The ten books in The American Lakes Series were published by Bobbs-Merrill in the 1940s. The first five cover all of the Great Lakes. The next five concern thirteen other lakes which are scattered throughout the United States. The titles of the books are provided along with some sample reviews.
The Great Lakes
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We are on the eve of a long weekend to celebrate what is known (for now) as “Victoria Day”. In the area surrounding the Great Lakes it is likely to be cool and rainy, so reading about the lakes will be more enjoyable than swimming in them.
These books were written in the 1940s by professional historians for popular consumption. The academic historians of today are generally forced to produce books suitable only for professional consumption by other members of the academies.
It is highly likely that you will find something of interest about either the condition of the lakes or the attitudes of the historians as you read these books which were written about 75 years ago. If you happen to be a university student, be warned that the word “savage” was spotted in one volume when the author is discussing the early indigenous occupants of this continent.
It should be noted that the books are also about the land and people around the lakes. One of the reviewers of the book about Lake Pontchartrain suggests that it is mostly about New Orleans. Perhaps the most interesting chapter in Landon’s Lake Huron is the one about an amazing medical experiment involving the exposed intestines of a voyageur. (See: Chapter 13: “William Beaumont: ‘Backwoods Physiologist’,”). The author, Professor Landon, was the University Librarian and a member of the history department at the University of Western Ontario. The copy of Lake Huron I borrowed from the Western libraries is signed by him.
These books were written in the 1940s by professional historians for popular consumption. The academic historians of today are generally forced to produce books suitable only for professional consumption by other members of the academies.
It is highly likely that you will find something of interest about either the condition of the lakes or the attitudes of the historians as you read these books which were written about 75 years ago. If you happen to be a university student, be warned that the word “savage” was spotted in one volume when the author is discussing the early indigenous occupants of this continent.
It should be noted that the books are also about the land and people around the lakes. One of the reviewers of the book about Lake Pontchartrain suggests that it is mostly about New Orleans. Perhaps the most interesting chapter in Landon’s Lake Huron is the one about an amazing medical experiment involving the exposed intestines of a voyageur. (See: Chapter 13: “William Beaumont: ‘Backwoods Physiologist’,”). The author, Professor Landon, was the University Librarian and a member of the history department at the University of Western Ontario. The copy of Lake Huron I borrowed from the Western libraries is signed by him.
Lake Huron
Lake Huron, Fred Landon, Bobbs-Merrill, 1944
“Here is history, biography, legend, anecdote, mystery and economic and social text. “Lake Huron is the first volume in the “American Lakes Series, edited by Milo M. Quaife. Fred Landon has provided his successors with a model which will cost them blood, sweat and tears to equal.” "Lake Huron, First Volume in 'The American Lakes Series': Lake Huron by Fred Landon," Oscar Cargill, New York Times, March 26, 1944.
“He just makes the past and the present of the central Great Lake so full of color and drama that the reader’s only consciousness of the author is the occasional wish that he would expand some incident further.” “Fred Landon’s History of Huron Inaugurates Great Lake Series,” William Arthur Deacon, Globe and Mail, June 17, 1944.
“It is good news that at last the Great Lakes are to be the subject of a series of books by an accomplished group of historians....” “Here is history warmed by love of the land and the water. More of Lake Huron lies in Canada than in the United States, and it is fitting that a Canadian historian should have told this story.” “Huron First in Series of Lake History, Walter Havighurst, Chicago Daily Tribune, Mar. 26, 1944
[Havighurst is the author of another book on the Great Lakes - The Long Ships Passing - which you can still order from the University of Minnesota Press.]
“To supply a very real historical need [for histories of the Great Lakes], then, Dr. Quaife has planned the American Lakes Series, and fortunately he has persuaded Professor Landon, sometime freshwater sailor, veteran journalist, and member of the history department of the University of Western Ontario, to write the first volume.” Edward P. Alexander, Pacific Historical Review, Sept. 1944 Vol. 13, No 3.
"The editor of the series, Mr. M. M. Quaife, hopes to appeal to the general public; and accordingly Professor Landon omits the critical apparatus of professional historical books and chooses the most dramatic happenings for his narrative, including the experiments of Dr. William Beaumont of Mackinac on the partly open stomach of Alexis St. Martin in the eighteen-twenties. He has used the reports of early travellers on the lakes and some publications of local societies but makes no claim to exhaustive research." W.B. Kerr, The Canadian Historical Review, 1944, Volume 25, Issue 4.
