Project MUSE®: Michigan Historical Review - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/775
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Michigan Historical Review.daily12026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 32 (2006) through current issueLatest Articles: Michigan Historical ReviewTWOProject MUSE®Michigan Historical Review2327-96720890-1686Latest articles in Michigan Historical Review. Feed provided by Project MUSE®From the Editor in Chief
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988101
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It has been a quarter of a century since I was a student minoring in history at Grand Valley State University. If I had it to do all over again, I would have majored in history rather than in English language and literature, but hindsight is 20/20. I remember several of my history classes with fondness. I particularly enjoyed US Intellectual History, during which we unpacked the documents and speeches that shaped our nation. I was deeply moved by my class on the Holocaust. But my favorite class by far was a 12-credit honors course called Classical World, in which we studied the history, art, architecture, philosophy, and literature of the Greek and Roman worlds in great depth.I only have circumstantial evidence to
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/775/image/coversmallFrom the Editor in Chief2026-04-22text/htmlen-USFrom the Editor in Chief2026-04-222026TWOProject MUSE®35642026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-22Introduction
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988102
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The Spring 2026 issue of The Michigan Historical Review includes two research articles, one research note, the winner of our 2025 Graduate Student Essay Contest, and critical reviews of recent books exploring a range of topics in Michigan history.The issue begins with an insightful research note on a unique Michigan archival document: an 1878 letter famed naturalist Charles Darwin wrote to Michigan State University Professor of Botany and Horticulture William James Beal. As Danita Brandt notes in "The Beal-Darwin Correspondence and Michigan State University's Agricultural Research Heritage," the letter is a point of pride for MSU, as few universities outside New England can make a similar claim. Brandt argues
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/775/image/coversmallIntroduction2026-04-22text/htmlen-USIntroduction2026-04-222026TWOProject MUSE®64862026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-22The Beal-Darwin Correspondence and Michigan State University's Agricultural Research Heritage
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988103
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Michigan State University (MSU) is justifiably proud of its direct connection to the famous naturalist Charles Darwin through an 1878 letter Darwin sent to MSU Botanist William J. Beal, today preserved in MSU's Archives.1 Few universities outside New England can make this claim. The Darwin MSU letter is a reply from the famous naturalist to an earlier letter from Beal, and its content reflects the shared botanical interests of the two experimentalists. However, in the absence of additional context, previous interpreters of the letter have misattributed Beal's motive in writing to Darwin and the subject of their exchange. Beal is most widely known today for his work on corn hybridization; for years, readers of the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/775/image/coversmallThe Beal-Darwin Correspondence and Michigan State University's Agricultural Research Heritage2026-04-22text/htmlen-USThe Beal-Darwin Correspondence and Michigan State University's Agricultural Research Heritage2026-04-222026TWOProject MUSE®529152026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-22Pursuing Her Dream: Evangeline Lindbergh and Her First Trip to Minnesota
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988104
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The S.S. North Land departed Detroit on Wednesday, August 29, 1900, at 4:30 p.m. and, at reduced speed, headed east up the Detroit River. From the upper deck, a young woman may have stood among the other passengers and watched her hometown—the place she'd spent nearly all her twenty-four years—slip behind her. Belle Isle, the summer vacationing spot of her youth, and Grosse Pointe Park, where one of her wealthy uncles lived, soon passed, too, as the steamship, increasing speed, turned northeast and headed out across Lake St. Clair. Soon, all sight of her beloved city fell behind. Ahead lay a strange new world, but with the sun also setting behind her, she would not see much more of it before dark. Instead, she
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/775/image/coversmallPursuing Her Dream: Evangeline Lindbergh and Her First Trip to Minnesota2026-04-22text/htmlen-USPursuing Her Dream: Evangeline Lindbergh and Her First Trip to Minnesota2026-04-222026TWOProject MUSE®457762026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-22Big Doings All the Time: The History of the House of David's Amusement Park, 1908–1975
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988105
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During the 1920s, the House of David's Eden Springs Amusement Park placed advertisements in Michigan newspapers proclaiming "Big Doings All the Time!" at the popular tourist destination. This sentiment remained true for most of the park's history. The House of David's amusement park in Benton Harbor was a premier tourist destination in Southwestern Michigan for almost seventy years, and the park played a key role in creating the region's thriving summer tourist economy. The park was just one of the many profitable business ventures started by the religious commune to support its membership. While not its most profitable business, the park was by far the House of David's most high-profile endeavor. Along with the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/775/image/coversmallBig Doings All the Time: The History of the House of David's Amusement Park, 1908–19752026-04-22text/htmlen-USBig Doings All the Time: The History of the House of David's Amusement Park, 1908–19752026-04-222026TWOProject MUSE®2805022026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-22Matrons and Moonshine: Alternate Paths of Empowerment in Prohibition-Era Michigan
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988106
