New Book Outlines Immigrant's Tale

Born into the Mexican Revolution, Maria Perez entered an arranged marriage at age fourteen to Miguel Arredondo. The couple and their tiny daughter immigrated to the United States in the 1920s, living in a boxcar while Miguel worked for a Texas railroad and eventually settling in East Chicago, Indiana, where Miguel worked for Inland Steel.

Their true story, which is featured in the new IHS Press book Maria's Journey, written by Ramón Arredondo and Trisha (Hull) Arredondo, includes much of early-twentieth-century America: the rise of unions, the plunge into the Great Depression, the patriotism of World War II, and the starkness of McCarthyism. It is flavored by delivery men hawking fruit and ice, street sports, and Saturday matinees that began with newsreels. Immigration status colors every scene, adding to their story deportation and citizenship, generational problems unique to new immigrants, and a miraculous message of hope.

Ramón Arredondo’s career has spanned the fields of law enforcement, administration, public policy, and business. Currently, he serves as a commissioner of the Ports of Indiana. Trisha (Hull) Arredondo began her career as an educator before becoming a successful advocate for health care and education for women, children, and migrants.

Maria's Journey costs $19.95. The paperback book is available from the IHS's History Market.

Interview with Beer Book Author

A Bloomington-based independent journalist and writer, Douglas A. Wissing, author of the new IHS Press book Indiana: One Pint at a Time; A Traveler's Guide to Indiana's Breweries, brings some family history to his work detailing the history and culture of the Hoosier State's brewing history. Wissing is a descendant of nineteenth-century Indiana-German brewers. In the following interview, Wissing, who has covered the war in Afghanistan, reflects on his experiences writing about Indiana's brewing past and present.

Did you know much about the history of beer in Indiana before you began your research for Indiana: One Pint at a Time?

From growing up in southern Indiana, I had experience with later industrial beers brewed in Evansville, Fort Wayne, and South Bend, and knew about some of the historical breweries dotted around the state, including one called Hack and Simon in my hometown of Vincennes, where there are still some old brewery buildings. But not much beyond that.

When I began research on the book, it was a big shock to eventually figure out that more than 500 breweries have operated in the Hoosier State since the Harmonists began the Indiana brewing tradition in 1816.

Were there any individuals in Indiana’s early beer history that caught your attention?

Some of the pioneer brewers captured my fancy: George Bentel, the German utopianist who was the brewer for the Harmonist communards in New Harmony. He was the first brewer in Indiana, and his house still stands on Brewery Street in New Harmony. It was very cool to track down one of his recipes, which the Brewers of Indiana Guild--today's organization of Hoosier craft brewers--used for their "replicale" for this year. About ten craft brewers around the state brewed Bentel's recipe for a dark lager, so as part of the book kick-off, Hoosiers can drink Indiana's First Beer this summer.

There was another early brewer who was associated with the second New Harmony communal experiment that followed the progressive ideas of Robert Owen. His name was Hew Ainslie, who was an iconoclastic Scottish poet who'd followed his dream to frontier of Indiana. He became a well-regarded brewer in New Albany, while continuing to parse the poesy of his years on the Wabash River.

And of course there was Ezra Boswell, a one-eyed Quaker brewer who opened Indiana's second brewery in Richmond in late 1817. Boswell learned his trade in Great Britain, before migrating to the Quaker town.

Beyond being a brewer and father of eleven children, Boswell was a town leader, as the citizens elected him as town clerk and later onto the board of trustees. Richmond was a straight-laced town, so there was some "tongues of slander" when it became known the trustees were drinking Boswell's brews at town expense.

How much traveling did you do to research microbreweries now in the state?

Oh, I wandered all over the place. Beyond my trips to research archives and locales about historical breweries, I visited all the contemporary craft brewery operating in the state at the time--almost three dozen at this point. This is the most breweries operating in Indiana since Prohibition.

Was there anything that surprised you about beer in Indiana during your research?

I had a funny experience down in Vincennes, where I descended from French and Alsatian-German stock. I was in the public library looking at an early-20th-century county history, the type that include biographies and engraved photos of the leading businessmen and professionals of the day. It is a good source of information on historic breweries, as they were often one of the major industries in town. I was looking for info on the Hack and Simon Brewery, which was a big regional player with a brewery that stretched a couple of blocks long near what is today the Vincennes University campus.

