This list is an impressionistic, subjective selection of standard
works in Iowa history. This list contains books only. For articles, see Marvin
Bergman, Iowa History Reader, and the footnotes in its introduction
as well as the bibliographical notes following each article. We’ve picked
those selections we believe to be the most important works in various areas in
state history, recognizing that others could also be included. We’ve
assigned categories while recognizing that many books appear on this list largely
because they cross boundaries and make connections among several fields of inquiry.
Suggestions are welcome.
GENERAL
Bennett, Mary. An Iowa Album: A Photographic History, 1860–1920
(Iowa City, 1990).
Bergman, Marvin, ed. Iowa History Reader (Ames, 1996; reprint, Iowa City, 2008).
A supplementary reader selecting from among the best interpretive articles and
books on Iowa history from the past 30 years. Bibliographical essays following
each essay offer additional suggestions for further reading.
Dawson, Patricia, and David Hudson. Iowa History and Culture:
A Bibliography of Materials Published between 1952 and 1986 (Ames, 1989).
See also the update through 1991 in 3 issues in the Annals of Iowa 52 (1993).
Use this to find Iowa history materials on particular topics. It’s
arranged by broad topic and also has an excellent index.
Sage, Leland. A History of Iowa (Ames, 1974). Prior to
the publication of Schwieder’s survey, the standard text on Iowa history.
Still fills gaps in political history not covered by Schwieder.
Schwieder, Dorothy. Iowa: The Middle Land (Ames, 1996).
Quite simply, the best available survey of Iowa history.
Schwieder, Dorothy. “Iowa: The Middle Land.” In Heartland:
Comparative Histories of the Midwestern States (Bloomington, IN, 1988). [Also
in Iowa History Reader.] Summarizes in 20 pages the key themes in Iowa
history. If you only have an hour to read one thing on Iowa history, read
this.
Wall, Joseph. Iowa: A Bicentennial History (New York,
1978). A series of short personal essays on important themes in Iowa history.
STATE, LOCAL, & REGIONAL
Cayton, Andrew R. L., and Peter S. Onuf. The Midwest and the
Nation: Rethinking the History of an American Region (Bloomington, IN,
1990). Largely an extended historiographical essay and therefore not an easy read,
but it’s only 125 pages, and it’s rewarding for the patient reader.
Deals primarily with the Old Northwest (Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois,
Wisconsin), but much of it applies to Iowa as well.
Cronon, William. Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the
Great West (New York, 1991). A long, difficult, but extremely rewarding book
about how people transformed the landscape as they built a region (a hinterland)
to support Chicago’s development. Cronon focuses particularly on grain farming,
lumber, and meatpacking. If you don’t have time to read the book, read “Perspectives
on Nature’s Metropolis: A Book Forum,” in The Annals of Iowa 51 (Summer
1992), 480–525.
Madison, James, ed. Heartland: Comparative Histories of the
Midwestern States (Bloomington, IN, 1988). A series of well-written, 20–30-page
essays on the history of each of 12 midwestern states. Nearly all claim that their
state is the most typically midwestern, and therefore the most typically American.
Marty, Myron, and David Kyvig. Nearby History (Nashville,
1982). A primer on the value of local history, with how-to suggestions. Marty
and Kyvig have also edited a series of valuable, individually authored books showing
how to do the history of, for example, houses, public places, farms, schools,
churches, utilities and public works.
Shortridge, James R. The Middle West: Its Meaning in American
Culture (Lawrence, KS, 1989). A cultural geographer’s account of the
changing and present images and understandings of the Midwest. A short, interesting
book that’s fairly easy to read.
AFRICAN AMERICANS
Bergmann, Leola Nelson. The Negro in Iowa (Iowa City,
1949, 1969).
Outside In: African-American History in Iowa, 1838–2000
(Des Moines, 2001).
Schwieder, Dorothy, Elmer Schwieder, and Joseph Hraba. Buxton:
Work and Racial Equality in a Coal Mining Community (Ames, 1987; expandeded., Iowa City, 2003).
EDUCATION
Reynolds, David R. There Goes the Neighborhood: Rural School
Consolidation at the Grassroots in Early Twentieth-Century Iowa (Iowa City,
1999).
ENVIRONMENTAL
Anfinson, John O. The River We Have Wrought: A History of
the Upper Mississippi (Minneapolis, 2003).
Conard, Rebecca. Places of Quiet Beauty: Parks, Preserves,
and Environmentalism (Iowa City, 1997).
Mutuel, Cornelia. The Emerald Horizon: The History of Nature in Iowa (Iowa City, 2008).
IMMIGRATION & ETHNICITY
Gjerde, Jon. The Minds of the West: The Ethnocultural Evolution
in the Rural Midwest, 1830-1917 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1997).
INDIANS
Murphy, Lucy Eldersveld. A Gathering of Rivers: Indians, Métis,
and Mining in the Western Great Lakes, 1737–1832 (2001).
Bataille, Gretchen, David Gradwohl, and Charles Silet, eds. The
Worlds between Two Rivers: Perspectives on American Indians in Iowa (Ames,
1978).
McTaggart, Fred. Wolf That I Am: In Search of the Red Earth
People (1976; reprint, Norman, OK, 1984).
Trask, Kerry. Black Hawk: The Battle for the Heart of America (New York, 2006).
White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics
in the Great Lakes Region (New York, 1993).
