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Amazing Iowa book review

Amazing Iowa shares a fascinating look at Iowa fact you may not know, highlighting interesting people and places from across our great state. I'm a huge fan of local history so as soon as I heard about this new book Amazing Iowa, I knew I needed to read it! Now that I have, I'm excited to tell you all about it and why you might love it too. Thank you to Reedy Press for sending me a review copy so that I could write this book review of Amazing Iowa!

*Amazon links in this post are affiliate links, which doesn't change your price, but means I get a tiny chunk of Amazon's profits if you choose to buy through one-thanks!! Links to Reedy Press and Book People are not affiliate links but I love supporting them too!)
 
the cover of Amazing Iowa provides a background to the post title

 

Who wrote and published Amazing Iowa?

Amazing Iowa was written by Michelle Sprout Murray, an Iowa writer who is also an owner of Birdsall's Ice Cream in Mason City. You can read more about Murray and her writing on her Substack.

Amazing Iowa is published by Reedy Press, an indie publisher based in Saint Louis (full disclosure: they also published one of my books, 100 Things to do in Sioux City & Siouxland Before You Die.) 

Inside Amazing Iowa

Amazing Iowa features amazing stories from Iowa, including those focusing on specific people, places, and events that anyone who enjoys Iowa history will find entertaining. It is full of so many fun stories about Iowa, including a few I already knew about (like Jolly Time, a local fave that I enjoy regularly and blog about occasionally!) and many I had not heard about previously. One that was new to me was "Snooky", the female aviator from Ames who taught Amelia Earhart to fly!

There was one entry I dispute:  I loved reading about MaidRites but I dispute, the premise that Fred Angell invented loose meats! I did a deep dive into the Sioux City Journal archives, and it has been reported multiple times by that paper that loose meat sandwiches were already being served in Sioux City by 1924, two years before MaidRites were invented. This is a point of contention amongst culinary historians though, so I don't think this is a mark against Amazing Iowa, just one I personally disagree with. 
Some of the other stories in the book with Siouxland connections include Blue Bunny Ice Cream, Twin Bings, Dear Abby and Ann Landers, and Flight 232.
Something I love about this book is its format: each two-page spread is about a different amazing Iowa story, which means that while you could sit down and read it all at once, it's also easy to read one page at a time or a few pages at a time, and as a busy mom of four, I'm a huge fan of books that I can read in bits in pieces without destroying continuity. I actually read most of this book while waiting for one of my kids to do swim lessons, and it was great to be able to just read however much I had time for each day!

And I love that she has thorough endnotes so that I can dive deeper into some of these stories in the future.  

How to get your copy of Amazing Iowa

Amazing Iowa is now available in stores across Iowa, and online. Grab your copy from Book People, from Amazon, or from your preferred bookseller. Congratulations to Murray and to Reedy Press on this excellent book!
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Location: Sioux City, IA, USA

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