Museum Blog

Lyn Millner. The Allure of Immortality: An American Cult, a Florida Swamp, and a Renegade Prophet.  Gainesville, University of Florida Press (2015). How many visitors to today’s Fort Myers Beach, Florida, have any idea that this was the site of one of the most peculiar of America’s religious utopias?  Cyrus Teed, who saw himself as a More

Timothy Stewart-Winter. Queer Clout: Chicago and the Rise of Gay Politics. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press (2016). “The path of gays and lesbians to political power led through city hall and developed primarily in response to the constant threat of arrest under which they lived.” With this thesis, Timothy Stewart-Winter offers a carefully-researched and richly-textured More

Laurie Calkhoven. Women Who Changed the World: 50 Amazing Americans. New York: Scholastic (2015). This is a book for children that, not surprisingly these days, includes an edition on Kindle. Among the fifty women is Chicago’s Jane Addams. In his Author! Author! blog series, Museum president Gary T. Johnson highlights works that draw on our More

  Chicago Historical Society. In Memoriam, Isaac Newton Arnold, Nov. 30, 1813–Apr. 24, 1884, Arthur Mason Arnold, May 13, 1858–Apr. 26, 1873. Kiev: Leopold Classic Library (2015). This book was originally published by the Chicago Historical Society in 1885. Isaac Arnold was one of early Chicago’s most prominent citizens. He was a founder of the More

Michael Saler, editor. The Fin-de-Siècle World. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group (2014). Dozens of writers contribute to this fascinating reconsideration of the “fin-de-siècle before last.” Peter Fritzsche, professor of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, contributed an overview of urban life in major cities, including Chicago, Berlin, and Tokyo. The global More