The third volume of Tabler’s celebration of The First State and its history moves from the late 19th century to what Tabler calls the “E-era,” charting the building of skyscrapers, highways (envisioned as early as 1911 by T. Coleman du Pont), and a leading edge in the development of the world’s digital present and future. As always, Tabler includes surprises (Neil Armstrong “took mankind’s first steps on the moon in a Delaware-designed and manufactured space suit”), like his delightful look at the rise and fall of the reputation among the upper crust of the Reedbird, a native of Delaware that “has been viewed through three lenses” across history: as a juicy delicacy, then a pest, and finally “as a fragile species warranting legal protection.” Its fall from grace as an epicurean event and fashionable accoutrement is captured by this turn-of-the-century dismissal from a newspaper columnist: “The up-to-date girl has finished with the toothsome reedbird and asks now for a stuffed partridge.”

Striking details like that abound, as in Tabler’s online writing and previous volumes as he sweeps across the history. This volume covers DuPont chemist Wallace Hume Carothers’s invention of nylon, educational activist Martha G. Bachman’s life-long campaign to improve and extend vocational education opportunities, and the founding of the Delaware Art Museum, originally conceived of as a one-time 1912 event to honor the work of “the recently deceased ‘father of illustration’” Howard Pyle and his proteges. Tabler also digs into the local impact of the Suffragist and Civil Rights movements, the World Wars, Prohibition—the Coast Guard was ill-equipped to deal with rum runners—and more.

Tabler closes with a look at the internet age, making a compelling case for the central role played in its development by three students from the University of Delaware. The result is an engaging, entertaining, warmly inclusive, and occasionally playful history with style and verve.

Takeaway: Engaging, highly illustrated guide to Delaware history from the 20th century on.

Comparable Titles: John Riley’s Delaware Eyewitness, Kennard R. Wiggins’s Delaware in World War I.

Production grades
Cover: B+
Design and typography: A-
Illustrations: A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A