An Illustrated History. by Frederick C. Luebke. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995

Book Reviews 77 Kimbrough seems happiest when most specific, especially when he is playing the role of interpreter of and advocate for mountain people now frequently in diaspora in the industrial cities of Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan. His book might have been hewn more care- fully in places, but it is one of the best introductions to this peren- nially fascinating phenomenon. PETERW. WILLIAMSis Distinguished Professor of Religion and American Studies, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. He is the author of Popular Religion in America (1980, 1989). Nebraska: An Illustrated History. By Frederick C. Luebke. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995. Pp. xxiv, 405. Illustrations, maps, bibliography, index. $35.00.) Most oversize picture histories stir little interest, ending their useful lives on dental office coffee tables and bookstore remainder tables. This book is a welcome exception to the norm, and for all the right reasons. It integrates well-chosen illustrations with intelligent text to tell an important story. Its author and editor has a command of the subject that reveals itself on every page. Both casual browsers and serious students of Nebraska history will appreciate it. The book is part of a “Great Plains Photography” series offered by the publisher. Its more than four hundred pages are sturdily bound and handsomely designed, and the layout refrains from crowding too many illustrations on a single page. High-quality paper ensures that the photographic reproductions have sharp lines and good contrasts. Frederick C. Luebke selected illustrations and wrote text for fifty-eight brief topical chapters grouped in five chronological sec- tions. Each section has a brief narrative introduction, and each chapter has a 500- to 800-word essay linking that topic’s illustrations. Chapter topics range from events (such as World War 111, to places (the siting of the state capital), to distinct groups (Native Ameri- cans), to social history (farm life), and to important personalities (George W. Norris). For example, a chapter on nineteenth-century housing illustrates an early log cabin, various styles of “soddies”(sod houses), the “harvesting” of sod for home construction, and a later plains frame house. The author taught history for many years at the University of Nebraska and is a recognized authority on the state, the Great Plains, and immigration history. For the book’s principal themes and ideas Luebke acknowledged drawing heavily upon his stimulating earlier essay in Heartland (19881, a collection of middle western state histories. His introduction and the various short essays emphasize the key role of water and land transportation routes in the state’s devel- opment, its ethnic variety, a special relationship between the people and their land, distinctive economic patterns, and an independent streak in its politics. 78 Indiana Magazine of History The three hundred illustrations include useful maps and some artwork, but photographs predominate. Luebke’s major source was the large photographic collection at the Nebraska State Historical Society, Lincoln, but he found some materials elsewhere as well. Dis- tinguishing this offering from a more conventional picture book was the author’s insistence on selecting illustrations based on their rel- evance to the themes and topics he selected rather than on a pho- tograph‘s intrinsic appeal or curiosity. Another good feature is the author’s preference for relatively lengthy captions that enable him fully to discuss the context as well as the subject matter of his illustrations. This book reinforces the author’s reputation as a well-informed historian and painstaking craftsman. The quality of both its text and illustrations are a reflection of his career-long study of the subject. Students of Nebraska history will welcome it; Hoosiers can find much to enjoy and learn about a distant neighbor in mid-America. CULLOMDAVIS is director of The Lincoln Legal Papers and professor of history emer- itus, University of Illinois, Springfield. His publications include work on Illinois and the Middle West. Delia Webster and the Underground Railroad. By Randolph Paul Runyon. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996. Pp. x, 259. Illustrations, map, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95.) The title of this book is misleading. On the surface it appears as though Randolph Paul Runyon’s study were a biography of Delia Webster, a white middle-class teacher from Vergennes, Vermont, who became infamous for her work on the Underground Railroad. The work is, however, less about Webster than about the local political culture surrounding the debates about antislavery and “slave stealing” in small southern towns. Webster serves as a vehicle for exploring the antislavery networks that operated in Kentucky and extend- ed northward and the fragile line that separated antislavery and proslavery forces in the South. As Runyon demonstrates in his dis- cussion of Webster’s relationship with her jailor, Newton Craig and his family, for example, such lines could easily blur. In this narrative Webster, for several reasons, remains a shad- owy figure. First, the author has expanded the purview of the study beyond a narrow chronology of Webster’s life, an approach that often results in extensive discussions of other people: escaped slaves such as Lewis and Harriet Hayden and William and Ellen Craft; more prominent antislavery activists such as Levi Coffin and Calvin Fair- bank; and the Craig family. It is always a difficult task for histori- ans to locate their biographical subjects within a larger social, political, and economic context without losing their focus. Unfortunately, in this book Webster disappears from Runyon’s narrative, partly because .

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