History of North Dakota by Elwyn B. Robinson (review)

Reviews 79 evading emotional involvement, accurate to the extent of curbing the imagina­ tion, yet generally informative enough to avoid dullness. If Smyth’s boyhood is neglected, it is probably because the letters do not go back so far, but if the last period of his life is skimpily dealt with (compared to the years 18351850 ), it could be that the author has discovered that he has succeeded in producing an adequate thesis and needs only to wind up the lose ends. Nevertheless, the reader already has been enriched with details of everyday life in East Texas back when a planter’s big house was a double log cabin with a dog-run through the middle, when wild myrtles were planted in the yard to keep fleas respectfully distant, and when a two-storey store could be built for $250. G e o r g e W. E w in g , Abilene Christian College History of North Dakota. By Elwyn B. Robinson. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 1966 xi+599 pages, $7.95.) Not long ago, a weekly news magazine contained an article about a leading U. S. publisher and some phases of book publishing. A portion of the article dealt with the decline of the novel, and among possible reasons for the decline, one was, in effect, that non-fiction writers had adopted the techniques of fiction, creating exciting presentations and thus gripping their readers’ attentions. The effectiveness of this approach may be judged by the number of non-fiction books on best-seller lists. However, “history books” resulting from scholarly research, though they are non-fiction, are not generally regarded as possibilities for exciting and absorbing reading —memories of dismal, boring history texts in high school and college still haunt this reviewer’s mind. There­ fore, to see Dr. Robinson’s book was a revelation in itself; to read it was to banish the ghosts of those earlier unfortunate volumes. Really good book -design has only slowly affected the appearance of scholarly books and classroom texts, and much credit for progress in this area should be given to university presses. This publication by the University of Nebraska Press, for example, indicates the degree to which good writing can be enhanced when the publisher applies the principles of artistic design and good bookmaking to a fine manuscript. The striking pictorial jacket, the gold-imprinted green fabric covers, the green line-drawings in the text, the maps on the end papers, and the line-spaced composition all attract and bind the reader closer to the author in an intimate communication. The publisher’s achievement in graphic arts would have been largely wasted, however, had not Dr. Robinson been more than a research scholar. He is professor of history and former department chairman at the University of North Dakota, and he has spent more than twenty years researching and 80 Western American Literature preparing this study, the first such by a professional historian. Yet more im­ portant, for its effect on his manuscript, is his thirty years as an active and interested state resident; for even though he has adhered to the professional historian’s high standard of -scholarship, his affection for the state and its people has caused him to produce a very human document, the style and language of which result in absorbing reading for all who might be drawn to the book. Dr. Robinson based his study on two keys which he says give form and meaning to the story of how a modern civilized society was carved out of the wilderness of the Northern Great Plains: first, the context of historical move­ ments in Europe and North America during which North Dakota was ex­ plored, settled, and developed; and second, North Dakota’s geographical location and the various ways in which that location influenced the course of events within the state. The second key, more important than the first according to the author, suggests six themes of which one or more relate to every event in the state’s history: remoteness, dependence, economic disad­ vantage, agrarian redicalism, the “Too-Much Mistake” (trying to do too much too fast with too little), and adaptation to environment. On the...