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booBookK RE Reviewsviews Creating Minnesota: and gender. She informs us, as well, about political schisms A History from the Inside Out from Ignatius Donnelly to Hubert Humphrey and Eugene Annette Atkins McCarty to Jesse Ventura, all of which help the reader un- (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, derstand the often cerebral and sometimes visceral nature 2007. 310 p. Cloth, $27.95; paper, $18.95.) of Minnesota’s politics. Minnesotans have a reputation for being nice, well educated, and polite, but their history bears State histories can be tedious to read. The traditional po- the scars of racism, violence, and greed, which Atkins care- litical, economic, and social subjects prevail along with fully points out. She stresses that Minnesota has had a rich deference to important men and women. Scholarly writing history of ethnic, social, and cultural diversity which has about Minnesota has followed this trajectory, and much of become even more complex with the increasing immigrant it has made an important contribu- population from Africa and Southeast Asia. tion to our knowledge of the state’s History is messy, that is, complex. Relationships change, history. Most of these histories political certainties crumble, and the interactions between have been written for the scholarly men and women are unpredictable. Whether the topic is audience, particularly historians labor on the Iron Range, economic development in Minne- and students. Annette Atkins is apolis, or agricultural production in the southwest, Atkins’s well-known to anyone who reads stories link seemingly unimportant people to the history of the state’s history. She is a veteran Minnesota and the nation. If Atkins sometimes dwells too teacher of Minnesota’s past, knows much on national trends, she always returns to Minnesota the archival collections, and writes examples to make her point. Still, her intent was to cast a with skill. This tribute is not to pro- broad net in pursuit of Minnesota’s history. In the tradition mote her reputation—her work stands on its own merit— of Marc Bloch, she argues that knowing is not enough; one but rather to say that she has reached a point in her career must understand. Atkins may perhaps agree with Bloch where she can afford to take risks that less experienced that this admirable goal is neither easily pursued nor often historians cannot, pursuing new and innovative approaches. achieved. Yet anyone interested in the history of Minnesota The result is a refreshingly different history of Minnesota. or the Midwest will find this study informative, readable, Atkins has written a book for the general public, al- and usable. Atkins has set a new, high bar for the writing of though scholars and students can learn much from it. She state history that will engage both general readers and pro- makes a considerable point of integrating the history of fessional historians. Minnesota with the nation’s past to show the state’s signifi- cance, but she does so by telling stories of everyday people Reviewed by R. Douglas Hurt, head of the department of his- whose lives were inextricably woven into Minnesota’s history at Purdue University. His most recent book is The Great tory. Her structure is neither strictly chronological nor Plains during World War II, published by the University of traditionally topical. Instead, Atkins analyzes the everyday Nebraska Press. matters of life that scholars transform into issues such as whiteness, modernization, and ethnicity. Her study is particularly engaging because she asks penetrating questions: “Are women better off now than before?” She empathically The West the Railroads Made answers, based on extensive research, “It depends.” Or, “Is Carlos A. Schwantes and James P. Ronda factory labor better than hand labor?” To which she replies: (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008. “For whom?” Atkins is skillful at looking at the proverbial 229 p. Cloth, $39.95.) other side of the coin. The result is an engaging, informative history that integrates biography, genealogy, and the study Nothing epitomizes western development more than the of material culture into a book that approaches the past railroad. Locomotives, rolling stock, and rails provided both slightly off center, that is, nontraditionally. The history of a literal and figurative engine of change, symbolized tech- Minnesota is better for it. nological triumph over distance, and connected western Atkins is particularly adept at integrating the past with settlers with the modern social amenities of the East. In the present. Whether her starting point is Fort Snelling, the The West the Railroads Made, authors Carlos A. Schwantes Ojibwe, or immigrants in St. Paul, she tells a story of indi- and James P. Ronda provide a beautifully illustrated, well- viduals whose lives give immediacy to matters of race, work, written analysis of the unrivaled and myriad ways in which 284 Minnesota History booBookK RE Reviewsviews the railroad transformed the American West up to the pres- entrepot for the agricultural commodities of the northern ent