NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY PRESS 

John Phillip Reid

 In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, English and American lawyers appealed to "the ancient constitution" as the cornerstone of liberty. According to this idea, constitutional law was not dictated by a monarch but based on the authority of custom, passed down unaltered from time immemorial. Legal historian John Phillip Reid convincingly demonstrates that this concept of an unchanging, ancient constitution furnished English common lawyers and parliamentarians an argument with which to combat royal prerogative power. At the same time, it provided American revolutionaries with legal arguments for rejecting the British parliament's effort to impose arbitrary rule upon the colonies.

 Whereas modern historians have tended to fault the constitutionalists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for inventing a mystical past, these polemical pamphleteers had less interest in the accuracy of their history than in its usefulness in forensic argumentation. Much as lawyers contending before the bar, they appealed to the past as precedent, as analogy, as principle--in short, as forensic history. Claiming that liberty had been more effective and secure during ancient times, they upheld an idealized Anglo-Saxon standard for testing contemporary institutions. More significantly, they called upon the authority of the ancient constitution as a defense against the innovations of the English monarchy and against the assertions of an unrepresentative parliament.

The Ancient Constitution and the Origins of Anglo-American Liberty complements Reid's recent book on another cornerstone of Anglo-American jurisprudence and constitutional theory, Rule of Law. Whereas "rule of law" insists that one law applies to rulers and ruled alike, the ancient constitution embodied the ideal for what that one law should be.

"Impressive.... The first thorough treatment of how waterborne transportation made Chicago a great metropolis."--George W. Hilton, Professor Emeritus, UCLA
"A well-rounded, deftly written account of Chicago's rise, fall, and rebirth as a maritime
center."--Theodore J. Karamanski, Loyola University, Chicago

This lavishly illustrated history of Chicago as freight handler to the nation chronicles
the vital role of waterborne trade and transportation in building a metropolis on the
swampland that the Illiniwek once called Checagou. Louis Jolliet, the first European
explorer to the area, recognized that a waterway between the Great Lakes and the
Mississippi River could link the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico, making Checagou
the fulcrum of east-west and north-south transportation for the continent. Upon
completion of the I&M canal in 1848, Chicago quickly became one of the busiest
ports in the world, attracting thousands of schooners, barks, sloops, and
paddle-wheel steamships.

More than 100 illustrations and maps—along with tales of majestic sailing ships,
piracy, terrible storms, and tragic shipwrecks—portray the eventful history of
Chicago's waterways. Young describes the reversal of the Chicago River, which
helped to clean the city and flood it with new life. Chicago flourished as a port of
entry to the West and transportation hub, despite the disastrous Great Fire of 1871
that destroyed much of the city, including the docks and ships moored along the
Chicago River. Marine disasters took their toll, too, as when the Eastland capsized in
1915, drowning nearly 900 passengers.

Through narratives by two famous travelers of Chicago's waterways, Charles
Dickens and Abraham Lincoln, Young reveals the hardships and small comforts of
lake and river travel in its heyday. He also recalls Chicago's marine traditions, such
as the eagerly anticipated arrival of ships bearing Christmas trees that drew holiday
crowds to the docks each year.

Today, giant car ferries and enormous ore carriers larger than battleships ply the
lakes alongside luxury yachts, while the rivers that feed Chicago—and allow
Chicago to feed the world—are still lively with traffic. Chicago's geographic
advantages, which allowed it to eclipse competitors in the age of sail and steam,
assure that it will remain a vital center for American transportation and commerce in
the twenty-first century.

David M. Young, a former writer and transportation editor for the Chicago
Tribune,is the author of Chicago Transit: An Illustrated History.

(2001) 260 pp., 126 illus., maps
0-87580-282-6 (hardcover) $39.95

Thomas Edward Berres

"Power relations were vital parts of Native American traditions.... They provided a means of
renewing time and reaffirming life in culture, a sharing of the whole sacred drama of
life."--from Power and Gender in Oneota Culture

Examining the traces left by inhabitants of prehistoric Illinois, archaeologist Thomas Berres
finds a society without hierarchy, whose patterns of daily life were shaped by deeply held
religious beliefs and traditions. Recognizing that symbols on artifacts left by the Oneota
people reveal much about their understanding of the world, Berres analyzes these symbols
and challenges commonly held assumptions about early Native American culture. He finds,
for example, that the Oneota conceived of power as a means of accomplishment rather than
as a way to control others and that the roles of men and women were well defined but
parallel. His findings carry important new implications for understanding the role of women
in Native American culture.

Berres recreates the values and cosmologies of the Oneota communities by closely
examining all aspects of Oneota life and death, from food preparation to burial. His
discussion of the thunderbird and Oneota mortuary practices, in particular, helps to capture
the beliefs in the supernatural that were a vital part of life for these people. Archaeologists
and readers interested in Native American history and culture will find fresh insights in
Power and Gender in Oneota Culture.