Shambaugh Awards best books on Iowa History

Every year, the State Historical Society of Iowa presents the Benjamin F. Shambaugh Awards for the best Iowa history books published during the previous year.
The award’s namesake served for 40 years as the State Historical Society’s superintendent, taught at the University of Iowa, and vigorously promoted the study of state and local history.
The four books on this year’s Shambaugh Short List—one overall winner and three honorable mentions—were selected by a volunteer jury of historians and educators, who wrote the following capsule reviews.
Shambaugh Award Winner
“The Good Governor: Robert Ray and the Indochinese Refugees of Iowa” by Matthew R. Walsh. McFarland and Co. 233 pages. $35.
Perhaps no single action of a governor changed our state more than Robert D. Ray’s decision to make Iowa a haven for Indochinese refugees after the Vietnam War.
It and subsequent resettlements of Bosnians, Sudanese and others altered the ethnic composition of Iowa. More important, Ray’s infectious compassion gave Iowans a proud self-image as a caring, welcoming people.
Now, 40-plus years later, the glow from the good deeds Ray inspired has faded, as have memories of that remarkable era. Fortunately, before living memory is entirely gone, Matthew R. Walsh compiled a book-length account of Indochinese resettlement in Iowa.
Walsh, professor of history at Des Moines Area Community College, tells the stories both of the various refugee groups and of Governor Ray. The book will become an enduring reference for a defining period in recent Iowa history.
Roused by Ray’s Christian conscience, Iowa offered refuge when other states hesitated, and Iowa became the only state to establish a state agency to facilitate resettlement. Iowa also set a model by, at Ray’s insistence, arranging jobs for refugees instead of welfare.
While many Iowans look back on the resettlement era as one of Iowa’s finest hours, there was a hidden dark side. Walsh recalls that a majority of Iowans never really supported the resettlement, and in his private correspondence Ray endured a stream of anti-refugee vituperation.
And in the end, it appears the dark side prevailed. The state office of refugee resettlement no longer exists, and recent governors have shown no interest in reviving it. Iowans showed their present feelings by casting a landslide vote for the anti-immigrant candidate for president in 2016.
So perhaps the Ray era was just one brief, shining moment in Iowa history, not to be repeated anytime soon. At least now there is a book about it.
Reviewer Richard Doak is a retired opinions editor at the Des Moines Register and teaches a course on Iowa history at Simpson College.
Honorable Mentions, in alphabetical order
“Crusading Iowa Journalist Verne Marshall: Exposing Graft and the 1936 Pulitzer Prize” by Jerry Harrington. The History Press.  141 pages. $22.
In 1936, editor Verne Marshall and the Cedar Rapids Gazette won the Pulitzer Prize for more than a year of vigorous muckraking. Two years earlier, a police raid of a Cedar Rapids canning plant had uncovered evidence of illegal liquor and gambling. The tendrils of the scandal led in many directions, including a tangle of allegations in Sioux City involving Iowa’s attorney general, Edward O’Connor.
Marshall was infuriated by the thought of Iowa officials flouting the law for their own benefit, so he launched an immensely expensive and time-consuming crusade that sent reporters statewide in search of miscreants. As Marshall said in 1935, “I think it is a newspaper man’s job to go after any dishonest public official who is pretending to serve the public, regardless of who it is. And when he gets the news he should print it, regardless of how much it costs.”
What it cost was more than a year of turmoil. Attorney General O’Connor was tried for corruption and eventually resigned. Harold Cooper, head of Iowa’s newly created Liquor Control Commission, also resigned. However, the investigation of campaign finance irregularities ground to a halt without any measurable results, and the indictments for illegal liquor sales and slot machines produced no convictions.
Even so, the scandal forced officials to pay attention to by-the-drink sales and gambling. Slot machines disappeared across the state. The media spotlight prompted several other resignations and led to a restructuring of law enforcement in Sioux City and Woodbury County. But it’s not entirely clear that Marshall succeeded in clearing the state of vice and crooked politicians in the way he had intended.
It is certainly not the author’s fault, but the book ends on a decidedly down note. After crusading against vice in Iowa, Marshall decided to crusade against American involvement in World War II. He founded the No Foreign Wars Committee and led a strident and shrill campaign, which ended with Marshall’s nervous breakdown. The skills he used in his journalistic crusade did not translate well into the political arena. He never again had the bully pulpit or the influence that he had in the 1930s, and he died in 1965.
“Crusading Iowa Journalist” is a thorough book and a dense one. For readers who delight in detail, there is detail a-plenty. The author clearly did his research. For those who want analysis, there was probably room for a bit more.
Nevertheless, this book is an interesting, fact-packed examination of vice in Iowa in the 1930s and a portrait of the man who made it his business to clean up the state.
Reviewer Pamela Riney-Kehrberg teaches American history at Iowa State University.
