People who know nothing else about Chicago’s Great Conflagration have heard of Mrs. O’Leary and her famous cow. But the disaster's real origins are more complicated.
You’ve just written a history of America from Columbus to Clinton; what do you put on the cover?
Living in, and with, the universal Midwestern latticework
A hundred and fifty years ago, a sea of grass spread from the Ohio to the Rockies; now only bits and pieces of that awesome wilderness remain for the traveler to discover.
For many children who accompanied their parents west across the continent in the 1840s and '50s, the journey was a supreme adventure
The Great Lakes hurricane of 1913 was a destructive freak. As far as lakers were concerned, it was …
The Story of Some Forgotten Four-Footed Pioneers
An artist recalls his Midwestern home town and the poet who made it famous