History as nostalgia

By William Furry

"Rural simplicity and contentment" were the cornerstones of Arcadia, the region of ancient Greece known for its pastoral charm and innocence. That sentiment more than meets the ambitions of Arcadia Publishing Company, the ubiquitous printer of "regional and local interest books" now flooding the market. Indeed, in terms of the geography of the imagination, Arcadia press now would seem to hold the deed.

Certainly the Charleston, South Carolina-based publishing house (with offices in Chicago and Portsmouth, New Hampshire) has found its niche in the history market, selling handsome cream-colored paperbacks filled with usually excellent old photographs accompanied by a minimum of text sparingly written by regional historians. Arcadia has been wise to avoid any pretense of publishing "true" history, however, for its catalog is more about nostalgia than any systematic interpretation of human experience.

That said, what are we to make of Arcadia's remarkable success in the "popular history" realm? By its very existence "popular history" suggests there is an "unpopular" variety, a distinction not lost on those who spend their lives sifting the past to earn a footnote in an unread tome. The less said the better. Arcadia satisfies a certain appetite, and the wisest of dieticians knows that an occasional dessert, though not particularly nourishing, is good for the soul.

On to the dessert then. Arcadia publishes a variety of series: Voices of America (an oral history series, and the closest Arcadia gets to the real goods); Images of America (pictorial histories); and Postcard, Sports, and Campus histories. Of the series Voices is by far the most substantive, but for the purposes of this review we'll focus exclusively on the pictorial histories, which are far more plentiful.

Each title in the Images of America series includes more than 200 captioned photographs, a very brief introduction, and a page of acknowledgments and photo credits. There are no indices, no bibliographies, no end-notes or footnotes. It is, more or less, cookie-cutter history. Depending on the author/editor, the photo captions can be either illuminating or obtuse; I have seen both within the same text. All titles have a table of contents, which suggests some forethought, although the the "chapters" arc often embarassingly skimpy. It there is nourishment in the Images menu it comes in the form of cultural diversity, at which it seems to excel. Recent Illinois titles explore a variety of ethnic communities, including Filipinos, Mexicans, Germans, and Assyrians in Chicago, as well as African Americans in West Central Illinois. In Filipinos in Chicago, Estrella Revelo Alamar and Willi Red Buhay strive "to bring historical justice to the Windy City," whose Filipino American legacy they maintain is as rich as "Seattle, Honolulu, and California's Stockton, San Francisco, and Los Angeles." An ambitious goal, to be sure, especially in a 128-page picture book crammed with photos.

Rita Arias Jirasek and Carlos Tortolero do a much better job in Mexican Chicago, casually exploring the neighborhoods of Pilsen, Little Village, South Deering, and) others where Latinos have" lived and prospered over the last 100 years. For this book Arcadia added 32 pages—including color—to the model, and increased the usual $19.95 cover price by 25 percent. Success does not come cheap.

Other books in the series succeed because they are tightly focused, such as Chicago's Southast Side, Douglas/Grand Boulevard, and my personal favorite, The Prairie Club of Chicago, which captures in photos the "back to nature" movement of the first decade of the last century as it was experience in the urban frontier. Here women in wool suits, silk blouses, and big hats forage through the woods with dapper, buttoned down gentlemen, delighting in their modest explorations and discoveries. What fun!

There is no end in sight to Arcadia's conquest of the "popular history" market. With its Postcard, Sports, and Campus history series, Arcadia is capturing and recording a past that would otherwise be lost. And there is still so much to be captured.

Certainly the ethnic photo histories, however shallow in context and analysis, are giving communities the opportunity to examine their heritages in ways that haven't been available before. For that Arcadia can and should be applauded.

The real histories will come. For now we have dessert—and lots of it. Pour yourself a glass of milk and enjoy.

18 ILLINOIS HERITAGE