Indiana University Press blog

Celebrate National Train Day with these railroad reads!

Today is National Train Day! Learn more about railroad history and why trains still matter in these books:

Railroads and the American People
H. Roger Grant

"With plenty of detail, Grant brings a bygone era back to life, addressing everything from social and commercial appeal, racial and gender issues, safety concerns, and leaps in technology. But Grant never loses sight of the big picture and the essential role the railroads played in American life. He writes with authority and clarity in a work that can appeal to both casual and hardcore enthusiasts." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

 Read excerpt

Available July 2013
Off the Main Lines
A Photographic Odyssey
Don L. Hofsommer

In this visually stunning and comprehensive photographic essay, railroad historian and photographer Donovan L. Hofsommer records the end of branchline passenger service, the demise of electric railroads, the transition from steam to diesel power, as well as the end of common carrier freight service on the Colorado narrow gauge.

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Available August 2013
The Rock Island Line
Bill Marvel

This richly illustrated book tells the story of a legendary railroad whose tracks spanned the Midwest, serving farms and small-town America for more than 140 years.

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Available October 2013
John Frank Stevens
Civil Engineer
Clifford Foust

One of America's foremost civil engineers of the past 150 years, John Frank Stevens was a railway reconnaissance and location engineer whose reputation was made on the Canadian Pacific and Great Northern lines. Drawing on Stevens’s surviving personal papers and materials from projects with which he was associated, Clifford Foust offers an illuminating look into the life of an accomplished civil engineer.

Learn more

And if you're looking for more than just a railroad reading adventure, search the National Train Day website for events in your area.

Book review: A Lancastrian Mirror for Princes

"[McGerr's] study, scholarly and intuitive in equal measure, demonstrates that what may appear to be an inert status symbol, is actually a highly charged, and exquisitely wrought, political document." —Renaissance Quarterly

Book review: Mercury, Mining, and Empire

“In Mercury, Mining and Empire, Nicholas Robins provides a superbly researched piece of interdisciplinary history that argues that the post-Conquest genocide of the indigenous population of what is now Bolivia and Peru occurred as a result of a highly exploitative system of silver and mercury mining. Thus Robins analyzes a ‘double genocide’ that initially entailed the death of up to ninety percent of the indigenous peoples due to illnesses brought to the Americas by the Spanish, and continued with the subsequent genocidal destruction wrought by the toxic effects of the emerging mining industry.” —Journal of Genocide Research

Book review: From Protest to Challenge, Volume 6

"[A] timely book offering a distinctive mix of insightful analysis and supporting primary documents, ensuring that it is a crucial read for anyone interested in the intriguing events of apartheids’s demise." —Political Studies Review

Book reviews: Being Maasai, Becoming Indegenous

Being Maasai, Becoming Indigenous was reviewed in the following publications:

"This book is written in a lucid, direct style. ... Those of us working in East African rangelands should be grateful to Dorothy Hodgson for this thoughtful, timely, and important work." —African Affairs

"[P]rovide[s] invaluable insight into the regional context, as well as useful analyses for those researching ethnic conflict and policy implications in other parts of the world." —Leeds University Centre for African Studies

"The book is a wonderful achievement and evident in it is the author's genuine hopefulness and sensitivity about the goals and future of Maasai in Tanzania." —Pastoralism

"Overall this serves as an important reminder of the ongoing struggle for political representation and recognition of rights and resources faced by marginalized pastoralist communities throughout Africa." —Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies

"Through what she terms 'nodal' ethnography, Hodgson provides a fascinating and close-up look at the origins, motivations, and complications of the emergent NGO sector among one of Africa’s most iconic groups." —International Journal of African Historical Studies

Three books reviewed in The American Historical Review

Three of our books were reviewed in The American Historical Review:

War of Words, War of Stones

"This book is painstakingly researched, providing a compelling portrait of the intricacies of Zanzibari politics in the post-independence period and the historical legacies that shaped those politics. ... [I]t will stimulate the sorts of discussions about race, nationalism, and memory that can help to reshape and move scholarship forward." 

The Question of Gender

"[The editors] provide fresh analyses of the state of gender studies and the dynamic theories of 'sexual difference' as proposed, tested, and critiqued by Joan Wallach Scott." 

Mercury, Mining, and Empire

"With meticulous research and vivid prose, Nicholas A. Robins examines silver mining's human cost in the royal mercury mines of Huancavelica, Peru, and the silver mines of Potosi."

Book reviews: The Politics of Heritage from Madras to Chennai

“The book will remain a serious contribution to the discussion of memory, of the complex contours of the secular and the religious, of the construction of spaces, and of the wobbly world of history.” —Contemporary South Asia

"The book makes a significant contribution to memory not only because it offers a theoretically informed and empirically rich analysis, but also because it reflects a deep and insightful engagement with the popular culture of Chennai." —South Asia Research

Book review: The Spatial Humanities

"This stimulating and wide-ranging book is a critically self-reflective attempt to map out ... the next phase of the role of ‘the spatial’ in humanities scholarship." —Literary and Linguistic Computing

Two IU Press books finalists for Herskovits Award

Jonathon Glassman, author of War of Words, War of Stones, and William Cunningham Bissell, author of Urban Design, Chaos, and Colonial Power in Zanzibar, have been selected as finalists for the African Studies Association’s 2012 Melville J. Herskovits Award.

This award is presented annually by the African Studies Association (ASA) for "the best scholarly work on Africa published in English during the previous year."

The winner will be announced during a ceremony at the ASA's annual meeting, which will take place November 29 at 1:30 p.m. at the Marriott Philadelphia Downtown in Philadelphia, PA.

Book review: Owen's Ape & Darwin's Bulldog

"In Christopher E. Cosans Owen has acquired a zealous modern mythologist. Owen’s Ape & Darwin’s Bulldog: Beyond Darwinism and Creationism offers a lively and uncompromisingly partisan account of the struggles between Owen and the Darwinists." —Journal of the History of Biology