day. While the text and imagery focus primarily the Great Plains. northern Great Plains and Northwest, the many historical The West the Railroads Made is good history, well writ- examples of the railroad’s effects in these regions are easily ten, and an expertly mated coalescence of period quotes extrapolated to other areas of western frontier development. and railroad documents, ephemera, and literature from the Schwantes and Ronda begin their analysis with a sum- St. Louis Mercantile Library’s Barriger National Railroad mary of midnineteenth-century promoters of a transcon- Library and the Washington State Historical Society collec- tinental railroad. These early advocates accurately foresaw tions. The seemingly endless examples of railroad handbills, railroads as the next essential step, beyond the limited travel posters, maps, lithographs, brochures, and advertisements routes of steamboats, for exploiting western resources. Fu- from these institutions add an extremely colorful, comple- ture development proved them correct, and by 1883 four mentary visual dimension to this scholarly monograph. This transcontinental trunk lines snaked from the East to the outstanding collection of historical documents, paired with Pacific. Less than a generation later, an ever-expanding concise, informative text, yields a wonderful addition to the network of railroads delivered historiography of western railroads. the natural and agricultural resources of the West to eastern Reviewed by Michael W. Vogt, curator at the Iowa Gold Star factories, mills, and consumers Military Museum, Camp Dodge. Vogt’s research interests are while simultaneously conveying in Gilded Age Iowa and midwestern and military history. a cornucopia of manufactured His latest article, “From Cornfields to Cuba: The 49th Iowa products to rural and frontier Volunteer Infantry in the Spanish-American War” appeared settlers. “Just as the natural in The Iowan (November/December 2007). world of northern forests be- came lumber for sale,” write the authors, “western nature was transformed to become bread and meat for eastern markets. Chief Bender’s Burden: The railroad was at the heart of all those transformations.” The Silent Struggle of a Baseball Star Concurrent with the railroads’ conquering of time and Tom Swift space, the familiar screech of the locomotive’s whistle her- (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008. alded an era of change described by the authors as “the ubiq- 339 p. Cloth, $24.95.) uitous sound of modernity.” And just as farming irrevocably changed the western landscape, the railroads transformed Charles Albert Bender was born May 5, 1884, in Crow Wing the physical appearance of the West, as well. In addition to County some 20 miles east of Brainerd, on the White Earth the cultivated fields, windmills, barns, and fences wrought Reservation. His father, Albertus, was of German American by the agricultural frontier, the ever-expanding western rail- descent, and his mother, Mary, was road network contributed its own intrusions to the country- a member of the Mississippi band of side. Iron and steel rails, telegraph poles and wires, wooden Ojibwe. Her Ojibwe name was Pay trestles, water tanks, and depots, around which the railroad shaw de o quay. towns were platted, all provided indelible reminders of the Charles, better known to the gen- railroads’ part in western development. eral public as “Chief” Bender, began Minnesota represents a typical example of commercial playing professional baseball with the expansion founded on the railroads. Following the Civil Philadelphia Athletics in 1903 and War, the state’s economy grew through the mining of iron remained with them until the end ore and the marketing of agricultural produce expedited of his major-league career in 1917, by a growing network of intrastate railroads. The comple- except for a brief sojourn in the Fed- tion of the Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad in 1870, eral League in 1915. He carried on as a player and player- connecting St. Paul and Duluth, was the key to this success manager in the minor leagues through 1927 and then in and a vital link to midwestern markets and Great Lakes various capacities as coach and scout through 1953, when he shipping. It facilitated the transport of iron ore mined in re- was named to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. gions west and north of the Great Lakes to iron mills in the In Chief Bender’s Burden, Minnesota journalist Tom Swift East. Furthermore, it transformed Duluth into a regional has written a compelling and fascinating biography of this Summer 2009 285 booBookK RE Reviewsviews remarkable man. Although a Minnesotan by birth, Bender ments of government policy in the larger cultural context was shaped by his educational experiences in Pennsylvania. would strengthen the story. There are examples of the rac- The first of these was a five-year stay at the Educational ism Bender faced, but a larger canvass is needed for a full Home near Philadelphia, and the second was his sojourn at appreciation of the burden.

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