I was flipping through this hundred-year-old county history, when I suddenly encountered a photo of my father--or so I first thought. After I got over the disjuncture of seeing what I thought was a totally impossible picture, I learned it was a picture of my great-grandfather John Ebner. (They always said my long-deceased father looked like the Ebner side of the family.) As I read the bio, I realized John Ebner was the founder of the Hack and Simon brewery, first naming Eagle Brewery before leasing it to Hack and Simon. I never knew he was a brewer, though he had a mansion in Vincennes, which was typical for the Indiana-German brewers of the heyday of lager brewing. I learned John Ebner was an Alsatian, who'd served in the French Foreign Legion in Africa before immigrating here. Made me think I came by both my wanderlust and love of beer honestly.

Have you ever tried to homebrew?

I believe I am one of the worst homebrewers ever. I have brewed horrible beer--beer so bad not even my son's post-college rock-and-roll band, Johnny Socko, would drink it. Those guys would drink any virtually free beer, so it was a real sign that I needed to stick to writing about beer, rather than trying to actually brew it. I think the world is a better place for that decision.

What is your favorite Indiana beer?

I'm not being coy when I say I don't have a favorite Indiana beer. There are just a lot of great beers being brewed across the state. Many folks know that the Three Floyds Brewery in Munster, Indiana, was rated the top brewery in the world, as well as having their Dark Lord imperial stout being ranked as the world's best beer. But that's just the start. Hoosier brewers up and down the state are brewing world-class beer--and getting recognized for it. And we get to drink it right here.

IHS Press Releases New Beer Book

Indiana: One Pint at a Time; A Traveler's Guide to Indiana's Breweries, just released from the Indiana Historical Society Press and written by Douglas A. Wissing, explores the history and living artisanal culture of the state's long, vibrant brewing tradition.

Using regional, ethnic, and commercial lens, the text depicts the early-nineteenth-century origins of Indiana's commercial breweries, through the early-twentieth-century heyday when forty-one Hoosier breweries hustled beer, to the mid-twentieth-century consolidation and decline.

The book focuses on Indiana brewing's remarkable post-1989 renaissance. Today more than thirty breweries produce award-winning craft microbrews across the state. Indiana: One Pint at a Time provides a travel guide to these craft breweries, interweaving their stories with Indiana architecture, ethnicity, and regional specificity, connecting the dynamics of today with the luster of the past.

Wissing is a Bloomington-based independent journalist and author. A descendant of nineteenth-century Indiana-German brewers, he has written articles for numerous publications and is the author of the book Pioneer in Tibet. Wissing has reported widely on the war in Afghanistan, including radio work for BBC and the Indiana NPR network.

Indiana: One Pint at a Time costs $24.95. The paperback book is available from the IHS's History Market.

Interview with Fall Creek Massacre Author

Chairman of the Department of History and Political Science at Anderson University, David Thomas Murphy teaches courses in Western Civilization, Modern German history, the history of modern Europe, and the history of the Holocaust and comparative genocides. Murphy tackles a different subject in his new book Murder in Their Hearts: The Fall Creek Massacre. In the following interview he explains how he came to write about this tragic incident in Indiana's pioneer past.

How did you get interested in writing about the Fall Creek Massacre?

Through my work as a teacher of history here at Anderson University. One of the courses I teach regularly is called "Historical Inquiry", and it's designed to get our advanced history majors working on topics that use primary research materials. One of the most accessible ways to do that, in my experience, is to have students complete either a genealogical or local history project, and I always require that. A few years ago, one of my students in the course who came from the Pendleton area did his project on the Fall Creek Massacre.

I am originally from northern Illinois, and had never heard of the Massacre. The paper really intrigued me, and when I looked for more information on the episode, I didn't find much. There was Jessamyn West's novel, and there were a few articles, but no archivally-based, book-length study. And that was the beginning of the project. (And, yes, I do thank that student in the preface.)

In doing your research, did anything surprise you about the event?

A couple of things surprised me. One was the variety and complexity of the attitudes held toward Native Americans by the settlers of the early white Indiana community. There were of course a few truly racist Indian haters, and that didn't surprise me so much. But I have come to believe that such unalloyed hostility was anything but the norm. Most of the whites, so far as their feelings are today discernible, seem to have regarded their native neighbors with mingled respect, fear, suspicion, tolerance and at times sympathy for a people whom many believed had been treated cruelly by fate. John Johnston, the Indian agent in the area, for example, had a deep respect for the nobility of character he believed he saw in many of his charges, while never romanticizing them or ignoring their sometimes fearsome cruelty in battle.

