(These are sources from which substantial information or insight was gained. Books, journal articles, and other resources that supplied only a single fact or statistic will be referenced only in footnotes.)
Allerton, Ellen P. Walls of Corn and Other Poems. Hiawatha, KS: Harrington Printing Company, 1894.
Anderson, Edgar. “Maize in the New World.” In New Crops for the New World, Charles Morrow Wilson, ed. New York: Macmillan, 1945.
Anderson, J. L. Industrializing the Corn Belt: Agriculture, Technology, and Environment, 1945–1972. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2009.
Aurand, Thomas J. “Food Constituents from the Wet Milling of Corn.” In Cereals and Legumes in the Food Supply. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1987.
Biles, Roger. Illinois: A History of the Land and Its People. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2005.
Bogue, Allan G. From Prairie to Corn Belt: Farming on the Illinois and Iowa Prairies in the Nineteenth Century. 2nd ed. Lanham, MD: Ivan R. Dee, 2011.
Boutard, Anthony. Beautiful Corn: America’s Original Grain from Seed to Plate. Gabriola Island, BC, Canada: New Society, 2012.
Brown, Linda Keller, and Kay Mussell, eds. Ethnic and Regional Foodways in the United States. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984.
Bubel, Nancy. Grow the Best Corn. North Adams, MA: Storey, 1981.
Burtea, Octavian. “Snack Foods from Formers and High-Shear Extruders.” In Snack Foods Processing. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2002.
Catlin, George. Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of North American Indians, Vol. 1. New York: Dover, 1973. (Reproduction of original 1844 edition published in London.)
Cerney, Jan. Mitchell’s Corn Palace. Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2004.
Conkin, Paul K. A Revolution Down on the Farm: The Transformation of American Agriculture since 1929. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2009.
Corn and Livestock. National Corn Growers Association, 2012.
Counihan, Carole M. Food in the USA: A Reader. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Cowan, Brian. “New Worlds, New Tastes.” Food: The History of Taste. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007.
Crabb, Richard. The Hybrid-Corn Makers: Prophets of Plenty. West Chicago, IL: West Chicago Publishing, 1993. (Includes full text of 1948 version of the book, which was published by Rutgers University Press.)
Cronon, William. Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York: Norton, 1991.
Culver, John C., and John Hyde. American Dreams: A Life of Henry A. Wallace. New York: Norton, 2000.
Cummins, John. The Voyage of Christopher Columbus: Columbus’s Own Journal. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992.
Danbom, David B. Born in the Country: A History of Rural America. 2nd ed. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.
Danforth, Randi, Peter Feierabend, and Gary Chassman, eds. Culinaria: The United States. New York: Könemann, 1998.
Davidson, Alan. The Oxford Companion to Food. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Diffley, Atina. Turn Here, Sweet Corn: Organic Farming Works. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012.
Dirks, Robert. Come & Get It!: McDonaldization and the Disappearance of Local Food from a Central Illinois Community. Bloomington, IL: McLean County Museum of History, 2011.
Driver, Harold E. Indians of North America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969.
Dupont, Jacqueline, and Elizabeth M. Osman. Cereals and Legumes in the Food Supply. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1987.
Eighmey, Rae Katherine. Food Will Win the War: Minnesota Crops, Cooks, and Conservation During World War I. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2010.
Flandrin, Jean-Louis. “Introduction: The Early Modern Period.” Food: A Culinary History from Antiquity to the Present. New York: Penguin, 2000.
Freedman, David H. “Are Engineered Foods Evil?” Scientific American 309, no. 3 (September 2013).
Fussell, Betty Harper. The Story of Corn. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992.
Galinat, Walton C. “Maize: Gift from America’s First Peoples.” Chiles to Chocolate: Food the Americas Gave the World. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1992.
Garrison, Fielding Hudson. An Introduction to the History of Medicine. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1921.
Gerlach, Nancy, and Jeffrey Gerlach. Foods of the Maya. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994.
Giles, Dorothy. Singing Valleys: The Story of Corn. New York: Random House, 1940.
Goitein, Patricia L. “Meet Me in Heaven: Confronting Death along the Galena Trail Frontier 1825–1855.” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 102, nos. 3–4 (Fall–Winter 2009).
Grivno, Max L. Gleanings of Freedom: Free and Slave Labor along the Mason-Dixon Line, 1790–1860. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011.
Hallauer, Arnel R., ed. Specialty Corns. 2nd ed. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2001.
Hamman, Cherry. Mayan Cooking: Recipes from the Sun Kingdoms of Mexico. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1998.
