The Evangelical and the Journalist: Billy Sunday & A.B. MacDonald

Crowds jam New York’s Penn Station to see Billy Sunday arrive. Bain News Service, between 1910 -1920. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

A. B. MacDonald was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist in the early decades of the 20^th century who had a front-row seat to the sermons of Billy Sunday, one of the most electrifying preachers of the day.

MacDonald, based in Kansas City, was an evangelical Christian himself. He spent much of 1917 to 1919 traveling across the country and proselytizing with Sunday, a man MacDonald repeatedly described as a “genius” and “the greatest man I have ever known.”

So begins Ryan Reft’s description of a new manuscript collection at the Library of Congress. You may read the entire post here.

Papers of President Theodore Roosevelt Now Online

The Library of Congress is announcing that the Theodore Roosevelt Papers are now online. You may read the entire announcement here.

Papers of President Woodrow Wilson Now Online

The Library of Congress now has Woodrow Wilson’s Papers online. You may read the official post, with link, here.

A Nation Without Borders: An Interview with the Author

Steven Hahn (Ph.D. Yale) is a professor in the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania. Here he deftly summarizes his new book about the United States from 1830-1910 as seen more from the South, West, and Mexico rather than from the Northeast: A Nation Without Borders – Process

A Factory Fire and Frances Perkins

Today marks 100 years since the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire—a blaze that lasted 18 minutes and left 146 workers dead. Among the many in New York City who witnessed the tragedy was Frances Perk…

Source: A Factory Fire and Frances Perkins | Prologue: Pieces of History

The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919

In 1919 a wave of molasses traveling at 35mph destroyed an entire Boston neighborhood. Find out about this strange disaster at Atlas Obscura: 100 Wonders: The Great Boston Molasses Flood | Atlas Obscura

Talking To or Talking Past Each Other in Progressive Era Iowa?

I am delighted to introduce to the world–well, the digital world–a new site created by 4 of my students.

The site is Talking To or Talking Past Each Other? | Woodrow Wilson, the Society of American Indians, and Progressive Era Iowa. It is the result of an assignment I made in my Progressive Era and Reform course.

The course was short–only 8 weeks. From the teaching side of things, it was a challenge to know what major assignment to make, other than reading and exams. There was little time for extensive research. The library folks here–in this case, most notably Greta Grond, Systems and Reference Librarian–have suggested Web 2.0 projects, for which they are happy to provide support. That is, have students construct web sites about substantively-researched topics critically considered. In other words, move students from web consumers to creators of web content that is something other than entertainment, opinion, or even Wikipedia.

Loess Hills, Iowa.

I am an old dog (Doug), but I do try to learn new tricks. I had Aaron Nash, Jordan Reinders, Jenna Ripke, and Cassandra Westpfahl build a site (with Greta Grond’s digital oversight) presenting and comparing two Progressive era events in Iowa: candidate Woodrow Wilson’s Sioux City speech in 1912 and the annual convention of the  Society of American Indians in Cedar Rapids in 1916. (The 1912 presidential campaign was a 4-way race that highlighted progressivism. The Society of American Indians was the first significant pan-Indian organization; its members were arguably “progressive” and “assimilated” Indians.)

I’m delighted with what Aaron, Jordy, Jenna, and Cassie came up with. I hope you will find their site worth taking a look at. Not only can you go directly to their site, per the link at the top of this post, you can also find the link here at Northwestern College’s Digital Commons, which is taking shape bit by byte.