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A surefire guarantee for the headaches and stomach upsets of the late twentieth century, The Lemon Jelly Cake carries readers back to kinder, gentler times in a small town at the turn of the century. Evoking a forgotten America of lush lawns, bountiful summer picnics, and shady front porches, the tale is set when the day's toughest decision might have been what to serve for dinner or which suit or dress to wear.In this new Prairie State Books edition, an introduction by longtime Millikin University faculty member and Findlay resident Dan Guillory situates the book and its charming tale firmly in the Central Illinois of 1900.

 This story is told in the words of a tragic figure in American history - a hook-nosed, hollow-cheeked old Sauk warrior who lived under four flags while the Mississippi Valley was being wrested from his people.The author is Black Hawk himself - once pursued by an army whose members included Captain Abraham Lincoln and Lieutenant Jefferson Davis. Perhaps no Indian ever saw so much of American expansion or fought harder to prevent that expansion from driving his people to exile and death.He knew Zebulon Pike, William Clark, Henry Schoolcraft, George Catlin, Winfield Scott, and such figures in American government as President Andrew Jackson and Secretary of State Lewis Cass. He knew Chicago when it was a cluster of log houses around a fort, and he was in St. Louis the day the American flag went up and the French flag came down.He saw crowds gather to cheer him in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York - and to stone the driver of his carriage in Albany - during a fantastic tour sponsored by the government.And at last he dies in 1838, bitter in the knowledge that he had led men, women, and children of his tribe to slaughter on the banks of the Mississippi.After his capture at the end of the Black Hawk War, he was imprisoned for a time and then released to live in the territory that is now Iowa. He dictated his autobiography to a government interpreter, Antoine LeClaire, and the story was put into written form by J. B. Patterson, a young Illinois newspaperman. Since its first appearance in 1833, the autobiography has become known as an American classic.

The story of the volatility of a marriage and the inelasticity of two personalities, set against the backdrop of the Second World War.

Offers an account of everyday life in early Illinois. This title presents a complex portrait of the midwestern wilderness during the 1830s. It includes descriptions of the author's encounters with early settlers and Native Americans, the flora and fauna that surrounded her, and the developing towns she passed through in her travels.

From Peoria to Corinth, from Corinth to Vicksburg, up the Red River country, down to Mobile and Fort Blakely, and back to Tupelo and Selma, the 47th Illinois Infantry Regiment marched 3,000 miles during Robert J Burdette's, private in the regiment, tour from March 1862 to December 1864. This memoir records the Civil War experiences of Burdette.

"The single most widely read book of American poetry."-James Hurt, Illinois Authors

Sherwood Anderson's first and most autobiographical novel and the only one set in Illinois, Windy McPherson's Son received uniformly high praise from literary critics when it was first published. It tells the story of an Iowa newsboy who fights his way to fortune in Chicago, then questions the meaning of his success. It was republished in 1922 with a different ending, which appears as an appendix in this edition.

Chicago Poems (1916) brought Carl Sandburg to national attention, and it remains one of the most widely known volumes of American poetry.

An annotated edition of Jane Addams' autobiography.

Debora Greger is a stoic comedian in an age when even wit has its dark undertones. In this her fourth collection she finds Ovid in Provincetown, a right whale in Iowa, and Cleopatra in the afterworld. Nothing resides in its proper place, except the place of exile. "Characteristic wit, irony, and precision." Publishers Weekly

First published in 1937 in honor of the Galesburg and Knox College Centenary, the book contains a wealth of lively details and amusing anecdotes. Calkins traces the progress of the community and the college through the arrival of the railroad, slave running, abolitionist confrontations, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the Civil War, and the postwar era.

Upton Sinclair's The Jungle is a vivid portrait of life and death in a turn-of-the-century American meat-packing factory. A grim indictment that led to government regulations of the food industry, The Jungle is Sinclair's extraordinary contribution to literature and social reform.