Hardeman, Nicholas P. Shucks, Shocks, and Hominy Blocks. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981.
Herbst, Sharon Tyler. Food Lover’s Companion: Comprehensive Definitions of Nearly 6000 Food, Drink, and Culinary Terms. Hauppauge, NY: Barron’s Educational Series, 2001.
Horowitz, Roger. Putting Meat on the American Table: Taste, Technology, Transformation. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.
Hudson, John C. Making the Corn Belt: A Geographical History of Middle Western Agriculture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.
Hurt, R. Douglas. American Agriculture: A Brief History (rev. ed.). West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2002.
Jones, Evan. American Food: The Gastronomic Story (3rd ed.). Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2007.
Kellogg, Mrs. E. E. Science in the Kitchen: A Scientific Treatise on Food Substances and Their Dietetic Properties. Chicago: Modern Medicine, 1893.
Kiple, Kenneth F., and Kriemhild Conee Ornelas, eds. The Cambridge World History of Food. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Knutson, Jonathan. “Corn Is King This Spring.” AgWeek, May 7, 2012.
Kupperman, Karen Ordahl, ed. Captain John Smith: A Select Edition of His Writings. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988.
Kurlansky, Mark, ed. The Food of a Younger Land. New York: Penguin, 2009.
Long, Lucy M. “Food.” The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Regional Cultures: The Midwest. Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 2004.
Lusas, Edmund W., and Khee Choon Rhee. “Extrusion Processing as Applied to Snack Foods and Breakfast Cereals.” In Cereals and Legumes in the Food Supply. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1987.
McGee, Harold. On Food and Cooking. New York: Collier, 1984.
Messer, Ellen. “Maize.” The Cambridge World History of Food. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Miller, Nicole. “Jumping Gene Enabled Key Step in Corn Domestication.” Science Daily, September 28, 2011.
Pilcher, Jeffrey M. “Food Fads.” The Cambridge World History of Food. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Pryor, Frederic L. “The Invention of the Plow.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 27, no. 4 (October 1985).
Quaife, Milo Milton. Chicago and the Old Northwest, 1673–1835: A Study of the Evolution of the Northwestern Frontier, Together with a History of Fort Dearborn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1913.
Roe, Daphne A., and Stephen V. Beck. “Pellagra.” The Cambridge World History of Food. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Root, Waverly, and Richard de Rochemont. Eating in America: A History. New York: Ecco Press, 1981.
Root, Waverley. Food: An Authoritative and Visual Dictionary of the Foods of the World. New York: Smithmark, 1996.
Ryder, Tracey, and Carole Topalian. Edible: A Celebration of Local Foods. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2010.
Shortridge, James R. The Middle West: Its Meaning in American Culture. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1989.
Shortridge, Barbara G., and James R. Shortridge, eds. The Taste of American Place: A Reader on Regional and Ethnic Foods. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998.
Simpson, Pamela H. Corn Palaces and Butter Queens: A History of Crop Art and Dairy Sculpture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012.
Slade, Joseph W., and Judith Yaross Lee, eds. The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Regional Cultures: The Midwest. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004.
Small, Ernest. Top 100 Food Plants: The World’s Most Important Culinary Crops. Ottawa, Canada: National Research Council of Canada, 2009.
Smith, Andrew F. Eating History: Thirty Turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.
———. Popped Culture: A Social History of Popcorn in America. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 2001.
Smith, C. Wayne, Javier Betrán, and E. C. A. Runge. Corn: Origin, History, Technology, and Production. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2004.
Standage, Tom. An Edible History of Humanity. New York: Walker, 2009.
Stevens, John. Early Arapahoe: Reprinted from the 1956 Issues of The Public Mirror. Arapahoe, NE: Arapahoe Public Mirror, 1988.
Strickler, Aubrey J. “Use of Cereal Products in Beverages.” In Cereals and Legumes in the Food Supply. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1987.
Studer, Anthony, Qiong Zhao, Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra, and John Doebley. “Identification of a Functional Transposon Insertion in the Maize Domestication Gene tb1.” Nature Genetics (November 2011).
Sturtevant, E. Lewis. Indian Corn. Reprinted from the Thirty-eighth Annual Report of the New York State Agricultural Society, 1878, Albany, NY: 1880.
———. Maize: An Attempt at Classification. Rochester, NY: Democrat and Chronicle Print, 1884.
———. Sturtevant’s Notes on Edible Plants. Edited by U. P. Hedrick. Albany, NY: J. B. Lyon, 1919.