“Those who have never gazed upon its limitless horizons cannot read this book without feeling that they have missed something very much worth while, and those to whom some of Huron's vast area at least is familiar will feel the haunting desire to return.” Lawrence J. Burpee, Minnesota History, 01/1944.
Lake Superior
Lake Superior, Grace Lee Nute, Bobbs-Merrill, 1944.
“Altogether a book to be highly recommended, to the serious student as well as the general reader." Lawrence J. Burpee, The American Historical Review, Vol. 50, No. 3 (Apr., 1945), pp. 553-554.
Lake Michigan
Lake Michigan, Milo Milton Quaife, Bobbs-Merrill, 1944.
“The story set forth in both Lake Michigan and Lake Superior is a breath-taking tale of vanishing men and vanishing things.” Oscar Cargill, New York Times, Aug 27, 1944.
[Both the Superior and Michigan books are discussed in this review.]
[Both the Superior and Michigan books are discussed in this review.]
"Third to appear in the "American Lakes Series," this is the very readable work of the editor and may be viewed as the pattern for the group. Neither geography nor travel guide, the book is rather a regional history designed apparently for popular consumption but not without a substantial foundation of research. Like its river counterparts, it is not so much the history of a lake as of a locality…” American Historical Review, Vol.50, No.3, April, 1945.
Lake Ontario
Lake Ontario, Arthur Pound, Bobbs-Merrill, 1945.
“Many American readers will enjoy most the chapters devoted to Ontario’s Canadian shores.”Mr. Pound sketches its story from the day in 1615 when Etienne Brule first saw the lake right down to the contemporary war boom in a volume which successfully combines geology, history, biography, statistics and folklore.” "The Story of Lake Ontario," Carl Bridenbaugh, New York Times, June 17, 1945.
This reviewer writes that "this is the best book written about Lake Ontario," but he notes that it seems to have been written for an American audience and that much of the Canadian material will be familiar to Canadians. “How Lake Ontario Stretches from Quebec to Mississippi," William Arthur Deacon,' The Globe and Mail, July 14, 1945.
Lake Erie
Lake Erie, Harlan Hatcher, Bobbs-Merrill, 1945.
"Lake Erie completes the American Lake Series as far as the Great Lakes are involved. Those who are interested in the great inland seas of North America may well take pride in the fact that their history has been done in a way which should be acceptable both to the historian and the general reader. These five volumes will for many years be both the basic outline and the point of departure of the history of the Lakes and their environs.” R. Carlyle Buley, Indiana Magazine of History, Vol.2, No 2, June, 1946.
[Hatcher also wrote a general history of all of these lakes. See: The Great Lakes, Harlan Hatcher, Oxford University Press, 1944. For a review see: The American Historical Review, Vol. 50, No. 4 (Jul., 1945), pp. 817-818.]
[Hatcher also wrote a general history of all of these lakes. See: The Great Lakes, Harlan Hatcher, Oxford University Press, 1944. For a review see: The American Historical Review, Vol. 50, No. 4 (Jul., 1945), pp. 817-818.]
The Other Lakes
Lake Pontchartrain
Lake Pontchartrain, W. Adolphe Roberts, Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1946.
“The striking thing about this volume on Lake Pontchartrain - one of the American Lakes series - is that it contains so little about the lake. Most of its pages are given over to the city of New Orleans - its founding, its growth, its charming ways and its unusual attitudes.”
“W. Adolphe Roberts Writes Vivid New Orleans Story,” Avery Craven, New York Times, Oct. 20, 1946.
"Lake Champlain and Lake George is consistently a good book, with no dull passages or chapters to mar the pleasure of the reader.” Stephen H.P. Pell, New York History, Vol. 28, No.2, April, 1947, pp. 214-217.
The Great Salt Lake, Dale E. Morgan, Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1947.
Post Script: (the usual bonus stuff)
If you were intrigued by the reference to the medical experiment at Mackinac see the Wikipedia entry for William Beaumont ("the Father of Gastric Physiology").
