Higher education in the United States underwent significant changes in the opening decades of the twentieth century. It was a period of standardization, coordination, and the creation of the system of higher education that defined the 1900s. Junior colleges were founded, Historically Black Colleges and Universities grew, liberal arts colleges modernized, and normal schools morphed into teachers’ colleges on their way to becoming state colleges and then state universities. As part of these larger changes, the American universities that had been established in the late nineteenth century took on a fuller and more solidified form. The rise of these universities was informed by changing views of science and knowledge, U.S. academics’ experiences studying in Germany, and broader Progressive Era ideas. In Edmund J. James and the Making of the Modern University of Illinois, 1904–1920, Winton U. Solberg and J. David Hoeveler examine one institution’s navigation of these changes under the leadership of a scholar and administrator educated at Illinois State Normal University, Northwestern University, and, ultimately, the University of Halle (now Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg).

This book is the fourth and final of Solberg’s books on the early years of the University of Illinois (including a volume on the University of Illinois College of Medicine). Solberg’s project, originally conceived as a single-volume history of the institution’s first hundred years for its 1967 centennial, ultimately transformed into a multi-volume work that consumed substantial portions of his long scholarly career. When, at age ninety-six, Solberg determined that he was unable to complete the book, his family turned to Hoeveler to help finish this volume. Hoeveler, an intellectual historian, was a natural choice; he had studied under Solberg in the 1960s and served as his research assistant on the initial volume detailing the university from its 1867 founding through 1894. Hoeveler’s contributions to this book include shortening the manuscript, contextualizing the Illinois experience in relation to broader changes in U.S. higher education, and adding two chapters on students in the early twentieth century.

The book comprises four parts, each examining different aspects of the institution under Edmund J. James, whom Solberg and Hoeveler argue should be better known and more respected. The first part combines straightforward discussions of institutional finances, political appeals, board elections, and organizational development with deep considerations of James’s upbringing, educational development, and intellectual contributions. Indeed, chapter five on James’s “intellectual world” is perhaps the richest in the book; it does not just detail his academic experiences but rather situates them within larger schools of thought and scholarly trends (57). While Solberg and Hoeveler acknowledge the importance of James’s Methodist upbringing to his worldview (discussed in chapter one), the authors emphasize the profound impact that his studies in Germany had on his intellectual and administrative leadership. James wrote and spoke frequently about German higher education and intellectual traditions, drawing on them to argue for changes to U.S. higher education and the reformation of the academic profession. James likewise was influenced by and contributed to “the early phase of the Progressive movement in American history as it began in the late nineteenth century and emerged confidently in the early twentieth…. He believed that the organic model of society, which commanded attention to all its components, or constituents, also commanded an ethical measure of those relationships and recourse to social justice as the pathway of politics” (78).

The second and third sections of the book move away from the university as a whole to individual departments and colleges, emphasizing the internal workings, curricula, and faculty of those units. Part two, “Academics,” includes chapters on the physical sciences, life sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Part three, “Educating for the Professions,” consists of chapters on the development of the schools and programs in education, engineering, law, and agriculture; mathematics and physics are included with engineering, while home economics is included with agriculture. Many of these chapters include specifics of salary negotiations with existing and prospective faculty members, changes in curricular requirements, the appointments of new department heads, and the like. Interspersed are six more detailed portraits of faculty from a handful of departments. These sections contain useful information but also some unevenness. The chapter on the School of Education, for example, frames the entirety of part three through a discussion of James’s 1887 talk at the Philadelphia Social Science Association about the importance of the professional and advanced training of teachers. To Solberg and Hoeveler, James’s drawing on German approaches to teacher training and his emphasis on philosophical studies more than vocational studies exemplified his approach to professional education. Yet the entire chapter, including this framing of the section and the discussion of the school of education’s development, is six pages; by contrast, the law school receives twenty. Similarly, more than half of the chapter on agriculture is a portrait of one home economics professor.

Several brief mentions of students appear in earlier sections, but they are centered in the two chapters that make up part four. The first addresses the “Collegiate Revolution” – the growth of extracurricular activities and the significant changes to student life in the early 1900s – beginning with Black student experiences before focusing on white student life. Included are discussions of fraternity life, student publications, athletics, the important role of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), and the role of Thomas Arkle Clark, a groundbreaking dean of men. The second focuses exclusively on women students’ experience, a welcome addition but one that recalls an earlier era of separating women from – rather than integrating them into – the main story. This chapter demonstrates James’s conflicted approach to women on campus; he sought and encouraged their attendance but struggled in his dealings with deans of women.

There is a great deal of value in this volume for those interested in the University of Illinois or who are looking for details on curricular changes, organizational developments, and hiring decisions at an emerging state university. The sections that dig into the larger intellectual trends and how they influenced the philosophy and development of the institution are even more broadly useful. We often give too much credit to individual leaders, especially those with identity privileges, but Solberg and Hoeveler demonstrate that we should pay attention to James and his efforts to transform the institution based on German educational traditions and progressive ideals. As they write, he “was in the thick of the crusade from the beginning” (66).