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On March 15, 1917—at a time when twenty-six states had already voted to outlaw the trafficking of liquor—the newsletter of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) printed a poem titled "When Dad Voted for Prohibition." Likely written from a daughter's perspective, it begins with her father apologizing to her mother for his past misuse of alcohol: "Oh, forgive me, dear, forgive me / For I turned that gold [hair] to gray." The long-suffering mother exclaims with joy upon learning that her husband plans to vote for liquor restrictions.1In the decades of activism leading up to the 1919 ratification of the US Constitution's Eighteenth Amendment, national prohibition, the WCTU consistently portrayed the prohibition
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/775/image/coversmallMatrons and Moonshine: Alternate Paths of Empowerment in Prohibition-Era Michigan2026-04-22text/htmlen-USMatrons and Moonshine: Alternate Paths of Empowerment in Prohibition-Era Michigan2026-04-222026TWOProject MUSE®1045012026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-22Warriors for Liberty: William Dollarson & Michigan's Civil War African Americans by Jack Dempsey (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988107
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The Michigan Civil War Association's latest volume, Warriors for Liberty: William Dollarson & Michigan's Civil War African Americans, offers an important corrective to the "scurrilous meme developed in Civil War historiography that 'slaves were freed without any effort of their own'" (107). It chronicles the story of Black Michiganders' long-standing pursuit of full-fledged citizenship rights that began during the state's earliest years in the Union. The volume is especially strong in its focus on the activities of Michiganders in the Underground Railroad; the state's proximity to Canada made it vitally important to refugees' pursuit of freedom after the implementation of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act that left
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/775/image/coversmallWarriors for Liberty: William Dollarson & Michigan's Civil War African Americans by Jack Dempsey (review)2026-04-22text/htmlen-USWarriors for Liberty: William Dollarson & Michigan's Civil War African Americans by Jack Dempsey (review)2026-04-222026TWOProject MUSE®58752026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-22Stains in the Sand: The History and Archaeology of Fort Gratiot, Michigan's Forgotten Post on the Northern Frontier by Bruce R. Hawkins and Richard B. Stamps (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988108
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Stains in the Sand: The History and Archaeology of Fort Gratiot, Michigan's Forgotten Post on the Northern Frontier by Bruce R. Hawkins and Richard B. Stamps is a welcome, in-depth account of the research conducted over the past fifty years at the fort. Though occupied on and off from 1814 to 1879, Fort Gratiot, as the title indicates, is often left out of conversations when discussing Michigan's rich history. By carefully analyzing hundreds of historical documents, including diaries, inventories, invoices, letters, maps, and reports, as well as the approximately 50,000 artifacts recovered during excavations, the authors guide readers through the history of the fort while focusing on the people who once lived
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/775/image/coversmallStains in the Sand: The History and Archaeology of Fort Gratiot, Michigan's Forgotten Post on the Northern Frontier by Bruce R. Hawkins and Richard B. Stamps (review)2026-04-22text/htmlen-USStains in the Sand: The History and Archaeology of Fort Gratiot, Michigan's Forgotten Post on the Northern Frontier by Bruce R. Hawkins and Richard B. Stamps (review)2026-04-222026TWOProject MUSE®51252026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-22A Place in Common: Rethinking the History of Early Detroit ed. by Karen L. Marrero and Andrew K. Sturtevant (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988109
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The engaging essays in A Place in Common remind us that Detroit's recent resurgence as a post-industrial space is just the latest in the city's continual reinvention. Building on Richard White's foundational The Middle Ground and recent borderlands histories, editors Karen L. Marrero and Andrew Sturtevant persuasively argue that early Detroit's inhabitants and historians repeatedly reshaped and reimagined the city of the straits, creating "successive Detroits" that could never erase their predecessors (xvi). As such, these chapters reveal how those who imagined and inhabited Detroit have made it "a place in common," where people could capitalize on—and cement their place in—its multilayered history (10).The book is
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/775/image/coversmallA Place in Common: Rethinking the History of Early Detroit ed. by Karen L. Marrero and Andrew K. Sturtevant (review)2026-04-22text/htmlen-USA Place in Common: Rethinking the History of Early Detroit ed. by Karen L. Marrero and Andrew K. Sturtevant (review)2026-04-222026TWOProject MUSE®60442026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-22Teamsters Metropolis by Ryan Patrick Murphy (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988110
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Ryan Patrick Murphy's Teamsters Metropolis is an ambitious, wide-ranging reappraisal of how the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, its leaders—including Jimmy Hoffa—and its membership fit into US history during the first two decades after World War II. Murphy focuses largely on metro Detroit, with excursions to Teamster-owned vacation properties in Miami Beach and to New York City and Levittown, the mass-produced, suburban community on Long Island.Murphy highlights the hugely successful organizing by the Teamsters during the 1950s with employers and owners of small businesses in the emerging service sector, for example bars, vending machine operators, jukebox providers, and beer distributorships. Their methods
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/775/image/coversmallTeamsters Metropolis by Ryan Patrick Murphy (review)2026-04-22text/htmlen-USTeamsters Metropolis by Ryan Patrick Murphy (review)2026-04-222026TWOProject MUSE®57922026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-22Big Time: The History of Big Ten Basketball, 1972-1992 by Murry R. Nelson (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988111
