BOOK REVIEW
By ANNA J. MERRITT

Recollections of Tribune's Bob Howard

Water resources in Illinois: the challenge of abundance Illinois is a land of many riches — from the vast veins of coal that underlie much of the state to the fertile farmland that stretches between its borders. Illinois is also rich in water, but this wealth is threatened by pollution, waste and poor management. Adequate supplies of clean water for the future will depend on today's solutions to these problems. Between June and November 1982 Illinois Issues, with funding from The Joyce Foundation, published a six-part series on water resources in Illinois. This series, authored by James Krohe Jr., explores the problems confronting this important resource and how they might be resolved. Now, all six articles have been compiled in Water resources in Illinois: the challenge of abundance. You may order your copy of this special publication today. Simply fill out the order card inserted in this magazine and send it along with $4 plus $1 for postage to Illinois Issues.

Robert P. Howard Memoir, Oral History
Office Sangamon State University,
Springfield (1982), 203 pp.

FOLLOWING upon a number of memoirs from Illinois legislators, the Oral History Office at Sangamon State University turns in this latest volume to a rather different but equally fascinating perspective on 20th century developments in this state. Robert P. Howard was a newspaperman, head of the AP office in Springfield from 1933 to 1938, then briefly with the Chicago Sun, and finally a political reporter and state-house correspondent in Springfield for the Chicago Tribune. During these years he developed an interest in history and historical figures, an interest he continues to cultivate to this day:

My interest in history went back to when I was in Springfield in the thirties. . . . The paintings of the governors at that time were in the Governor's Office, and I used to wonder who they were. [Someone] at one time gave me a booklet, a small thing I would carry in my coat pocket, that listed a bibliography of Illinois history. So I kept that for years and acquired some books on the subject.

After his retirement in 1970, Howard was appointed to the State Archives Board, became active in the State Historical Society and completed a manuscript he had been working on for some time, Illinois: A History of the Prairie State (published in 1972).

Mr. Howard's instinct for the good story and concern for the historical perspective, combined with Cullom Davis' marvelous ability to sculpt an interview have produced yet another valuable contribution to our understanding of a part of our past.□

February 1983 | Illinois Issues | 33