I was also surprised by the sophistication of the land speculation business on the frontier. Every settler of any means was deeply committed to the steady appreciation of land values--investment in land was the stock market of that time and place - and the steps taken to exploit (and manipulate) that generator of wealth seemed like they could have been taken from the headlines of the last few years.

The unreliable nature of frontier record-keeping took some getting used to as well. I have done two previous books on aspects of modern German history, so I know that error creeps into the official record at times. But I still found in early county records a casual disregard for getting basic facts straight that surprised me.

How hard was it to reconcile the conflicting accounts of the event?

Sometimes it was not hard at all. For example, it was pretty easy to use contemporary newspaper accounts, which were carefully dated, of course, to figure what dates in the transcripts were accurate and which had to be incorrect.

Other times it was very difficult, and could finally be resolved only by making judgments about what seemed most plausible. A dozen conflicting accounts of the tribal origins of the victims of the Massacre are out there, and sometimes the same witness will identify them as of one tribal group at one time and as of a different group later. So, I had to take the results of modern anthropological research about who was most likely to have been here in numbers at the time, consider that with the testimony of the earliest and most knowledgeable sources, and try to decide where the truth seemed most probably to lie. I believe I came up with a defensible and plausible solution, but there is no way to say, categorically, that my view on this, or some similar matters, is the right one.

Were there books or authors that you drew upon for inspiration as you wrote your book?

While I was working on this book, Larry McMurtry, whose writings I admire, published a book called "O, What a Slaughter", about interracial violence in the Old West. That book gave me some ideas about how a person might present such events in a way that was historically accurate, and appealing to readers who, while not experts, are discriminating, perceptive and educated. I relied a lot upon the Indiana histories of Barnhart and Carmony, upon James Madison's Indiana Way, and Drew Cayton's Frontier Indiana. And I think anyone interested in writing regional history that is accurate, sophisticated, and written with verve can do a lot worse than consider John Bartlow Martin's Indiana: An Interpretation.

What is your next project?

I am working on two books now. One is a study of Jewish and Catholic interfaith relations in the West over the last two centuries. It is really just in the beginning stages, and relates to some earlier research I have done in German history. The other is a book about literature and education tentatively entitled "The Twenty-First Century Mind-Diet." We'll see what happens with that.

IHS Press Releases Book on Fall Creek Massacre

In March of 1824 a group of angry and intoxicated settlers brutally murdered nine Indians camped along a tributary of Fall Creek. The carnage was recounted in lurid detail in the contemporary press and the events that followed sparked a national sensation.

As author David Thomas Murphy notes in the new IHS Press book Murder in Their Hearts: The Fall Creek Massacre, although violence between settlers and Native Americans was not unusual in the Old Northwest Territory during the early nineteenth century, in this particular incident the white men responsible for the murders were singled out and hunted down, brought to trial, convicted by a jury of their neighbors, and, for the first time under American law, sentenced to death and executed for the murder of Native Americans.

In the aftermath of the slayings, federal and state authorities perhaps motivated more by the encouragement of economic growth and the preservation of regional security than a commitment to justice for the victims, nevertheless, were determined to maintain the fragile peace of interracial coexistence. Their success in doing so proved to be local, temporary, and imperfect.

Murphy is chair of the Department of History and Political Science at Anderson University, where he also serves as codirector of the University Honors Program. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Illinois. His previous works include The Heroic Earth: Geopolitical Thought in Weimar Germany, 1918-1933 (1997) and German Exploration of the Polar World, 1870-1940 (2002).

Murder in Their Hearts costs $13.95 and is available from the IHS History Market.

IHS Author Television Interview

IHS Press author Norbert Krapf, Indiana's Poet Laureate, was interviewed last week by WISH-TV, Channel 8, in Indianapolis.

In the interview, Krapf discusses his recent article in the spring 2010 issue of the IHS Press popular history magazine Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History detailing his decision to return to Indiana from Long Island, New York, and the writing of his memoir The Ripest Moments: A Southern Indiana Childhood, published by the IHS Press in 2008.

