Tales and Trails of Illinois

Tower Rock - ageless landmark of the Mississippi: salt mines in Illinois - an important early industry; the Great Sauk Trail across northern Illinois; Europeans come to Illinois - the Jolliet and the Marquette expedition; a grisly reputation - John Moredock - Indian slayer; the sucker state and mining galena at Galena; the last trails of Chief Ducoigne and his Kaskaskia; across Illinois with the famed birdwatcher John James Audubon; ''Black diamonds'' along the Big Muddy - Illinois' first coalmine; waiting for the second coming - the Rappites Harmonie; a ''perfect society'' experiment - Robert Owen's New Harmony; the midnight ride of Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard; stillman's run - a debacle of the Black Hawk War; Illinois martyr to freedom of the press - Elijah Parish Lovejoy; the singing plow that ''scoured'' - John Deere and Company; a trail of tears across southern Illinois - a Cherokee tragedy; James Semple's trackless train - the prairie car; shaping the state - the Illinois and Michigan Canal; a French quest for Utopia in Illinois - the Icarians; up-up and away - two kids in a runaway balloon; an angelic hero of the Civil War - Mary Ann ''Mother'' Bickerdyke; fencing the west - De Kalb and its barbed wire; James Buchanan Eads and his wonderful bridge; elixers in Illinois - mineral springs - baths and resorts; who threw the bomb? - the Haymarket Riot; death stalks the rails - the Chatsworth train wreck; Quincy's pioneer in the sky - Thomas Scott Baldwin; a shortcut to the Mississippi - the Hennepin Canal; Illinois's most heinous murderer - Herman W. Mudgett; Chicago's master boodlers - Michael ''Hinky Dink'' Kenna and ''Bathhouse'' John Couglin; of ferris wheels and Jacksonville's Eli Bridge Company; ''General'' Alexander Bradley's marches on the coalfields; the man who electrified Illinois - Samuel Insull; John Alexander Dowie's Utopia - Zion - Illinois; ''The most dangerous woman in America'' - Mary Harris ''Mother'' Jones; Chicago's new Iroquois Theatre becomes a fiery death trap; a big lake - a small town and William Patrick Rend; Illinois's worst coal mine disaster - the Cherry Mine fire; Rock River Valley - Lorado Taft and the Black Hawk statue; Calbraith Perry Rogers and the Vin Fiz Flyer cross Illinois; World War I hysteria - the Prager hanging; ''Butchery wrought in madness'' -the 1922 Herrin Massacre; the minister served arsenic - Ina's great scandal; nature wreaks devastation - the 1925 Tri-State Tornado; Illinois's last hanging - the gangster Charley Birger; the nuclear age dawns in a Chicago squash court; Illinois's beautiful gorge - Lusk Creek Canyon; the Sun Singer and Robert Allerton's exotic park; Oquawka - the town that immortalized an elephant; monsters and creatures of the Big Muddy River; an Illinois ecological Eden - LaRue Swamp-Pine Hills area; the Koster site - ''Amerindians'' and Dr. Stuart Struever.

ADVANCE PRAISE ''Tales and Trails of Illinois is well written and the vignettes are interesting and varied in content. The book will appeal to a wide readership who enjoy popular history. Also, teachers need more worthwhile publications to aid in presenting Illinois history to their students. Stu Fliege's account does just that.'' -- Rand Burnette, president of the Illinois State Historical Society