REVIEWS 275

New Castle. Tracing the motivations ilies, as important, Smith gives weight of individual men who enlisted in the to the role that ordinary Americans armed forces, Smith downplays patri- play in shaping history, and he otism and suggests myriad factors demonstrates the critical part that oral that influenced decisions about when history can play in recreating this his- and whether to join up. Centered on tory. Smiths example will hopefully personal and local accounts, Smiths inspire others to investigate the events complicated and honest narrative that transformed towns in Indiana challenges stereotypes of a country and across America in the first half of unified by war and nationalism. the twentieth century. Readers with an interest in Indi- ana history will find much to appre- ANNEM. VALKis a professor in the ciate in The War Comes to Plum Street. Department of History and the Pro- By treating the history of one town, gram in Women’s Studies at Southern and the lives of a select sample of fam- Illinois University, Edwardsville.

The Encyclopedia of Chicago Edited by James R. Grossman, Ann Durkin Keating, and Janice L. Reiff (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Illustrations, maps, business and biographical dic- tionaries, appendices, index. Pp. xxix, 1117. $65.00.) The past two decades have witnessed Chicago’s neighborhoods and loca- the appearance of a number of urban tions and embeds within each entry encyclopedias, including two (Cleve- both a separate history and a con- land and Indianapolis) from the Mid- nection to the larger metropolis. The west. Most reviewers have lauded result is an integrative history that these efforts and have touted The links the city’s vital parts to a civic Encyclopedia ofNew York City (1995) whole. as the best of the group. The 2004 Another important integrative appearance of The Encyclopedia of feature of the work is the simultane- Chicago has likely upset this ranking. ous creation of an electronic ency- This volume is a superb work that clopedia, with an emphasis on links fulfills its editors’ goal of revealing the and extensibility. Of course, the ency- Windy City’s interdependent sense of clopedias created before the Internet place. More than the other urban contained cross-references-the trait, encyclopedias, this handsome work after all, is common to the genre- literally and metaphorically maps the but the Chicago editors clearly were city’s geography. It conveys a deep thinking of the volume as a digital sense of place in multiple entries on product as well as a traditional one. 276 INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

Given this strategy, it is disappoint- the city’s mayors and a comprehen- ing to learn that the electronic ver- sive index. sion (http://www.encyclopedia. These features notwithstanding, chicagohistory.org) appears to con- illustrations are the glory of this vol- tain nothing more than the print edi- ume. No urban encyclopedia to date tion. has made better use of cartography. The entries, arranged alphabeti- Thumbnail maps accompanying the cally, are well-written and informa- entries reveal the location of each tive. The editors’ implied claims to county, municipality, and neighbor- the contrary, they follow the types of hood within the metropolitan area, entries found in other urban ency- while large-scale maps show every- clopedias: places, people, events, thing from Chicago’s global and organizations, ethnic groups, religious national connections (pp. 342-343) bodies, and so forth. Topical essays to the railroad path used by the Great appear throughout the volume (e.g., Migration (p. 363) to the city’s freight Air Quality, Home Rule, Mental tunnels (p. 834). The maps reinforce Health, etc.). Most of the contribu- the editorial theme of Chicago as an tors appear to be associated with aca- interconnected place. In like manner, demic institutions and libraries. the illustrations-especially the four- Several features are worth noting. color Timeline and Year Pages- Businesses deemed significant by exceed in quality and quantity longevity, number of employees, or anything produced by the other urban industry leadership receive separate encyclopedias. treatment in the “Dictionary of Lead- Great cities deserve great ency- ing Chicago Businesses, 1820-2000” clopedias. With the publication of The (pp. 909-953). A biographical dic- Encyclopedia of Chicago, one of the tionary (pp. 955-998) provides sum- worlds leading cities has a volume mary information on 2,000 deceased worthy of its name. Chicagoans who are mentioned in the main body of the encyclopedia, DAVIDJ. BODENHAMERis professor of although page numbers to these ref- history and director of the Polis Cen- erences are not included. Census ter at Indiana University-Purdue Uni- information for counties, municipal- versity, Indianapolis, and co-editor of ities, and communities, noted at thir- The Encyclopedia of lndianapolis ty-year intervals, also appears at the (1994). end of the volume, as does a list of