Juvenile Fiction Book Honored

The IHS Press book By Freedom’s Light, written by Elizabeth O’Maley, won an honorable mention honor in the juvenile fiction category in ForeWord Reviews 2009 Book of the Year Awards. ForeWord named 201 Book of the Year Award winners in 60 categories at a ceremony Wednesday, May 26, at BookExpo America in New York City. These books, representing the best independently published works from 2009, were selected by a panel of librarian and bookseller judges.

ForeWord’s founder and publisher, Victoria Sutherland, spoke at the awards ceremony and announced the winners. “This year more than ever before, we heard from the judges how great the finalist books were and how difficult it was to make their decisions,” she said. “Despite this tough economy, independent publishers are producing some of the best books out there, and we are happy to honor them today.”

By Freedom’s Light, a historical novel for grades four and up, examines both the harshness of a slave society and the brave acts of people who helped slaves find freedom.

Thirteen-year-old Sarah Caldwell is an unhappy Indiana pioneer. She misses her sister, Rachel, who stayed behind in North Carolina. Worse yet, their widowed father has married a Quaker schoolteacher, whom Sarah discovers is a secret abolitionist. When Rachel and her family arrive for a visit, Sarah is overjoyed. Rachel brings Polly, a slave girl, with her. As Polly and Sarah become friends, Sarah questions her beliefs about slavery. Soon she is faced with a life-altering decision.

IHS Press Book Wins National Book Honor

IHS Press author Jim McGarrah's 2007 book, A Temporary Sort of Peace: A Memoir of Vietnam, has won the Legacy Nonfiction Prize for 2010 from the Eric Hoffer Award for Short Prose and Independent Books.

Titles in the Legacy Nonfiction category are nonfiction books more than two years of age that hold particular relevance to any subject matter or art form. Unlike many in the industry, the Eric Hoffer Award believes "good books last longer than one season."

"Eric Hoffer was a great American philosopher," said McGarrah. "His foundation honors, in their own words, 'independent publishers and authors who who write and release extraordinary books to little or no recognition.' To have received the Legacy Nonfiction Award for 2010 gives me the encouragement I need to keep writing literary books that provoke lasting thought and strengthens my belief that the best words in the best order can actually help make the world a little better place."

In honoring McGarrah's work, the Hoffer Award noted the following: "McGarrah paints a remarkable canvas in a true-life account of his time in the Vietnam War. Our senses become in tune, as we feel, hear, smell, and touch the Viet Cong jungle. McGarrah offers a glimpse into his life before Viet Nam, his military years, the aftermath of coming home, and his later return to Vietnam. Some accounts are candid and bold, such as his teenage quest for sex or the brutal reality of the Viet Cong jungle. It is an honest and memorable story."

Each year, independent publishers (academic, independent, small press, and self-published authors) release extraordinary books to little or no recognition. The Eric Hoffer Award for independent books recognizes excellence in publishing with a $1,500 grand prize and various category honors and press type distinctions, as well as the winners of the Montaigne Medal and the da Vinci Eye. The book awards are covered in the US Review of Books. After the contest, books are donated to libraries, schools, and hospitals where appropriate.

IHS Press Author to Appear on Radio Program

Ray E. Boomhower will be appearing on the Hoosier History Live! radio program to discuss his new IHS Press book Fighter Pilot: The World War II Career of Alex Vraciu at 11:30 a.m. Saturday, April 10, on WICR, 88.7 FM.

Hoosier History Live! is a weekly radio adventure through Indiana history, live with call-in, hosted by Nelson Price, historian and author of Indiana Legends and Indianapolis: Then and Now. Each week, the program includes a featured guest and topic, a call in from The Roadtripper with a tip about a Hoosier heritage-related road trip, and a Hoosier History Trivia question, complete with a prize for the correct answer. It is the nation's first and only call-in talk-radio show about history, premiering as a live weekly show on Jan. 12, 2008. The call-in number is (317) 788-3314.

IHS Press Books Nominated for Awards

Three books published by the IHS Press in 2009 have been named as finalists in ForeWord Reviews 2009 Book of the Year Awards.

The books selected as finalists and their categories are:

* By Freedom’s Light, by Elizabeth O’Maley, juvenile fiction

* My Indiana: 101 More Places to See in Indiana, by Earl Conn, travel guide

* Steve McQueen: The Great Escape, by Wes Gehring, biography

The finalists, representing 360 publishers, were selected from 1,400 entries in sixty categories. The winners will be determined by a panel of librarians and booksellers selected from ForeWord Review’s readership. Gold, Silver, and Bronze winners, as well as Editor's Choice Prizes for fiction and nonfiction, will be announced at a special program at BookExpo America in New York City on May 25. The winners of the two Editor's Choice Prizes will be awarded $1,500 each. The ceremony is open to all BEA attendees.

