A New History of Iowa

This program will focus on three important people from Iowa history—a Civil War soldier, a temperance crusader, and a journalist. Jeff will share from his book, A New History of Iowa to address issues that have gained importance in the past few decades—economic inequality, immigration, racial injustice, and the environment—while providing a broad survey of Iowa’s history. It reviews familiar topics and adds new ones to the state’s story. It fills in such gaps in previous histories and provides an updated story for Iowa’s changing population. A new history of Iowa.

Jeff Bremer teaches classes on the early American republic, Iowa history, business history, and social studies methods at Iowa State University. He also helps coordinate ISU's history and social studies education program—he was a teacher in California before earning his Ph.D. Before coming to ISU, he taught at Stephen F. Austin State University and at the University of Kansas. At KU he taught for the Humanities and Western Civilization program for five years.

In 2024 he won the LAS Award for Outstanding Achievement in Teaching. He was also awarded the Benjamin F. Shambaugh award for best book on Iowa the same year. He has been a Fulbright Scholar in China and Poland.

His first book, A Store Almost in Sight: The Economic Transformation of Missouri from the Louisiana Purchase to the Civil War, was published in 2014. The University Press of Kansas published A New History of Iowa in 2023, a comprehensive survey of the state from the last ice age until the end of 2020 His next book will be Des Moines: A Concise History for Indiana University Press. It will be the first survey of the city since the 1940s.