Iowa has been blessed with citizens of strong character who have made invaluable contributions to the state and to the nation. In the 1930s alone, such towering figures as John L. Lewis, Henry A. Wallace, and Herbert Hoover hugely influenced the nation’s affairs.

Iowa’s Native Americans, early explorers, inventors, farmers, scholars, baseball players, musicians, artists, writers, politicians, scientists, conservationists, preachers, educators, and activists continue to enrich our lives and inspire our imaginations.

Written by an impressive team of more than 150 scholars and writers, the readable narratives include each subject’s name, birth and death dates, place of birth, education, and career and contributions. Many of the names will be instantly recognizable to most Iowans; others are largely forgotten but deserve to be remembered.

Beyond the distinctive lives and times captured in the individual biographies, readers of the dictionary will gain an appreciation for how the character of the state has been shaped by the character of the individuals who have inhabited it.

From Dudley Warren Adams, fruit grower and Grange leader, to the Younker brothers, founders of one of Iowa’s most successful department stores, The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa is peopled with the rewarding lives of more than four hundred notable citizens of the Hawkeye State. The histories contained in this essential reference work should be eagerly read by anyone who cares about Iowa and its citizens.

Read The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa Online

Welcome to the online version of The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa, edited by David Hudson, Marvin Bergman, and Loren Horton. Written by an impressive team of more than 150 scholars and writers, The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa was created to spotlight prominent Iowans throughout the history of the region.

Hardcover: 608 pages
Publisher: University Of Iowa Press; 1 edition (January 1, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1587296853
ISBN-13: 978-1587296857

INTRODUCTION
The character of a state is determined by the character of the people who inhabit it. Iowa has been blessed with citizens of strong character who have made invaluable contributions to the state and to the nation. Of course, the creators of a biographical dictionary for any state in the Union could likely make the same claim. And yet. . . .

John Schacht, one of our contributors, has made a serious argument that Iowa’s cultural climate, at least in the last half of the nineteenth century, might have made it more than coincidental that “a disproportionate share of the influential people of the 1930s came from Iowa.” In an article in the Palimpsest in 1982, he gives a long list of influential people in various areas, but focuses on four: Herbert Hoover, John L. Lewis, Henry A. Wallace, and Harry Hopkins. “Aside from the towering figure of FDR himself,” Schacht notes, “it would be difficult to name four people as important in national affairs between 1930 and 1940.”

Iowa’s influence, of course, was not limited to the 1930s. In an earlier time, national political figures such as William Boyd Allison and David B. Henderson carried considerable weight. Nor are significant Iowans limited to those who served in the political realm. ...

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
David Hudson recently retired as acquisitions librarian for the State Historical Society of Iowa.

Marvin Bergman has edited the Annals of Iowa for the State Historical Society of Iowa since 1987. He is the coeditor of Unionizing the Jungles: Labor and Community in the Twentieth-Century Meatpacking Industry (Iowa, 1997) and the editor of the Iowa History Reader (Iowa edition, 2008).

Loren Horton retired as senior historian after twenty-four years of working for the State Historical Society of Iowa.

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