The Future City on the Inland Sea: A History of Imaginative Geographies of Lake Superior by Eric D. Olmanson (review)

Book Reviews 151 about the American experience. Sadly, Jim McGarrah's new memoir, A Temporary Sort ofPeace, while engagingly written, does none of these. McGarrah's tale follows a narrative most readers will find familiar: He chronicles growing up in rural Indiana; the complicated relationship he had with his father and his decision to enlist in the Marine Corps after flunking out of college; his harrowing time in combat, around the time of the 1968 Tet Offensive; and his roller coaster return to "the world," including a nightmarish experience at a VA hospital and a torturous addiction to various drugs. Sadly, the section of the book with the greatest potential to break new ground is also the shortest part of A Temporary Sort ofPeace. In his concluding chapter, McGarrah travels back to Vietnam to confront his past. This has become an increasingly common journey for American vets, but it has rarely been documented, much less by someone with McGarrah's talents. Yet this original section is all too brief, and the book ends rather abruptiy at this point. For many veterans, writing has been a means to both find their voices and confront their demons. And although the period during which Vietnam veterans were "silenced" has long since passed, they should nevertheless continue to be encouraged to write, speak, and share their stories. If we are to take these stories seriously as literary and historical writing, however, they must be evaluated not just for their cathartic potential, but for their significance and originality as well. In these respects, McGarrah's book falls short. Ed Martini Western Michigan University Eric D. Olmanson. The Future City on the Inland Sea: A History of Imaginative Geographies ofLake Superior. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2007. Pp. 276. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Cloth, $27.00. If you are looking for a fine piece of scholarship that elegandy melds historical geography and environmental history, or if you are just looking for a new and interesting work on Great Lakes history, especially one relating to Lake Superior, this is your book. In The Future City on the Inland Sea, Eric Olmanson examines changing perspectives of the southern shore of Lake Superior using "a narrative-descriptive approach, most eloquendy advocated by geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, to show how language played a crucial role in 152 Michigan Historical Review place creation in the vicinity of Chequamegon Bay" (p. 12). Using an interesting collection of travel narratives, geological surveys, newspapers, and booster literature, complemented by an assortment of maps, illustrations, photographs, and advertisements, Olmanson highlights how the Lake Superior environment was imagined by successive generations and how such imaginings helped to shape the development of the region over time. At first glance, one might describe this book as a regional geography, but Olmanson points out that it actually "does not start with a region." He suggests instead that his study "begins with something less defined: space or territory sought by explorers under government, commercial, or scientific sponsorship" (p. 16). Focusing primarily on the nineteenth century, Olmanson divides his book into two parts. The first part, the author admits, is "more about moving through space than about being in place" (p. 14). Following early to mid-nineteenth-century explorers and surveyors along Lake Superior's southern shore, Olmanson reveals how the explorers viewed the landscape through lenses tinted by romantic ideals, whereas later surveyors were influenced more by scientific principles. In the second half of the book, we move from space to place, notably Chequamegon Bay, and thus witness the attempts of various boosters (including Andrew Jackson Turner, father of the noted historian Frederick Jackson Turner) paradoxically to promote the region as "a future metropolis" while simultaneously advertising the area as awilderness escape from the ills of urban America. Beautifully written and well researched, Olmanson's study, which began life as a dissertation, creatively portrays how regions are conceptualized, reconceptualized, and ultimately realized. In addition, it is amuch-needed examination of the Lake Superior environment that charts the process of placemaking in the Great Lakes basin. Anyone who specializes in the history of the Great Lakes or midwestern history should read this book. And anyone who wants an admirable model of how...