ForeWord's Book of the Year Awards program was designed to discover distinctive books from independent publishers across a number of genres.

Alex Vraciu Biography Released

On the morning of June 19, 1944, as U.S. troops were battling Japanese forces on Saipan in the Mariana Islands in the Pacific, American pilots based on aircraft carriers offshore rushed to their planes to protect their fleet from an enemy attack from the air.

Calling the mission a “once-in-a-lifetime fighter pilot’s dream” when he spotted a large mass of enemy planes bearing down on the U.S. ships, one navy pilot from Indiana, Alex Vraciu, flying a Hellcat fighter from the USS Lexington, pounced on the Japanese and shot down six dive bombers in just eight minutes. “I looked ahead,” Vraciu later told a Chicago Tribune reporter. “There was nothing but Hellcats in the sky. I looked back. Up above were curving vapor trails. And down on the sea, in a pattern 35 miles long, was a series of flaming dots where oil slicks were burning.”

Written by award-winning biographer Ray E. Boomhower, Fighter Pilot: The World War II Career of Alex Vraciu, the sixth volume in the Indiana Historical Society Press’s youth biography series, examines the daring exploits of the Hoosier flier during his wartime career. A graduate of DePauw University, Vraciu learned to fly during his college years through a government program and joined the navy before America was thrust into the war following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Possessed with keen eyesight, quick reflexes, excellent shooting instincts, and a knack for finding his opponent’s weak spot, Vraciu became skilled in the deadly game of destroying the enemy in the skies over the Pacific Ocean. For a period of four months in 1944, Vraciu stood as the leading ace in the U.S. Navy. He shot down nineteen enemy airplanes in the air, destroyed an additional twenty-one on the ground, and sank a large Japanese merchant ship with a well-placed bomb hit.

Vraciu’s luck, however, finally ran out on December 14, 1944, during a strafing run against a Japanese airfield before the American invasion to retake the Philippines. Luckily he was almost immediately rushed to safety by a small group of U.S. Army in the Far East guerrillas, who had been battling the Japanese in the area for the past few years. The navy pilot spent the next five weeks with the guerrillas, receiving the honorary rank of brevet major while with them. Vraci finally marched into an American camp carrying with him a captured Japanese Luger pistol and sword.

Boomhower is senior editor with the Indiana Historical Society Press, where he edits the quarterly popular history magazine Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History. His previous books have included biographies of author and Civil War general Lew Wallace, famed Hoosier war correspondent Ernie Pyle, suffragette and peace activist May Wright Sewall, World War II photographer John A. Bushemi, and astronaut Gus Grissom. In 1998 Boomhower received the IHS’s Hoosier Historian honor.

Fighter Pilot costs $17.95 and is available from the IHS's History Market.

Interview with Nuremberg Author

A graduate of the University of Rochester and the Boston University School of Law, Suzanne Bellamy practiced law for twenty-five years as a corporate counsel in Indianapolis. She used this experience to help her with her writing of the new Indiana Historical Society Press book Hoosier Justice at Nuremberg. Bellamy took took to answer a few questions about her book.

How did you first become involved with this project?

Indiana Chief Justice Randall T. Shepard approached me about five years ago about researching and writing this book. He was interested in how two judges from the Indiana Supreme Court had ended up as judges in the American military trials in Nuremberg, Germany after World War II. As a public history student and an attorney, I was instantly attracted to the topic as it combined both of my disciplines.

Did your training as a lawyer help with the research and writing of this book?

Definitely. In order to tell the story of Curtis Shake and Frank Richman, I had to tell the story of the trial in which each was involved. In Shake’s case, he was the presiding judge at the I.G. Farben trial. Richman was on the panel for the trial of Friedrich Flick and his associates. I needed to explain the counts of each indictment and the evidence presented relative to each such count in order to make sense of the verdicts and the responses thereto. I also did research at the law library on the significant cases brought before the Indiana Supreme Court during their tenures in which Shake and Richman wrote the majority opinions.

What did you learn in doing the project that surprised you?

