Iowa has been blessed with citizens of strong character who have
made invaluable contributions to the state and to the nation. In
the 1930s alone, such towering figures as John L. Lewis, Henry A.
Wallace, and Herbert Hoover hugely influenced the nation's affairs.
Iowa's Native Americans, early explorers, inventors, farmers,
scholars, baseball players, musicians, artists, writers,
politicians, scientists, conservationists, preachers, educators,
and activists continue to enrich our lives and inspire our
imaginations.
Written by an impressive team of more than 150 scholars and
writers, the readable narratives include each subject's name, birth
and death dates, place of birth, education, and career and
contributions. Many of the names will be instantly recognizable to
most Iowans; others are largely forgotten but deserve to be
remembered. Beyond the distinctive lives and times captured in the
individual biographies, readers of the dictionary will gain an
appreciation for how the character of the state has been shaped by
the character of the individuals who have inhabited it.
From Dudley Warren Adams, fruit grower and Grange leader, to the
Younker brothers, founders of one of Iowa's most successful
department stores, "The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa" is peopled
with the rewarding lives of more than four hundred notable citizens
of the Hawkeye State. The histories contained in this essential
reference work should be eagerly read by anyone who cares about
Iowa and its citizens.
Entries include Cap Anson, Bix Beiderbecke, Black Hawk, Amelia
Jenks Bloomer, William Carpenter, Philip Greeley Clapp, Gardner
Cowles Sr., Samuel Ryan Curtis, Jay Norwood Darling, Grenville
Dodge, Julien Dubuque, August S. Duesenberg, Paul Engle, Phyllis L.
Propp Fowle, George Gallup, Hamlin Garland, Susan Glaspell, Josiah
Grinnell, Charles Hearst, Josephine Herbst, Herbert Hoover,
Inkpaduta, Louis Jolliet, MacKinlay Kantor, Keokuk, Aldo Leopold,
John L. Lewis, Marquette, Elmer Maytag, Christian Metz, Bertha
Shambaugh, Ruth Suckow, Billy Sunday, Henry Wallace, and Grant
Wood.
Excerpt from the entry on:
Gallup, George Horace (November 19, 1901-July 26, 1984)--founder of
the American Institute of Public Opinion, better known as the
Gallup Poll, whose name was synonymous with public opinion polling
around the world--was born in Jefferson, Iowa. . . . . A "New
Yorker" article would later speculate that it was Gallup's
background in "utterly normal Iowa" that enabled him to find
"nothing odd in the idea that one man might represent,
statistically, ten thousand or more of his own kind." . . . In 1935
Gallup partnered with Harry Anderson to found the American
Institute of Public Opinion, based in Princeton, New Jersey, an
opinion polling firm that included a syndicated newspaper column
called "America Speaks." The reputation of the organization was
made when Gallup publicly challenged the polling techniques of The
Literary Digest, the best-known political straw poll of the day.
Calculating that the Digest would wrongly predict that Kansas
Republican Alf Landon would win the presidential election, Gallup
offered newspapers a money-back guarantee if his prediction that
Franklin Delano Roosevelt would win wasn't more accurate. Gallup
believed that public opinion polls served an important function in
a democracy: "If governŽment is supposed to be based on the will of
the people, somebody ought to go and find what that will is,"
Gallup explained.
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