And yet, despite his countless successes, Ward's captivating life was filled with ruthless competition, labor conflict, familial dispute, and scandal.

Eber Brock Ward (1811-1875) began his career as a cabin boy on his uncle's sailing vessels, but when he died in 1875, he was the wealthiest man in Michigan. His business activities were vast and innovative. Ward was engaged in the steamboat, railroad, lumber, mining, and iron and steel industries. In 1864, his facility near Detroit became the first in the nation to produce steel using the more efficient Bessemer method. Michael W. Nagle demonstrates how much of Ward's success was due to his ability to vertically integrate his business operations, which were undertaken decades before other more famous moguls, such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. And yet, despite his countless successes, Ward's life was filled with ruthless competition, labor conflict, familial dispute, and scandal. Nagle makes extensive use of Ward's correspondence, business records, contemporary newspaper accounts, and other archival material to craft a balanced profile of this fascinating figure whose actions influenced the history and culture of the Great Lakes and beyond.

Iron Fleet focuses on the vital role played by the Great Lakes shipping industry during World War II. George J. Joachim examines how the industry met the unprecedented demand for the shipment of raw materials to meet production quotas during the war, when failure to do so would have had disastrous consequences for the nation's defense effort. Steel production was crucial to the American war effort, and the bulk shippers of the lakes supplied virtually all of the iron ore necessary to produce the steel. In describing the evolution of the Great Lakes shipping industry during World War II, Joachim also explores the use of Great Lakes shipyards for the production of salt water civilian and military vessels, the role of the Great Lakes passenger ships in providing vacation opportunities for war workers, and the extensive measures taken to to safeguard the Soo Locks and other potential targets from sabotage.

A detailed picture of the status of the Great Lakes at the end of the twentieth century.

Michigan's foremost lumbertowns, flourishing urban industrial centers in the late 19th century, faced economic calamity with the depletion of timber supplies by the end of the century. Turning to their own resources and reflecting individual cultural identities, Saginaw, Bay City, and Muskegon developed dissimilar strategies to sustain their urban industrial status. This study is a comprehensive history of these lumbertowns from their inception as frontier settlements to their emergence as reshaped industrial centers. Primarily an examination of the role of the entrepreneur in urban economic development, Michigan Lumbertowns considers the extent to which the entrepreneurial approach was influenced by each city's cultural-ethnic construct and its social history. More than a narrative history, it is a study of violence, business, and social change.

Ojibwa Narratives presents a fresh view of an early period of Ojibwa thought and ways of life in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and the south shore of Lake Superior. This fascinating collection of fifty-two narratives features, for the first time, the tales of three nineteenth-century Ojibwa storytellers-Charles and Charlotte Kawbawgam and Jaques LePique-collected by Homer H. Kidder. By the late nineteenth century, typical Ojibwa life had been disrupted by the influx of white developers. But these tales reflect a nostalgic view of an earlier period when the heart of Ojibwa semi-nomadic culture remained intact, a time when the fur trade, together with seasonal roving, traditional transportation, and indigenous practices of child rearing, religious thought, art, and music permeated daily life.

This work examines the archaeological record of copper mining in the Lake Superior area.