Winter 2017 Issue of The Annals of Iowa Now Available

Marvin Bergman Discussion

The Winter 2017 issue of The Annals of Iowa is now available.

In one feature article, JERRY HARRINGTON, an independent historian, narrates the effort by Harold E. Hughes—in his campaign for governor in 1962 and during his first year in office—to legalize liquor by the drink in Iowa. Harrington situates the debate as the culmination of more than a century of political conflict in Iowa over access to alcohol. This “last liquor battle” in Iowa also marked the rising influence of Iowa’s urban interests after the longtime dominance of the state’s political life by rural interests.

In another feature article, KEITH OREJEL, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Mis­souri, describes the origins of the Iowa Development Commission (IDC) during and after World War II. He shows how the IDC, the first perma­nent state agency dedicated pri­marily to promoting industrialization in the state, marked an important institutional breakthrough in the history of govern­ment sponsorship of rural industrialization, and he argues that the emer­gence of the IDC was directly linked to the agricultural transformation occurring in the state during those years. 

A third article, by WILSON J. WARREN, professor and chair of the Department of History at Western Michigan University, shows how, as Local 1 of the United Pack­ing­house Workers of America in Ottumwa moved beyond plant bargaining into a larger political struggle for greater power in local and state politics after World War II, it helped spur a transformation of Iowa’s political culture from solid Republicanism to competitive two-party status.

The usual set of book reviews includes reviews of books about "the last big animals of the Great Plains," state constitutional conventions in Iowa and the Old Northwest, Ioway reservation life and reform, the temperance battle in Minnesota, Coxey's Army, correspondence of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the letters, diary, and artwork of a World War I Corporal in Europe, railroading in Illinois, the Jefferson Highway, the Nonpartisan League, the New Deal, food policy protests during the Great Depression, Christianity and the American working class, Thomas Hart Benton, Des Moines architecture, writers workshops under Wallace Stegner and Paul Engle, and University of Iowa wrestling coach Dan Gable.

For more information, to purchase this issue, or to subscribe to The Annals of Iowa, contact Marvin Bergman at Marvin-Bergman@uiowa.edu .