“Iowa: A Definitive Collection” edited by Zachary Michael Jack of Oxford Junction and the topic of my Ramblin’ column in today’s Gazette, is really a fascinating read, whether you read only one or two of the 90-plus entries or study them all.
“I wanted it to be big and diverse,” Zachary said in a telephone interview, espousing how he likes the richness of actual accounts instead of sanitized history book versions. “I hope when you’re done, it leaves readers with a breadth and a scope of Iowa’s history.”
The book includes campaign platforms, creeds, diaries, editorials, ethnographic studies, fictions, government documents, history, humor, journalism, legal opinions, letters, memoirs, pamphlets, speeches and travel narratives from 1831 to 2007. The writers range from the unknown (just as interesting as the known) to the likes of Carrie Chapman Catt, Bob Feller, Susan Glaspell, Herbert Hoover, Ted Kooser, Aldo Leopold, Glenn Miller, Wallace Stegner, Henry Wallace and Grant Wood.
You can hear Zachary read from the book at 7 p.m. Friday night at Prairie Lights Books in Iowa City (and buy a copy for $26.95 there). To learn more about Zachary Jack click here.
Also, you can learn more about publisher Steve Semken who published it under the Tall Corn Books label of his Ice Cube Press in North Liberty by clicking here.
1 Comment
July 1, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Good article on the new Z. Jack book. I may try to pick up a copy as I need a good collection of Iowa stories for myself and a history buff friend.
I was in CR for family stuff when this article came out in the Gazette, and now that I’m back home (Raleigh, NC) I’ve noted that no one has yet corrected your error in the print edition on the author for the State Fair novel. The author was Phil Stong (not Strong). Perhaps this is a case of a spell checker run amuck.
The tenuous Cedar Rapids connection is that the newspaper character in the book was supposedly based on Cliff Millen, a longtime political reporter for the Des Moines Tribune and later a columnist for the Register and Tribune. But Cliff first worked as a reporter in CR for the Cedar Rapids Republican before it went under (See Political Notes: by Frank Nye, p 7B, CR Gazette, 28 May 1972)