You can find the answers to these questions and more in All Around Illinois: Regions and Resources. This book contains many fascinating facts and figures about the diverse regions of Illinois, as well as each of their natural and artificial resources. You will also learn how these valuable resources directly affect the state's economy. Book jacket.

Illinois 2021 Rules of the Road handbook, drive safe!

The Beautiful Music All Around Us presents the extraordinarily rich backstories of thirteen performances captured on Library of Congress field recordings between 1934 and 1942 in locations reaching from Southern Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta and the Great Plains. Including the children's play song "Shortenin' Bread," the fiddle tune "Bonaparte's Retreat," the blues "Another Man Done Gone," and the spiritual "Ain't No Grave Can Hold My Body Down," these performances were recorded in kitchens and churches, on porches and in prisons, in hotel rooms and school auditoriums. Documented during the golden age of the Library of Congress recordings, they capture not only the words and tunes of traditional songs but also the sounds of life in which the performances were embedded: children laugh, neighbors comment, trucks pass by. Musician and researcher Stephen Wade sought out the performers on these recordings, their families, fellow musicians, and others who remembered them. He reconstructs the sights and sounds of the recording sessions themselves and how the music worked in all their lives. Some of these performers developed musical reputations beyond these field recordings, but for many, these tracks represent their only appearances on record: prisoners at the Arkansas State Penitentiary jumping on "the Library's recording machine" in a rendering of "Rock Island Line"; Ora Dell Graham being called away from the schoolyard to sing the jump-rope rhyme "Pullin' the Skiff"; Luther Strong shaking off a hungover night in jail and borrowing a fiddle to rip into "Glory in the Meetinghouse." Alongside loving and expert profiles of these performers and their locales and communities, Wade also untangles the histories of these iconic songs and tunes, tracing them through slave songs and spirituals, British and homegrown ballads, fiddle contests, gospel quartets, and labor laments. By exploring how these singers and instrumentalists exerted their own creativity on inherited forms, "amplifying tradition's gifts," Wade shows how a single artist can make a difference within a democracy. Reflecting decades of research and detective work, the profiles and abundant photos in The Beautiful Music All Around Us bring to life largely unheralded individuals--domestics, farm laborers, state prisoners, schoolchildren, cowboys, housewives and mothers, loggers and miners--whose music has become part of the wider American musical soundscape. The hardcover edition also includes an accompanying CD that presents these thirteen performances, songs and sounds of America in the 1930s and '40s.

Grab your paddle and enjoy Illinois' beautiful rivers. This comprehensive guidebook--the only one for Illinois--features 64 trips on 33 rivers. Rivers covered include Cashe, Des Plains, Embarras, Fox, Galena, Mackinaw, Middle Fork, and Spoon. This is the ultimate guide for canoe or kayak enthusiasts of all abilities.

Includes dot-to-dots, mazes, coloring, matching, word searches, riddles, crossword puzzles, word jumbles, writing, hidden pictures and many other creative activities--all about Illinois.

Wings over Illinois recounts World War II veteran Arthur Abney’s illustrious aviation career, effectively documenting a span in our own nation’s history from the vantage of the skies. Abney describes a lifetime of experience, from his time as an eager young pilot with the Flying Egyptians to his tour of service during World War II, his years with the Illinois Department of Aeronautics, American Airlines, and the Southern Illinois University Aviation Management and Flight program. Abney introduces readers to hangar flying—exciting end-of-day flight tales told in the hangar—with sixty stories provided by military and civilian airmen from across the country. Included are such accounts as a 1943 bombing squadron assignment over Saipan in a typhoon, an engine freeze on takeoff during a solo training flight, a white-knuckle Bermuda Triangle flight, and a power failure on a homebuilt aircraft. Complementing Abney’s own experiences, these stories offer insights into the split-second decision making necessary to resolve problems in the air. In this fascinating autobiography Abney takes readers on a journey through nearly seven decades of a life in aviation.

Copious illustrations and witty, page-turning prose guide readers on geologic walking or driving tours of 37 sites in Illinois.

In this collection of articles describing the people, places, and folkways of southern Illinois, John W. Allen provides entertaining and informative glimpses into the region’s past. Included here are sketches of the early pioneering days when wolves were literally chased from the door, stories about the many Indian artifacts discovered among the rolling hills and valleys of the area, and articles pertaining to the strategic role the region played during the Civil War. Allen also describes the activities of such infamous outlaws as Samuel Mason and the Harpe brothers as well as the famous Illinois-born heroes “Bat” Masterson, “Wild Bill” Hickok, and Wyatt Earp. In his warm and friendly style, Allen reminisces about the self-sufficient and satisfying rural life of a previous generation with its oxcarts, pie suppers, threshing machines, kerosene lamps, and blacksmith shops. Any reader interested in southern Illinois and its history will delight in this collection of stories from John W. Allen’s popular newspaper column, “It Happened in Southern Illinois.”

This book gathers drawings, engravings, photographs, maps, and other illustrations to inspire imaginations young and old to envision the history of Illinois in all its depth and breadth. Gerald A. Danzer distills the story of Illinois from these visual artifacts, exploring the state's history from its earliest peoples and their encounters with European settlers, through territorial struggles and the strife of the Civil War, and into the modern era of industry and urbanization.