Three History Recommended Reads

Submitted for your consideration are three books of history. The first two relate to Wisconsin and both involve the UW's Frederick Jackson Turner Professor of History William Cronon. The third, being about the decline of British aristocracy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, doesn't.

By the way, this entry is similar, but better than the original post over on Monona Doug.

Wisconsin's Past and Present: A Historical Atlas by Wisconsin Cartographers' Guild with an Introduction by William Cronon. An astonishingly excellent collection of maps. Most of the maps are the creation of six Wisconsin cartographers that are uniquely insightful.

The atlas is particularly strong on ethnic histories. Just an example, the series of maps on the native nations of Wisconsin helped me understand - at last - where the tribes came from and where they lived in Wisconsin.

You can sample the book on Google Books.

(One disappointment is the woefully inadequate & inaccurate assessment of railroads in the state.)

***

Cronon authored my second recommendation:

Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991).

I've pitched this book before. It's a great read. If you live in the Upper Midwest and you have any interest in the area's history, you really have to read this book. Cronon explains by topical study how we got from such a foreign 'then' to the familiar present.

The cover is part of a magnificent lithograph of Chicago made in 1857 by Christian Inger based on a drawing by I.T. Palmatary. Click over to the Encyclopedia of Chicago to see this and other marvelous maps (and anything you want to know about that great city's history).


 
The book won just a few prizes.

Bancroft Prize for 1992



Chicago Tribune's Heartland Prize for best non-fiction work of 1991



One of three nominees for the Pulitzer Prize in History, 1992



George Perkins Marsh Prize for 1992 for Best Book in Environmental History published in 1990 or 1991 given by American Society for Environmental History



Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Award for 1993 for the best book in forest and conservation history published in 1991 or 1992 given by the Forest History Society



Award for Outstanding Achievement Recognition to Nature's Metropolis by the Wisconsin Library Association Literary Awards Committee



Honorable Mention for 1992 to Nature's Metropolis in the John Hope Franklin Prize competition, American Studies Association

Geographic Society of Chicago Publication Award for 1991



A review:

http://www.duke.edu/~ekb6/Review,%20Nature's%20Metropolis-3.pdf


A critical assessment of the book.

A study guide for the book.

***

My third offering is The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy by David Cannadine. This intensely factual forms around a simple thesis: The British aristocracy plunged from the top of the world primarily because of the collapse of agricultural prices in the 19th century (circa 1880) and secondarily, the almost concomitant extension of suffrage to ever greater numbers of common people. The British aristocracy was a landed elite. Their wealth was almost entirely in the value of their lands for agriculture and the rents the lands could generate. I found the simplicity of the explanation very attractive; how many big things are really just that simple?

As described here:

In 1880, Cannadine informs us, the members of the British aristocracy (which he defines as landholders with 1,000 acres or more) were the "lords of the earth." They were a tiny minority, only 7,000 families in a country of millions. Yet this "tough, tenacious, and resourceful elite" owned four-fifths of the land in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

Cannadine richly details the various ways in which the decline manifested itself. The fall was swift - it started and was completed within the span of a single lifetime. They had to sell, sell land, sell art, sell houses, sell it all. (When the going gets Toff, the Toffs get selling.)

At times the meticulous exhaustive detail can get to be a bit much, but the occasional skimming along to the next topic is permitted. His accomplishment is collecting such a vast amount of information, compiling it, and still managing to present it in an interesting the fashion.

One wonders why anyone would bother to write another book on the topic.


More books by Cannadine.