Digitized Book of the Week

http://www.archive.org/details/crankyannstreetw00andr
http://www.archive.org/details/wickednellgaygir00andr
View the Flip Book of Cranky Ann. View the Flip Book of Wicked Nell.

The city of Chicago, whose authorities were unprepared to cope with the crime and vice that attended its rapid growth from a small trading post to a large metropolis in barely sixty years, came to be known world-wide as "the wicked city" by the mid-1800s. These two lurid novelistic exposés of corruption and vice in 1870s Chicago--Cranky Ann, the Street-walker: a Story of Chicago in Chunks and Wicked Nell: a Gay Girl of the Town by Chicago journalist Shang Andrews come from the Lawrence J. Gutter Collection of Chicagoana, housed in the Richard J. Daley Special Collections department at the library of the University of Illinois at Chicago. These and many other rare volumes of Chicago history were recently digitized at UIUC's scanning center in the Oak Street Library Facility. View more Chicagoana from the Gutter Collection.

See also The Wicked City by Grant Eugene Stevens digitized by the University of California Libraries and available from the Internet Archive.

http://www.archive.org/details/illinoiscollegeo00illi
View the Flip Book!

This week's featured book--Illinois College of Photography : Effingham, Illinois 1905-1906--was discovered in the UIUC Library's collection on the Internet Archive by a man from Effingham, who writes "I am currently renovating a Queen Anne home, built in 1892, that is the only surviving building of the Illinois College of Photography. The College is of major significance as it was the first international college of photography in the world. It also continued where others failed, spanning from the early 1890's until 1932. The college was attended by students from every state in the US, every province in Canada, and 52 foreign countries. I have been actively collecting and documenting the history of this home, which has aided in the renovation. I had found other books from the college, but yours was of major significance, because it was the oldest I had come across. It offered excellent insight about the home and college. I am extremely grateful to you for making this book available online, allowing me to learn more of my home's rich history."

http://www.archive.org/details/latterdaysaintse00clay
View the PDF or Flip Book.

"Look out for toads with horns and tails." So read one of the many cautionary notes that William Clayton (1814-1879) recorded in this guide for Mormon pioneers who were embarking on the long and often treacherous journey westward to Salt Lake City, Utah. Clayton designed a "roadometer," an early odometer, to track the mileage from point to point. "About noon today Brother Appleton Harmon completed the machinery on the wagon called a "roadometer" by adding a wheel to revolve once in ten miles, showing each mile and also each quarter mile we travel, and then casing the whole over so as to secure it from the weather. We are now prepared to tell accurately, the distance we travel from day to day which will supercede the idea of guessing, and be a satisfaction not only to this camp, but to all who hereafter travel this way." (From William Clayton's journal; a daily record of the journey of the original company of "Mormon" pioneers from Nauvoo, Illinois, to the valley of the Great Salt Lake, 1921).