A bright package of words, illustrations and photographs about the Hawkeye State--from its origin to the present--by a glittering array of talented Iowans and two non-Iowans. From pioneer days and the state's beginning co0me essay sand verse by George C. Duffield (whose grandson Phil Stong, also here with a story about the Iowa State Fair, wrote some forty novels set in Iowa)., Hamlin Garland, Herbert Quick, Charlton Laird, MacKinlay Kantor and others; its farm traditions are represented with farm poems by James Hearst, with an essay by merle Miller on a Hardin County farm farm family, a story by Father Leo Ward about a rural Monroe county couple, and by an article about a Mitchell County farm family that defied the Truman administration. Iowa's cities and towns are represented here with stories and verse by marquis Childs, Richard Bissell, Berton Roueche, Clarence Andrews, Jay Sigmund, James Stevens and B. Paul Chicoine ("Sioux City's boisterous steamboat days"). Iowa celebrations are sampled by Paul Engels' essays on Memorial Day and the Old Time Fourth of July, and Iowa's Great Lakes are pictured by R. Verlin Cassill. Some four-dozen illustrations are provided by "Ding" Darling, Grant Wood, William Wagner, Polly Kemp, Joan Liffring-Zug and others.