Tannahill, Reay. Food in History. New York: Crown, 1988.
Tarrant, John, ed. Farming and Food. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Toussaint-Samat, Maguelonne. History of Food. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1993.
Tracy, William F. “Sweet Corn.” In Specialty Corns. 2nd ed. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2001.
Visser, Margaret. Much Depends on Dinner. 2nd ed. New York: Grove Press, 2008.
Walters, William D., Jr. The Heart of the Cornbelt: An Illustrated History of Farming in McLean County. Bloomington, IL: McLean County Historical Society, 1997.
Wang, Rong-Lin, Adrian Stec, Jody Hey, Lewis Lukens, and John Doebley, “The Limits of Selection during Maize Domestication,” Nature (March 18, 1999).
Warman, Arturo. Corn and Capitalism: How a Botanical Bastard Grew to Global Dominance. Translated by Nancy L. Westrate. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
Weatherwax, Paul. Early Contacts of European Science with the Indian Corn Plant. Reprinted from the proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Science, vol. 54, Indiana University, 1945.
White, Pamela J. “Properties of Corn Starch.” In Specialty Corns. 2nd ed. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2001.
Wolke, Robert L. What Einstein Told His Cook. New York: Norton, 2002.
Wolmar, Christian. The Great Railroad Revolution: The History of Trains in America. New York: Public Affairs, 2012.
Ziegler, Kenneth E. “Popcorn.” In Specialty Corns. 2nd ed. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2001.
Corn Products International: Celebrating 100 Years. Westchester, IL: Lake County Press, 2006.
C. Cretors & Company: The First Hundred Years, 1885–1985. Chicago: C. Cretors & Co., 1985.
Green Giant Division of General Mills
John Deere
Kellogg Company
Baptist Ladies’ Aid Society. The Baptist Ladies’ Cook Book. Monmouth, IL: Republican, 1895.
Collins, Mrs. A. M. The Great Western Cook Book or Table Receipts, Adapted to Western Housewifery. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1857.
Farmer, Fannie Merritt. The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book. Boston: Little, Brown, 1896.
Ladies of Plymouth Church, Des Moines, Iowa. “76”: A Cook Book. Des Moines, IA: Mills, 1876.
Ladies of the First Presbyterian Church of Dayton. Presbyterian Cook Book. Dayton, OH: Oliver Crook, 1873.
Ladies of the Westminster Presbyterian Church, Keokuk, Iowa. Cookbook of the Northwest. Chicago: J. L. Regan, 1887.
Kander, Mrs. Simon, and Mrs. Henry Schoenfeld. The Settlement Cookbook. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2005. (Originally published in 1903 in Milwaukee, WI.)
Owen, Mrs. T. J. V. Mrs. Owen’s Illinois Cookbook. Springfield, IL: John H. Johnson, 1871.
Wilcox, Estelle Woods. Buckeye Cookery and Practical House Keeping. Minneapolis, MN: Buckeye, 1877.
Adams, Jocelyn Delk, media and events producer, culinary correspondent, and creator of Grandbaby-Cakes.com.
Allen, Dell M., PhD, meat scientist, regulatory implementation specialist, consultant, and former professor of animal science, Kansas State University.
Allen, Terese, food columnist, coauthor of The Flavor of Wisconsin, The Flavor of Wisconsin for Kids, and Wisconsin Local Foods Journal, and president of the Culinary History Enthusiasts of Wisconsin (CHEW).
Buiter, Rob, corn farmer, Wheatfield, Indiana.
Brockman, Terra, founder and executive director of The Land Connection.
Chaffin, Jack, docent, Nebraska History Museum, Lincoln, NE.
Corbett, Gary, CEO, Fair Oaks Farms, Fair Oaks, IN.
Cretors, Charlie, C. Cretors & Co., Chicago, IL.
Decker, Tom, farmer, owner, Farmers Best Popcorn, Rockwell, IA.
Diffley, Martin, organic farming pioneer, sweet corn breeder/developer, educator.
DeKryger, Malcolm, vice president, Belstra Milling Company.
Engler, Peter, PhD, microbiologist and food historian.
Fernholz, Carmen, organic agriculture coordinator–research, University of Minnesota, and organic farmer.
Fitkin, Jim, farmer, owner Fitkin Popcorn LLC, Cedar Falls, IA.
Goldstein, Walter, PhD, founder of the Mandaamin Institute, Inc., and former research director at Michael Fields Agricultural Institute in Wisconsin.
Grady, Lee, McCormick–International Harvester Collection archivist, Library–Archives Division, Wisconsin Historical Society.
