BOOK REVIEW
Caroline A. Gherardini, editor, Illinois Issues Annual. Legislative Studies Center, Sangamon State University, Springfield, Ill., 1976, iii. plus 108 pp., $3.00.
William K. Hall, Illinois Government and Politics, A Reader. Kendall / Hunt Publishing Co., Dubuque, la., 1975, viii plus 284 pp., $6.95.
Robert M. Sutton, editor, with Janet Crist, Christina Newton and Karen Kanady Miller, The Heartland: Pages from Illinois History. Deer path Publishing Co., Lake Forest, Ill., 1975, 250 pp., $1.95 paper, $5.95 hardbound.
IF IT IS the case (as Prof. Hall says) that Illinois social science teachers have been complaining of the lack of materials dealing with this state, they now have these three readers for use. The Illinois Issues Annual, drawing on articles published in 1975, is the most current. Prof. Hall's reader is the most scholarly. Prof. Sutton's historical sampler is the most far ranging.
Forty articles make up the Annual, grouped under state house politics, personalities, women, crime and punishment, environment and energy, local government and "Getting Things Done." The selection from 1975 numbers of this magazine was made by a committee of three high school
social science teachers, a consultant of the
Illinois Office of Education, and two
university political scientists. Basically
intended for use in the high schools, the
materials would be appropriate for basic
political science courses at the community
college and university level. Such articles as
James P. Hartnett's " Energy use profile for
Illinois" give the current facts within a framework of policy alternatives for the state.
The reader assembled by Prof. Hall of Bradley University consists of 23 papers dealing with the Constitution, legislature,
governor and executive branch, judiciary,
electoral politics, and "Sub-State Politics: Local Governments in Illinois." It includes
such classics as Tom Littlewood's "Bipartisan Coalition in Illinois," the account of how
the late Paul Powell got himself elected
speaker of the House in 1959 in spite of the
opposition of the Chicago Democratic
organization, as well as Paul Simon's 1974 article, "The Illinois Legislature: A Study in
Corruption." More recent reprints include
articles on the legislature by Bill O'Connell
and on the new Constitution by Robert W.
Bergstrom that appeared in the Peoria
Journal Star. Most of the materials, however, are reprinted from scholarly sources.
The reader is intended for college use.
| Prof. Sutton, director of the Illinois Historical Survey at the University of Illinois, and his three assistants have aimed their book at high school or junior high school audiences. The Heartland is illustrated and includes an index (neither of the other volumes do). Its 52 chapters range from prehistoric Indians to "Illinois and the Future" and include such topics as "Death Dealing Disasters in Illinois," "Scandals in the State House," and "Inventions — Practical and Otherwise." Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago gets his own chapter which mentions the 1968 Democratic Convention and its violence and concludes with his triumphant reelection in 1975. Sutton and his associates have packed a tremendous amount of information into a paperback. Did you know that the ice cream sundae was invented in Evanston?/ W.L.D. |
|