Playing in Peoria

In Playing in Peoria: From Abraham Lincoln to Warren Harding by bike, train, and bus, noted travel writer and historian Matthew Stevenson describes the the landscape and much American history between Chicago and New York. In particular, he makes stops in Mark Twain's Missouri, Lincoln's Illinois, Theodore Dreiser's Indiana, presidential homes across Ohio, and what was called "the Burned-over district" in upstate New York. Never one to travel in a straight line, Stevenson sets his sights on such diversions as the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates, the union base of socialist Eugene V. Debs in Terre Haute, the worlds of author Kurt Vonnegut in Indianapolis, and the homes of the many American presidents in Ohio (including those of Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, and Benjamin Harrison). In Canton, Ohio, he writes about William McKinley, yet another president who based his presidency on imposing tariffs, and in Elmira, New York, he finds where Twain put the finishing touches on Huckleberry Finn. The result is a Gilded Age ramble (mostly by bike and trains) that with grace and humor recalls the many complexities and ironies of American history, refreshing at a time when the past seems forgotten.

--Matthew Stevenson