I learned that these Hoosier judges were both men of depth whose stories each included tests of their character. In Shake’s case, he was accused as a young man of being a member of the Ku Klux Klan, which derailed his run for statewide office in Indiana. Richman was tested by his own political party when he was not renominated for his seat on the Indiana Supreme Court due to an opinion he had written contrary to his party’s position.

What is your next writing project?

I participated in writing several sections of the upcoming book on all of the Indiana Supreme Court justices which the Indiana Historical Society is publishing in July 2010. I am currently writing an institutional history of this decade for the American Legion Auxiliary, a national women’s patriotic organization.

Indiana Native Americans Explored in New Book

Native American ancestors inhabited the land of Indiana from around 9,500 BC. European contact with Indiana's Miami, Wea, Mascouten, and Shawnee tribes began in 1679. The history of Native Americans in the state is examined in the new Indiana Historical Society Press book The Native Americans.

Written by Elizabeth Glenn and Stewart Rafert, the book is the second volume in the IHS Press's Peopling Indiana series based on the 1996 publication Peopling Indiana: The Ethnic Experience. Each volume in the series includes an updated essay on one of the state's larger ethnic groups illuminating the migratory, settlement, and community-building experiences of the essay's subject group.

Native Americans in Indiana were forced into western reservations by the 1830s. By 1850 only a portion of the Miami remained in Indiana. Many natives either assimilated into white culture or hid their identity. This scenario changed when Native Americans served in the military and at home during World War II. Afterward, Indians from many lineages flocked to Indiana. Along with Indiana's Miami and Potawatomi, they are creating a diverse Indian culture, expressed through pan-Indian as well as tribal activities, that enriches the lives of all Hoosiers.

Glenn is professor emerita of the Ball State University Anthropology Department. An adjunt professor of history at the University of Delaware, Rafert is the author of The Miami Indians of Indiana, published by the IHS Press in 1996.

The Native Americans costs $13.95 and is available from the IHS's History Market.

Book Examines Nuremberg Trials

In the years after World War II, as the world grappled with the enormity of the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazi regime, two Hoosiers had a significant role in the American response to unfolding events in Germany.

In the Indiana Historical Society Press book Hoosier Justice at Nuremberg, part of the Indiana Supreme Court Legal History Series, author Suzanne S. Bellamy examines how Frank Richman of Columbus, Indiana, and Curtis Shake of Vincennes, Indiana, both served with distinction as members of the Indiana Supreme Court. By early 1947 both justices had stepped down from the court to begin new phases in their profession. Shake resumed his law practice in Vincennes, and Richman planned to teach law. World events intervened when both men were called to serve as civilian judges in tribunals convened in Nuremberg to try secondary Nazi war criminals. Shake and Richman sat on the bench in the trials of leading German industrialists for crimes against humanity, applying international law according to American concepts of fairness.

Despite lingering doubts about the legitimacy of American judges having jurisdiction over German nationals, Richman and Shake responded with grace, competence, and high ethical standards, along with a little controversy. The book highlights the role two leading citizens of Indiana played in events that, more than sixty years later, still resonate across the world.

Bellamy is a graduate of the University of Rochester and the Boston University School of Law. She practiced law for twenty-five years as a corporate counsel in Indianapolis. As a freelance historical researcher and writer, she has worked on projects for the IHS, the American Legion Auxiliary, and the Indiana Supreme Court.

Hoosier Justice at Nuremberg costs $6.95 and is available from the IHS's History Market.

Jackson Featured in Fall 2009 Traces

The fall 2009 issue of the Indiana Historical Society Press's popular history magazine Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History will be in members' mailboxes soon.

The issue features an article, "A Hoosier Thriller: Gary, Indiana's Michael Jackson," by Julie Young exploring the Indiana boyhood and early career of music legend Michael Jackson, who died on June 25, 2009.

In addition, the issue includes articles on the history of Shapiro's Deli in Indianapolis; the fiftieth anniversary of the film Ben-Hur, based upon the best-selling book by Hoosier author and general Lew Wallace; a look back at how Indianapolis reacted to the great railroad strike of 1877; and a piece on the African American Townsend family of Putnam County, Indiana.

Traces is an award-winning popular history magazine published quarterly as a benefit of membership in the IHS. Conceived as a means of bringing to the public good narrative and analytical history about Indiana in its broader contexts of region and nation, the magazine since 1989 has explored the lives of artists, writers, politicians, performers, soldiers, entrepreneurs, homemakers, reformers, and naturalists.

