Review: Illinois State University

Illinois State University by April Karlene Anderson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A historic photo book covering Illinois State University. The pictures are of three basic kinds. The first are pictures of people, mostly of the presidents of the university (and, because this is ISU, there’s a picture of basketball star Doug Collins). The second, and most common type of picture is the building picture. The history of the school is, in this case, broadly a history of the buildings of the school. The school has grown over the years, and many buildings were built, then torn down, to be replaced by other buildings that may also have been torn down. The various plans for additional buildings, plans abandoned over the years, are also documented. The third type of picture I would consider candids, pictures of students in their dorms or classrooms being the most common. Each picture includes a paragraph or two of descriptive text, and there are short essays starting each chapter. You can learn a lot about the history of the school. My daughter attends ISU, but I am not that familiar with the many school buildings. I found a weakness of the book is that it assumes you know when describing some of the demolished buildings where they were based on current buildings that replaced them. Including campus maps from the various eras would have helped this Normal visitor get his bearings. There was also very little on the college circus, which I also found surprising, although it is well covered in a separate book.

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