An Afternoon in Waterloo Park evokes feelings, sights, and textures of experience of a bygone period. Prompted by the emotional strain of his mother's death in 1968, Gerald Dumas contemplates three generations of his family and lyrically records impressions of life on Dickerson Avenue in Detroit. This is a complex family story, recollected from the surface of childhood and pondered from the depths of mature experience. Dumas' poetic form allows for closely packed images not possible in prose. What Our Town did in its attempt to find a value for the smallest events of everyday life in early twentieth-century New England, An Afternoon in Waterloo Park achieves for midcentury mid-America-a real and honest evocation of going home.

Michael Delp conjures with his writing the intense pull of nature on Michiganders and he allows the reader to discover-or rediscover-the marvels of life and sport amidst the Great Lakes. This collection of new work, along with some of Delp's important earlier work, will inspire anyone with a fondness for water, fishing, and Michigan's great outdoors. Delp's writing is richly nuanced and sharply imaged with an authenticity that comes only from someone native to such experiences. His engaging portraits of Michigan, its freshwater landscapes, and their many invocations can function as metaphor for larger philosophical and ecological issues, but the first aim of The Last Good Water is to draw readers back to nature and allow them to relish its splendor. This collection is an important addition to the library of the creative, the ecocritical, and above all, the outdoorsmen and women of the Midwest.

Ojibwa Narratives presents a fresh view of an early period of Ojibwa thought and ways of life in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and the south shore of Lake Superior. This fascinating collection of fifty-two narratives features, for the first time, the tales of three nineteenth-century Ojibwa storytellers-Charles and Charlotte Kawbawgam and Jaques LePique-collected by Homer H. Kidder. By the late nineteenth century, typical Ojibwa life had been disrupted by the influx of white developers. But these tales reflect a nostalgic view of an earlier period when the heart of Ojibwa semi-nomadic culture remained intact, a time when the fur trade, together with seasonal roving, traditional transportation, and indigenous practices of child rearing, religious thought, art, and music permeated daily life.

First published in 1961, Early Midwestern Travel Narratives records and describes first-person records of journeys in the frontier and early settlement periods which survive in both manuscript and print. Geographically, it deals with the states once part of the Old Northwest Territory-Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota-and with Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska. Robert Hubach arranged the narratives in chronological order and makes the distinction among diaries (private records, with contemporaneously dated entries), journals (non-private records with contemporaneously dated entries), and "accounts," which are of more literary, descriptive nature. Early Midwestern Travel Narratives remains to this day a unique comprehensive work that fills a long existing need for a bibliography, summary, and interpretation of these early Midwestern travel narratives.

Although historians have devoted a great deal of attention to the development of federal government policy regarding civil rights in the quarter century following World War II, little attention has been paid to the equally important developments at the state level. Few states underwent a more dramatic transformation with regard to civil rights than Michigan did. In 1948, the Michigan Committee on Civil Rights characterized the state of civil rights in Michigan as presenting "an ugly picture". Twenty years later. Michigan was a leader among the states in civil rights legislation. Expanding the Frontiers of Civil Rights documents this important shift in state level policy and makes clear that civil rights in Michigan embraced not only blacks but women, the elderly, native Americans, migrant workers, and the physically handicapped. Sidney Fine's treatment of civil rights in Michigan is based on an exhaustive examination of unpublished, published, and interview sources. Fine relates civil rights developments in Michigan to civil rights actions by the federal government and other states. He focuses on the administrations of the three governors -- Democrats G. Mennen Williams (1949-1960), and John B. Swainson (1961-1962), and Republican George Romney (1963-1969) -- and the roles they played in furthering civil rights in Michigan, as well as other politicians and policymakers. Students of state history, civil rights history, and those interested in post-World War II history will find few accounts as broad ranging as this study of state civil rights legislation during the years the book covers.

A poignant history of the cartoonists and illustrators from the Connecticut School For a period of about fifty years, right in the middle of the American Century, many of the the nation’s top comic-strip cartoonists, gag cartoonists, and magazine illustrators lived within a stone’s throw of one another in the southwestern corner of Connecticut—a bit of bohemia in the middle of those men in their gray flannel suits. Cullen Murphy’s father, John Cullen Murphy, drew the wildly popular comic strips Prince Valiant and Big Ben Bolt, and was the heart of this artistic milieu. Comic strips and gag cartoons read by hundreds of millions were created in this tight-knit group—Superman, Beetle Bailey, Snuffy Smith, Rip Kirby, Hagar the Horrible, Hi and Lois, Nancy, Sam & Silo, Amy, The Wizard of Id, The Heart of Juliet Jones, Family Circus, Joe Palooka, and The Lockhorns, among others. Cartoonists and their art were a pop-cultural force in a way that few today remember. Anarchic and deeply creative, the cartoonists were independent spirits whose artistic talents had mainly been forged during service in World War II. Illustrated with never-before-seen photographs, cartoons, and drawings, Cartoon County brings the postwar American era alive, told through the relationship of a son to his father, an extraordinarily talented and generous man who had been trained by Norman Rockwell. Cartoon County gives us a glimpse into a very special community—and of an America that used to be.

The first historical study-and a riveting account-of the last execution in Michigan.

Marshall M. Frederick's sculptures can be seen in public places throughout the world, but it is in Michigan, where he lived for sixty years, that his legacy shines. Although his name is unknown to many people, a work such as The Spirit of Detroit is instantly recognized and loved by millions. This delightful book follows a young girl named Abby who is captivated by the sculptures she sees around Detroit —bronze pterodacytls, soaring humans, bears, clowns, and more. "How could anyone be in charge of decorating a whole city?" she wonders. With so many marvelous sculptures, it takes the determination of a curious child to discover them and learn how they were made. The Outdoor Museum is a guide to finding and appreciating hundreds of sculptures around the Great Lakes that were created by Marshall M. Fredericks — an invitation to the region's residents and visitors to discover the private world of public art.

Born in Asia Minor in 1909, Sarkis Sarkisian came to Detroit at the age of 14. He studied formally under John P. Wicker at the Wicker School of Fine Arts and for the next fifty years, he evolved into a leader of the city's artistic community. A teacher and the director of the Art School of Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts, now the Center for Creative Studies, College of Art and Design, he influenced generations of art students. This book is a study of Sarkis as an artist and as a teacher. A classicist in his belief that the mission of the artist is to create beauty and to represent the inner life of the spirit, Sarkis endowed his paintings with gravity and grace. His emphasis on the formal elements of art, in his painting and in his teaching, did not obscure the humanism that influenced both. Sarkis celebrates the achievements and contributions of this remarkable artist.