Wissing Wins Dunn Award

Douglas Wissing, a freelance writer from Bloomington, Indiana, is the winner of the Indiana Historical Society’s annual Jacob Piatt Dunn Jr. Award for the best article to appear in Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History for 2009. Wissing’s article, “‘Cook Good, Serve Generously, Price Modestly’: The Shapiro’s Story,” appeared in the fall 2009 issue.

Named for the noted Indiana historian and author, the $500 award honors the article that in the opinion of the Traces editorial board and staff best serves the magazine’s mission. This mission involves presenting thoughtful, research-based articles on Indiana history in an attractive format to a broad audience of readers.

Dunn (pictured above, left), who helped revitalize the Society in the 1880s, produced such standard works as the two-volume Greater Indianapolis (1910) and his five-volume Indiana and Indianans (1919). In his remarkable career, Dunn also worked on a variety of Indianapolis newspapers, campaigned to establish free public libraries, endeavored to preserve the language of the Miami Indians, and prospected for minerals in Haiti.

Interview with McQueen Biographer

Wes D. Gehring, professor of Film at Ball State University, is the author of twenty-nine books, many of which examine the lives of Hollywood legends. During his career, Gehring has written about the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy, Joe E. Brown, Carole Lombard, W. C. Fields, Red Skelton, and Charlie Chaplin.

Gehring's latest book is a biography of Steve McQueen titled Steve McQueen: The Great Escape recently released by the IHS Press. Here, he talks about the book and McQueen:

You have written about a number of Hollywood legends. What drew you to McQueen?

Growing up, McQueen was one of my favorite actors.

McQueen is seen by many fans as the prototypical screen tough guy. Is that an accurate description of his appeal?

Yes and no. McQueen was more an antiheroic tough guy. He wasn't big like Wayne, or intellectually articulate like his film star favorite Bogart. In Bullitt he's old school tough. But he is just as likely to mix that toughness with poignant vulnerability, as in The Sand Pebbles and Junior Bonner. His stone faced toughness is often a sort of desperate minimalist cover for the universal fears of modern life.

How is what we see on screen of McQueen the same or different from him in real life?

He did not have a great acting range, but he was brilliant at playing the aforementioned antiheroic tough guy--which was McQueen in real life . . . on a good day. Like many artists, the work is where he got it right.In real life that macho minimalism could explode into rage. He was fond of saying that his life was screwed up before he was born. Thus, the foundation for the underdog toughness. The true link between the actor and the person was defining himself through his interaction with objects in the film frame, particularly mechanical things--a favorite off-screen passion. The guy tinkering with engines in The Sand Pebbles or The Reivers was McQueen. But he carried an attention to detail, be it getting on and off a horse, in and out of a race car, handling weapons, fixing breakfast in The Getaway--that gave his work an authenticity that was consistent with the real life, work with his hands, physical man.

Is there anything you found out about McQueen in your research that surprised you or that you did not know before?

I was most amazed by the extreme sadness of his youth. He never got that chip off his shoulder.

What is McQueen’s legacy?

In his best films, there is a sense of the Hemingway axiom, about life destroying you but (if you have some personal code), not defeating you.

What project are you working on now?

I have two forthcoming books: I, Red Skelton: Exit Laughing (a novelized memoir), and Forties Film Comedians: In the Shadow of World War II (a film criticism). I'm currently writing a biography of director Robert Wise.

IHS Press Releases McQueen Biography

The poster-child victim of a dysfunctional family from Beech Grove, Indiana, Steve McQueen experienced an unsettled early life with a rebellious and alcoholic mother. McQueen channeled his difficult childhood into a masterful career on screen portraying tough, self-sufficient characters in such iconic films as The Magnificent Seven (1960), The Great Escape (1963), The Sand Pebbles (1966), Bullitt (1968), and Papillon (1973).

Nationally known film historian Wes D. Gehring explores how McQueen rose from his days as a troubled youth into one of Hollywood’s top box-office stars of the 1960s and 1970s, and how he attempted to ease the lives of other troubled youth, in a new biography now available from the IHS Press titled Steve McQueen: The Great Escape. Along the way, Gehring delves into McQueen’s early success as a television star on the hit Western Wanted: Dead or Alive, his sometimes rocky relationships with women, his sardonic sense of humor, the actor’s love of fast cars and motorcycles, and McQueen’s often neglected acting in such films as The Reivers (1969) and Junior Bonner (1972), which Gehring labels as “arguably his greatest performance.” McQueen ironically saw the title of one of his best films, The Great Escape, as a veiled reference to what his life might have been like without the movies: “If I hadn’t made it as an actor, I might have wound up a hood.”

