Review (2011)

164 Michigan Historical Review professional life. Lehto covers Houghton‘s life chronologically in twenty chapters, carefully detailing the remarkable amount of travel, lectures, research, and public service that Houghton accomplished in only fifteen years after he arrived in Detroit in 1830. Lehto argues that the Copper Country did not fully define Houghton‘s life, although his attempt to push the focus of his book away from the Keweenaw is hindered by the lack of personal details about his subject. Stronger editing might have remedied the book‘s shortcomings. The endnotes are not numbered; nor do they follow a consistent format. Readers would also have benefited from an index. Lehto repeatedly uses vague unsourced references to ―historians‖ or statements that ―historians have observed,‖ and he employs the term ―revisionist‖ (with a strong negative connotation) when he takes ―some revisionist historians‖ (p. 134) to task, while ignoring his own ―revisionist‖ efforts to reshape our perceptions of Houghton‘s life. Lehto‘s efforts to track down various scattered Houghton sources also lead him to occasional digressions, including a complaint about research fees to view a painting (p. 134). A more important criticism is that Lehto‘s narrow focus on the particulars of Houghton‘s life and his legacy omits the broader context that the best popular biographies provide. The narrative touches on Houghton‘s legacy but does not place him among other explorers of the era, such as Stephen H. Long and John C. Fremont. Douglass Houghton‘s voyages may not have left a lasting impression, but they were very much a part of the spirit of his time. Despite these limitations, however, Lehto‘s work is a wellresearched , highly readable, interesting work on a major figure in Michigan‘s early history, and it should reach a broad readership. Matthew Lawrence Daley Grand Valley State University Patrick Livingston. Summer Dreams: The Story of Bob-Lo Island. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2008. Pp. 192. Illustrations. Index. Note on sources. Notes. Paper, $24.95. Patrick Livingston‘s Summer Dreams is a cradle-to-grave history of Bob-Lo Island, the Detroit-area amusement park that closed in 1993 after nearly a century of operation. Although its amusements always were American-owned, the island itself is a narrow dot of Canadian Book Reviews 165 territory eighteen miles south of the city where the Detroit River opens into Lake Erie. Throughout its history, Bob-Lo was a remote destination accessible only by ferry or steamship. That remoteness was not unusual for an amusement park in 1900, but Bob-Lo survived even as Detroit and the rest of the continent chose the convenience of travel by automobile. Each summer members of the region‘s middle class, by the hundreds of thousands, temporarily abandoned their cars to get away to ―the greatest spot on earth in their own backyard‖ (p. 3). Livingston‘s studiously researched history presents accounts of a fondly remembered local resort and of the ―people who brought the amusement park to life‖ (p. 3). Generously illustrated and thoughtfully conceived, Summer Dreams further explores the history of this region by examining its popular summertime playground. Opened in the late 1890s during the first era of American amusement parks, Bob-Lo Island did not copy its more famous contemporaries at New York‘s Coney Island. Those resorts lured urban hordes with mechanical thrills, exotic illusions, and brilliant electric lighting. For generations, the owners of Bob-Lo sought to attract ―the more desirable element of pleasure seekers‖ (p. 47) with an alternative vision of escape to a quietly illuminated, wooded ―isle of picnic and pleasure‖ (p. 39). Modern dance steps that appeared lewd were banned at Bob-Lo; beer consumption was prohibited until 1937, and then allowed only on ferries. Aside from a carousel, mechanical rides were kept to a minimum until 1957, when the island was converted into a modern amusement park. Even then, Bob-Lo‘s owners still targeted a mass customer base, composed not of thrill seekers and night owls, but of respectable middle-class families. In Livingston‘s interviews, these people describe their deeply felt memories of a place cherished for its tranquility and separation ―from the everyday life‖ (p. 101). However, Livingston also...