Archivists in Special Collections and their trusty student assistants have been hard at work processing archival and manuscript collections. The following five collections have brand new guides for your researching pleasure. The collections are small, but full of interesting material for lovers of late 19th and mid-20th century history. Happy Researching!

Material from the U.S. Government War Exposition, 1918 Collection.

United States Government War Exposition, 1918. Collection

Did you know that the U.S. government hosted public events during WWI to showcase how our boys were fighting “over there?” How would you like to visit a trench in the middle of Grant Park or try out the food being served to soldiers? This collection contains memorabilia from a Chicago exhibition in 1918, and includes ticket stubs and turnstile counts of visitors.

John L. Balderston Collection.

In 1945, four individuals who had worked on the Manhattan project formed a committee and wrote a letter to 154 public figures asking for their opinions about the possibility of the creation of a world government.  The collection includes over a hundred letters from prominent intellectual, political, and entertainment figures of the mid-1940s.

Andrew Lindblad Collection

More World’s Fair memorabilia! This collection contains guidebooks, postcards, and photographs from the 1893 and 1933 fairs.

Adolf Leo and Elizabeth Oppenheim Papers

Follow the lives of two Jewish intellectuals as they try to escape Nazi Austria and Vichy France. The collection contains official emigration documents and correspondence from the couple’s 3-year-long efforts to come to the United States.  (Spoiler alert: they escape!)

Lois Jansson Papers

Have you read or seen A River Runs Through It? Author and U of C alumnus, Norman Maclean, also wrote a book about the deadly 1949 Mann Gulch wildfire in Helena, Montana called Young Men and Fire. Lois Jansson’s husband, John Robert Jansson, was the district ranger on duty during the fire. Maclean interviewed Bob Jansson for his book. The collection contains copies of correspondence between the Janssons and Norman and John Maclean, as well as Jansson family histories.