LABOR
Fink, Deborah. Cutting Into the Meatpacking Line: Workers
and Change in the Rural Midwest (Chapel Hill, NC, 1998).
Nelson, Daniel. Farm and Factory: Workers in the Midwest,
1880–1990 (Bloomington, IN, 1995).
Stromquist, Shelton. Solidarity and Survival: An Oral History
of Iowa Labor in the Twentieth Century (Iowa City, 1993).
Warren, Wilson. Struggling with “Iowa's Pride”:
Labor Relations, Unionism, and Politics in the Rural Midwest since 1877 (Iowa
City, 2000).
LITERATURE
Burns, E. Bradford. Kinship with the Land: Regionalist Thought
in Iowa, 1894–1942 (Iowa City, 1996).
Weber, Ronald. The Midwestern Ascendancy in American Writing
(Bloomington, IN, 1992).
POLITICS & LAW
Acton, Richard Lord, and Patricia Nassif Acton. To Go Free:
A Treasury of Iowa's Legal Heritage (Ames, 1995).
Cook, Robert. Baptism of Fire: The Republican Party in Iowa,
1838–1878 (Ames, 1994).
Culver, John C., and John Hyde. American Dreamer: The Life
and Times of Henry A. Wallace (New York, 2000).
Dykstra, Robert R. Bright Radical Star: Black Freedom and
White Supremacy on the Hawkeye Frontier (Cambridge, MA, 1993).
Jensen, Richard J. The Winning of the Midwest: Social and
Political Conflict, 1886–1896 (Chicago, 1971).
Larew, James. A Party Reborn: The Democrats of Iowa, 1950–1974
(Iowa City, 1980).
Ostler, Jeffrey. Prairie Populism: The Fate of Agrarian Radicalism
in Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa, 1880–1892 (Lawrence, KS, 1993).
Winebrenner, Hugh. The Iowa Precinct Caucuses: The Making
of a Media Event, 2d ed. (Ames, 1998).
RELIGION
Robert F. Martin, Hero of the Heartland: Billy Sunday and
the Transformation of American Society, 1862–1935 (Bloomington, IN,
2002)
Tucker, Cynthia Grant. Prophetic Sisterhood: Liberal Women
Ministers of the Frontier, 1880–1930 (Boston, 1990).
RURAL & AGRICULTURAL
Barron, Hal S. Mixed Harvest: The Second Great Transformation
in the Rural North, 1870–1930 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1997).
Bogue, Allan. From Prairie to Cornbelt: Farming on the Illinois
and Iowa Prairies in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago, 1963).
Danbom, David. The Resisted Revolution: Urban America and
the Industrialization of Agriculture, 1900–1930 (Ames, 1979).
Friedberger, Mark. Farm Families and Change in Twentieth-Century
America (Lexington, KY, 1988).
Hudson, John. Making the Corn Belt: A Geographical History
of Middle-Western Agriculture (Bloomington, IN, 1994).
Jellison, Katherine. Entitled to Power: Farm Women and Technology,
1913–1963 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1993).
Neth, Mary C. Preserving the Family Farm: Women, Community,
and the Foundation of Agribusiness in the Midwest, 1900–1940 (Baltimore,
1995).
Riney-Kehrberg, Pamela. Childhood on the Farm: Work, Play,
and Coming of Age in the Midwest (Lawrence, KS, 2005).
Ross, Earle D. Iowa Agriculture: An Historical Survey (Iowa
City, 1951).
TOWNS & TOWN DEVELOPMENT
Atherton, Lewis. Main Street on the Middle Border (1954;
repr., Bloomington, IN, 1984).
Mahoney, Timothy. River Towns in the Great West: The Structure
of Provincial Urbanization in the Midwest, 1820–1870 (New York, 1990).
Mahoney, Timothy. Provincial Lives: Middle-Class Experience
in the Antebellum Middle West (New York, 1999).
Morain, Thomas. Prairie Grass Roots: An Iowa Small Town in
the Early Twentieth Century (Ames, 1988).
Pawley, Christine. Reading on the Middle Border: The Culture
of Print in Osage, Iowa, 1860–1900 (Amherst, MA, 2001).
URBAN
Johnson, Russell L. Warriors into Workers: The Civil War and
the Formation of Urban-Industrial Society in a Northern City (Bronx, NY,
2004).
Wood, Sharon. The Freedom of the Streets: Work, Citizenship,
and Sexuality in a Gilded Age City (Chapel Hill, NC, 2005).
WOMEN
Bunkers, Suzanne. “All Will Yet Be Well”: The
Diary of Sarah Gillespie Huftalen (Iowa City, 1993).
Fink, Deborah. Open Country, Iowa: Rural Women, Tradition,
and Change (Albany, NY, 1986).
Lensink, Judy. “A Secret to be Burried”: The Diary
and Life of Emily Hawley Gillespie, 1858–1888 (Iowa City, 1989).
Murphy, Lucy Eldersveld, and Wendy Hamand Venet, eds. Midwestern
Women: Work, Community, and Leadership at the Crossroads (Bloomington, IN,
1998).
Noun, Louise. Strong-Minded Women: The Emergence of the Woman-Suffrage
Movement in Iowa (Ames, 1969).
Noun, Louise. More Strong-Minded Women: Iowa Feminists Tell
Their Stories (Ames, 1992).
Riley, Glenda. Frontierswomen: The Iowa Experience (Ames,
1981).
