Iowa History Book Club

Join the State Historical Society and Annals of Iowa editor, Andrew Klumpp, to explore Iowa’s past. Each quarter a book related to a different aspect of Iowa history will be selected and at the online book club meeting Klumpp will be joined by the book’s author or a current Iowa historian to discuss it. Book Club attendees are encouraged to submit questions during the meeting or at registration. 

Participants are encouraged but not required to read the book prior to our meeting. Most books can be found from online booksellers or libraries. Registration is required for each event. View past programs here. 

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7 p.m. Thursday, March 7
A New History of Iowa by Jeff Bremer
Hosted by Andrew Klumpp and Jeff Bremer
Register

This new story of Iowa provides a brisk, readable narrative written for a broad audience, from high school and college students to teachers and scholars to general readers. It tells the story of ordinary and extraordinary people of all backgrounds and greatly improves our knowledge of a state whose history has been neglected. A New History of Iowa is for everyone who wants to learn about Iowa’s surprising, complex, and remarkable past.

 

 

7 p.m. Thursday, May 23
Tending Iowa's Land: Pathways to a Sustainable Future by Cornelia Mutel
Hosted by Andrew Klumpp and Cornelia Mutel
Register

In the last 200 years, Iowa’s prairies and other wildlands have been transformed into vast agricultural fields. This massive conversion has provided us with food, fiber, and fuel in abundance. But it has also robbed Iowa’s land of its native resilience and created the environmental problems that today challenge our everyday lives: polluted waters, increasing floods, loss and degradation of rich prairie topsoil, compromised natural systems, and now climate change. In a straightforward, friendly style, Iowa’s premier scientists and experts consider what has happened to our land and outline viable solutions that benefit agriculture as well as the state’s human and wild residents.