McQueen died from cancer on November 7, 1980, at the age of fifty. Reflecting on the Hoosier actor’s career, Gehring notes that “McQueen’s often unorthodox life was always lived on his own terms, but with the underlying insecurity of the lost child he perceived himself to be.”

Gehring is a professor of film at Ball State University and an associated media editor for USA Today Magazine, for which he also writes the column “Reel World.” The award-winning author of twenty-eight books, Gehring has written biographies of such screen legends as Charlie Chaplin, W. C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy, Irene Dunne, Carole Lombard, James Dean, and Red Skelton.

Steve McQueen: The Great Escape costs $19.95. The book is available from the IHS's History Market.

IHS Hosts Seventh Annual Holiday Author Fair

Mingle with your favorite Indiana authors, photographers and illustrators, finish your holiday shopping, and get your books signed at the Indiana Historical Society's seventh annual Holiday Author Fair from noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday, December 5, at the Indiana History Center, 450 West Ohio Street, Indianapolis.

The fair features approximately 75 talented writers of fiction, nonfiction, history, gardening, poetry, and children's books. Among the authors set to attend are such award winners as James H. Madison, Susan Neville, Mary Mackey, Philip Gulley, Lou Harry, James Alexander Thom, Norbert Krapf, Alan Garinger, and Ray E. Boomhower.

There will be speakers throughout the day, holiday music, and refreshments and free gift wrapping.

The schedule of speakers, presented in the Frank and Katrina Basile Theater, are:

12:30 p.m. "My Indiana Adventure" Student Writing Contest Awards Presentation

1 p.m. Lou Harry, author and journalist, "The Lou Harry Write-About-Anything Lecture and Game Show Extravaganza"

1:30 p.m. Jane Fortune, author, "To Florence, Con Amore"

2 p.m. Dick Wolfsie, author and humorist, "Mornings with Barney and Indiana Curiosities"

2:30 p.m. Terry Border, author and artist, "Bent Objects"

3 p.m. Ingrid Cummings, author and journalist, "the Vigorous Mind: How to Cross-train Your Brain and Why it Matters"

IHS, Storytelling Arts Sponsor Youth Writing Contest

The Indiana Historical Society and Storytelling Arts of Indiana are sponsoring "My Indiana Adventure: A Writing Contest." Children as young as five years old are invited to enter. Participants should write about an adventure they’ve experienced in the state of Indiana. It could be anything-–a special event, holiday celebration or day at the park. Maybe it happened at the Indiana State Fair or at a relative’s house. It could be something that happened at a museum, while watching a sporting event or even at school.

Stories should be no more than 500 words. First, second, and third-place winners will be invited to read their stories on Saturday, December 5, 2009, at the IHS's seventh annual Holiday Author Fair, sponsored by Verizon Wireless, at the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana History Center, 450 West Ohio Street, Indianapolis.

Stories must be postmarked by November 1 and mailed to:

My Indiana Adventure
Indiana Historical Society
Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana History Center
450 West Ohio Street
Indianapolis, IN 46202-3269

Awards to be given include:

5 to 8 Years Old

First, second and third place: A signed copy of Evie Finds Her Family Tree and two tickets to a Storytelling Arts of Indiana event

PLUS

First place: $20 gift certificate to Basile History Market
Second place: $15 gift certificate to Basile History Market
Third place: $10 gift certificate to Basile History Market

9 to 12 Years Old

First, second and third place: A signed copy of By Freedom’s Light and two tickets to a Storytelling Arts of Indiana event

PLUS

First place: $20 gift certificate to Basile History Market
Second place: $15 gift certificate to Basile History Market
Third place: $10 gift certificate to Basile History Market

13 to 18 Years Old

First, second and third place: A signed copy of Going Over All the Hurdles: A Life of Oatess Archey and two tickets to a Storytelling Arts of Indiana event

PLUS

First place: $20 gift certificate to Basile History Market
Second place: $15 gift certificate to Basile History Market
Third place: $10 gift certificate to Basile History Market