Kabbani, Jim, CEO, Tortilla Industry Association.
Kennedy, Jack, vice president and general manager, Chelsea Milling Company, Chelsea, MI.
Koos, Greg, executive director of the McLean County Historical Museum.
Kraig, Bruce, professor emeritus in History at Roosevelt University, food historian, author, documentary filmmaker, and founding president of Culinary Historians of Chicago.
Maddox, Michael, farmer’s son and award-winning French chef.
Moose, Stephen P., associate professor, maize genomics, Department of Crop Science, and program leader, feedstock genomics, Energy Biosciences Institute, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Murtoff, Jennifer, Midwest urban chicken consultant.
North, Amy, Iowa native and former corn detasseler.
Oliver, Sandra, food historian, author, and editor of Food History News.
Perry, Sharon, farm owner, farmer’s daughter.
Peterson, Greg, fifth-generation farmer, agricultural videographer, composer/creator of viral videos “I’m Farming and I Grow It” and “Farmer Style.”
Pierce, Donna, journalist, former assistant food editor and test kitchen director for the Chicago Tribune, founder of BlackAmericaCooks.com and SkilletDiaries.com, and family recipe expert.
Steinberg, Justin, corn trader at the Chicago Board of Trade.
Temple, Mike, branch manager, Heritage Cooperative, Richwood, OH.
Tracy, William, Friday Endowed Chair of Vegetable Research, professor and chair, Department of Agronomy, University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Velasquez, Arthur, founder and chairman, Azteca Foods, Summit-Argo, IL.
Weber, Cathy, third-generation farm owner and journalist, Arapahoe, NE.
Williams, Eric, chef/owner of Momocho, Cleveland, OH.
Zimmerman, Ed, Jr., Ohio farmer.
Zimmerman, Sylvia, farmer, farmer’s wife, cheese maker, educator.
Arapahoe, NE (and environs)
Belstra Milling Company, DeMotte, IN
Chelsea Mills (home of Jiffy corn muffin mix), Chelsea, MI
“Corn 101” with Dr. Charles Bauer at Garfield Farm Museum, LaFox, IL
J. M. Dawes Grain Elevator and Agriculture Museum, Atlanta, IL
John Deere Pavilion, Moline, IL
Fair Oaks Farm, Fair Oaks, IN
Graue Mill and Museum, Oak Brook, IL
The Henry Ford Museum/Greenfield Village, Dearborn, MI
Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, West Branch, IA
Heritage Cooperative, Richwood, OH
Illinois and Michigan Canal Museum, Lockport, IL
Illinois Railway Museum, Union, IL
Iowa State Historical Museum, Des Moines, IA
Jardín Etnobotánico, Oaxaca, Mexico
John Harvey Kellogg Sanitarium, Battle Creek, MI
Kline Creek Farm (1890s living history farm), West Chicago, IL
Living History Farms, Des Moines, IA
McLean County Historical Museum Archives, Bloomington, IL (Note: Letters, speech transcripts, newsletters, local papers, farm reports, and other documents found in the archives are not listed in the bibliography above. They will be identified in footnotes, along with reference to the McLean Archives.)
National Road Museum, Norwich, OH
Nebraska History Museum, Lincoln, NE
Old World Wisconsin, Eagle, WI
Pioneer Village, Minden, NE
Union Station, St. Louis, MO
Zimmerman Farm, Richwood, OH
Chicago Historical Society. http://www.chicagohs.org
Corn Refiners Association. http://www.corn.org
Encyclopedia of Chicago History. http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org
Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, University of Nebraska, Lincoln. http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia
Environmental Protection Agency: Agriculture. http://www.epa.gov/oecaagct/index.html
Harvard University Library Open Collections Program. http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu
Iowa Pathways. http://tinyurl.com/2eua7f
Iroquois Museum. http://www.iroquoismuseum.org/corn.htm
National Corn Growers Association. http://www.ncga.com
Ohio State University Extension Department of Horticulture and Crop Science: Agronomy Facts. http://tinyurl.com/ll4973y
Popcorn Board. http://www.popcorn.org
Purdue Agricultural Department. http://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn
Purdue Horticulture Department. http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/crops/corn.html
The Grains Foundation / U.S. Grains Council. http://www.thegrainsfoundation.org/corn
The Old Farmer’s Almanac. http://www.almanac.com
United States Census Bureau. http://www.census.gov
United States Department of Agriculture. http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn.aspx
USDA National Agricultural Library. http://www.nal.usda.gov