperback editions of worthy titles about all parts of Illinois, augmented with scholarly introductions.
The U of C publishing operation is the oldest (1891) and largest university press in Illinois. Its reach is international, but it has not neglected its own neighborhood. Any good Illinois library will include dozens of titles about Chicago and Illinois from Fort Dearborn to
Vivian Maier.
Northern Illinois University Press
The newest (1965) and the smallest of the university presses with an interest in Illinois, Northern Illinois University Press gave us important titles such as the standard one-volume history of the state (Biles' Illinois:
A History of the Land and Its People) and contributions to the history of Chicago, Illinois transportation, and the Civil War. Now an imprint of Cornell University Press.
Reviews and significant mentions by James Krohe Jr. of more than 50 Illinois books, arranged in alphabetical order
by book title.
Run by the Illinois State Library, The Center promotes reading, writing and author programs meant to honor the state's rich literary heritage. An affiliate of the Library of Congress’s Center for the Book, the site offers award competitions, a directory of Illinois authors, literary landmarks, and reading programs.