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Murry Nelson has written on a wide variety of basketball topics, ranging from the well-known to the esoteric. His 2005 book on NBA legend Bill Russell covers the former, while his 2009 work profiling the National Basketball League, an NBA forerunner that operated from 1935 to 1949, satisfies the latter. In addition to these professional basketball subjects, he has also chronicled the college game with the 2016 book Big Ten Basketball, 1943-1972.Big Time… is a detailed continuation of his previous work on the conference and provides a year-to-year survey of each Big Ten season from 1972 to 1992. Primarily drawn from the pages of the Chicago Tribune, a publication the author notes as the "mouthpiece of the Big Ten,"
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/775/image/coversmallBig Time: The History of Big Ten Basketball, 1972-1992 by Murry R. Nelson (review)2026-04-22text/htmlen-USBig Time: The History of Big Ten Basketball, 1972-1992 by Murry R. Nelson (review)2026-04-222026TWOProject MUSE®54622026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-22To Your Posts! Fort Meigs in the War of 1812 through the Voices of Those Who Fought There by Larry L. Nelson (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988112
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It would come as a great surprise to Daniel Cushing, captain of US Artillery, that the war in which he fought would be remembered only for being forgotten. Cushing provides the book its title, To Your Posts; it was his exhortation to fellow soldiers to mind the attention of the country. To Your Posts is the view of the War of 1812 as seen from the walls of Fort Meigs, a lonely American bastion in Ohio. Here, soldiers fought, labored, and endured weather and disease. Many kept personal or professional records.The records make up the bulk of To Your Posts, collected by Dr. Larry L. Nelson, the longtime site director of the Fort Meigs Historic Site. They are a survey of (mostly) American fighting men: soldiers and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/775/image/coversmallTo Your Posts! Fort Meigs in the War of 1812 through the Voices of Those Who Fought There by Larry L. Nelson (review)2026-04-22text/htmlen-USTo Your Posts! Fort Meigs in the War of 1812 through the Voices of Those Who Fought There by Larry L. Nelson (review)2026-04-222026TWOProject MUSE®53802026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-22The Wizard of Mecosta: Russell Kirk, Gothic Fiction, and the Moral Imagination by Camilo Peralta (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988113
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The Michigan native Russell Kirk achieved fame and influence early in his career. In 1953, he published The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Santayana, which grafted the American Right onto a tradition of Anglo-American conservative thought originating with Edmund Burke and helped launch the post-World War II conservative movement. With the book's success, Kirk resigned his teaching position at the Michigan State College of Agriculture and Applied Science (his alma mater) and purchased a home in sparsely populated Mecosta, Michigan. From this base, he wrote a column on education for the National Review, maintained a syndicated newspaper column, and published hundreds of essays and books. Ironically, Kirk's greatest
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/775/image/coversmallThe Wizard of Mecosta: Russell Kirk, Gothic Fiction, and the Moral Imagination by Camilo Peralta (review)2026-04-22text/htmlen-USThe Wizard of Mecosta: Russell Kirk, Gothic Fiction, and the Moral Imagination by Camilo Peralta (review)2026-04-222026TWOProject MUSE®63052026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-22Robert Franklin Williams Speaks: A Documentary History ed. by Ronald J. Stephens (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988114
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Ronald J. Stephens's book on Robert Williams introduces readers who may only be familiar with Williams through the narrow frames of Black Power in the United States to the breadth of Williams's public political life. Organized by geography and chronology, readers follow a trail of primary sources that trace Williams's movements from Monroe, North Carolina, to Havana, Cuba; Peking, China; and back to Michigan cities of Detroit, Ann Arbor, and Baldwin. His political world comes into focus in ways that raise new questions about Black politics in the post-WWII period. Central to that world is his political partnership with his wife, Mabel Williams, and the book starts with a robust introduction to the Williamses'
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/775/image/coversmallRobert Franklin Williams Speaks: A Documentary History ed. by Ronald J. Stephens (review)2026-04-22text/htmlen-USRobert Franklin Williams Speaks: A Documentary History ed. by Ronald J. Stephens (review)2026-04-222026TWOProject MUSE®62402026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-22Concrete Century: Julius Kahn and the Construction Revolution by Michael G. Smith (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988115
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The elusive figure of Julius Kahn and his company, the Trussed Concrete Steel Company (later "Truscon"), have long awaited exploration. Like other important structural engineers in history, Kahn built for many named architects without receiving credit or fame. In factory construction, trimmed to essentials, the omission of engineers from the historical record is a serious one. Yet the Truscon system was not limited to factories; enormous buildings like the 1913 reconstruction of the Victoria National Library in Melbourne and the Ubudiah Mosque in Kuala Kansar, Malaysia (also 1913) were also built with Truscon technology, and Charles and Ray Eames' famous Case Study House #8 is "a Truscon building." Yet we know
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/775/image/coversmallConcrete Century: Julius Kahn and the Construction Revolution by Michael G. Smith (review)2026-04-22text/htmlen-USConcrete Century: Julius Kahn and the Construction Revolution by Michael G. Smith (review)2026-04-222026TWOProject MUSE®67562026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-22