Milo Quaife, the editor of the American Lakes Series and author of the volume on Lake Michigan, was killed in a car crash near Sault Ste. Marie in 1959. See: "Historian Dies in Crash: Milo Quaife, 79, Specialized in Midwestern Subjects," New York Times, Sept. 4, 1959.
Enjoy these lakes while you can. Last summer it was reported that even Lake Superior is experiencing algae blooms. Things are likely to get worse. It has just been announced that copper mining will be allowed in the Boundary Waters Wilderness area in Minnesota. See: "Trump Administration Opens Minnesota Wilderness Area to Copper Mining," Valerie Volcovici, Reuters, May 15, 2019.
“The striking thing about this volume on Lake Pontchartrain - one of the American Lakes series - is that it contains so little about the lake. Most of its pages are given over to the city of New Orleans - its founding, its growth, its charming ways and its unusual attitudes.”
“W. Adolphe Roberts Writes Vivid New Orleans Story,” Avery Craven, New York Times, Oct. 20, 1946.
Lake Champlain and Lake George
Lake Champlain and Lake George, Frederick F. Van de Water, Bobbs-Merrill Co. 1946."Lake Champlain and Lake George is consistently a good book, with no dull passages or chapters to mar the pleasure of the reader.” Stephen H.P. Pell, New York History, Vol. 28, No.2, April, 1947, pp. 214-217.
The Great Salt Lake
The Great Salt Lake, Dale E. Morgan, Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1947.
The well respected Wallace Stegner had this to say about this work:
“Even from a book from a popular series one may expect accuracy in the important facts of history. One does not usually expect precision and definitiveness, especially when the book in question must cover centuries of time. It is therefore something of a tour de force that Dale Morgan has accomplished, for The Great Salt Lake is both panoramic and precise, both popularly readable and historically important.” Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Aug., 1947), pp. 330-331.
Lake Okeechobee
Lake Okeechobee: Wellspring of the Everglades, Alfred Jackson Hanna and Kathryn Abbey Hanna, Bobbs-Merrill Co. 1948.
“The Hannas have written a book which will have a wide appeal, and their treatment of the subject matter is excellent.” Junius E. Dovell, The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Nov., 1948), pp. 567-568.
Sierra-Nevada Lakes
Sierra-Nevada Lakes, George and Bliss Hinkle, Bobbs-Merrill Co. 1949.
"This book is about 8 lakes, but is particularly good about Lake Tahoe -”Eight Western Lakes: Sierra-Nevada Lakes,” George R. Stewart, New York Times, April, 17, 1949.
“It would be difficult to find any couple - or anyone - better versed in the lore of this hinterland than the Hinkles." John Walton Caughey, The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 36, No. 4 (Mar., 1950), p. 714
“The book is well written, and the point of view is often fresh and stimulating.” August Fruge, Pacific Historical Review,Vol. 18, No. 4 (Nov., 1949), pp. 524-525.
Sources:
None of these books are yet available for reading via the Internet. All are available through book dealers such as AbeBooks, although purchasing the set would be expensive. The entire book series and all of the other titles mentioned above are found in the Western Libraries.
Interesting information about Grace Lee Nute, the author of Lake Superior, is found at the Minnesota Historical Society.
Sources:
None of these books are yet available for reading via the Internet. All are available through book dealers such as AbeBooks, although purchasing the set would be expensive. The entire book series and all of the other titles mentioned above are found in the Western Libraries.
Interesting information about Grace Lee Nute, the author of Lake Superior, is found at the Minnesota Historical Society.
Post Script: (the usual bonus stuff)
If you were intrigued by the reference to the medical experiment at Mackinac see the Wikipedia entry for William Beaumont ("the Father of Gastric Physiology").
Milo Quaife, the editor of the American Lakes Series and author of the volume on Lake Michigan, was killed in a car crash near Sault Ste. Marie in 1959. See: "Historian Dies in Crash: Milo Quaife, 79, Specialized in Midwestern Subjects," New York Times, Sept. 4, 1959.
Enjoy these lakes while you can. Last summer it was reported that even Lake Superior is experiencing algae blooms. Things are likely to get worse. It has just been announced that copper mining will be allowed in the Boundary Waters Wilderness area in Minnesota. See: "Trump Administration Opens Minnesota Wilderness Area to Copper Mining," Valerie Volcovici, Reuters, May 15, 2019.
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