“The Fighting Sullivans: How Hollywood and the Military Make Heroes” by Bruce Kuklick. University Press of Kansas. 224 pages. $28.
Except for several unusual circumstances, the Sullivan brothers of Waterloo probably would have passed into history with little recognition or recollection. That is the central thesis of this important book: how the military and the film industry worked in tandem to use the tragic loss of five brothers to stir up American patriotism during World War II.   
Such a statement seems cynical, but it is hard to dispute the facts. Certainly the young men had done little to merit admiration before they all showed up to join the United States Navy in the aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. They were typical American recruits.
What distinguished them was their insistence that they serve together on the same ship. “We Sullivans stick together,” they were heard to say. It was not an unusual request; numerous brothers made the same request when they joined the military. What is mystifying is that the Sullivans were, in fact, assigned to the same ship, the USS Juneau.
Although service together might have gained them a brief mention in the local press, it was what happened on Nov. 13, 1942, that swept the brothers and their family into a vortex of patriotism, myth and celebrity. On that day the Juneau was struck by an errant Japanese torpedo, broke in two and sunk. It appeared that all hands were lost, and there was no immediate effort to look for survivors.
But that was not the case. In fact, as many as a hundred members, including George Sullivan, awaited rescue, but the false assumption that all hands were lost delayed rescue efforts for 48 hours. When the Navy finally searched the area, only 10 survivors remained.
All five Sullivans were lost as the result of a series of snafus. At the time, nobody could have predicted how the Navy would use this senseless loss of life to motivate the armament industry to produce more and more ships. The Navy plastered a photo of the brothers above the slogan “they did their part” on a widely distributed poster and, to further enhance the message of total sacrifice, asked the brothers’ parents to tour ship-building facilities as news cameras whirred.
The spotlight on the Sullivan family’s sacrifice eventually led Hollywood to produce a film called “The Fighting Sullivans.” It was a real pot-boiler, which fictionalized the boys’ life growing up on the streets of Waterloo.
The evolution of these extraordinary circumstances is the focus of Bruce Kuklick’s important new book. Well researched and well considered, Kuklick’s book raises uncomfortable questions about the nature of heroism and celebrity during wartime. He carefully analyzes the rather pedestrian life of the Sullivan family in Waterloo and notes the bond between the boys during the 1930s. He further traces the military engagement that led to their family’s tragic loss.
What distinguishes the book, however, is how well Kuklick dissects the ways the Navy and Hollywood used the Sullivan family for their own ends. Rather than acknowledging the stupidity of the decision to let five brothers serve on the same ship, the Navy lionized the boys, and Hollywood capitalized on all the attention. The Sullivan family became props in the effort to build a myth about sacrifice and heroism.
Kuklick also provides a useful chapter on the aftermath of all the mythmaking. Now, long after the war is over, how does Waterloo remember the Sullivan brothers? The book notes that there were ambivalent responses to the various proposals to honor their sacrifice.
“We need heroes,” Kuklick writes in the book’s excellent conclusion. “But how we identify them is unclear, as is why we must elevate them beyond the human.”
That is the ongoing dilemma over the legacy of George, Frank, Red, Matt and Al Sullivan.
Reviewer Tim Walch is a retired director of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in West Branch.
“Harvest of Hazards: Family Farming, Accidents, and Expertise in the Corn Belt, 1940-1975” by Derek S. Oden. University of Iowa Press. 292 pages. $63.
Midwest farming has always been unsafe. The weather, animals and working with hand tools were always dangerous. Farmers then added dangerous and powerful equipment along with agricultural fertilizers and chemicals to the already risky business. I grew up on a small Midwest farm and often think that my father’s obsession with farm safety made the difference between my survival and death.
“Harvest of Hazards” summarizes the period from 1940, around the time the first real farm-safety campaigns had just begun and some farms still used horses, all the way up to 1975, when modern technologies were common, along with commercial fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, and farm-safety measures were widespread. That transition was slow, since the tight margin in farm profits made the introduction of some safety measures difficult.
The small-business entrepreneurial nature of Midwest farming and a more lax regulatory environment also slowed farm-safety improvements. Midwest farmers were often reluctant to adopt farm-safety technology, particularly when it increased costs. Workplace safety had radically improved for most Americans by 1940, but not on the farm. Nevertheless, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Safety Council, Future Farmers of America, 4-H, Midwest land grant universities (particularly Iowa State University) and others publicized the dangers of farming and promoted better farm safety. Despite occasional controversy, this broad coalition of safety advocates helped boost public awareness and update the liability laws that some believe have helped make farming safer.
The book’s author has a doctorate in history from Iowa State University and teaches history at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Tex. His well-written compilation of information from scattered sources is now a key part of U.S. agricultural and occupational safety history.
Reviewer John Brown of Johnston has served on the State Historical Society of Iowa Board of Trustees since 2009.