Writings of famous Iowans on display at the U-of-I

A one-of-a-kind collection of the personal writings of Iowans over two centuries is now on display at the University of Iowa Libraries. Bob McCown, the U-of-I’s manuscripts librarian, says the exhibit covers the work of about two-dozen well known and lesser-known Iowans.The exhibit includes the three diaries of George Shearer, an Iowa Civil War soldier who was taken prisoner and held in Georgia. McCown says there are also selections displayed from Jay “Ding” Darling, the longtime Des Moines Register cartoonist who spent a month in the Soviet Union in 1931.McCown says the exhibit includes some writings from Nile Kinnick, the U-of-I football player who won the Heisman Trophy in 1939. McCown says Kinnick’s journals are from his days in the Navy as an aviator.There are also personal writings of Charles Wood Irish, an engineer and surveyor from Iowa City who helped in the first attempt to build a railroad across Iowa in the 1850s. There is no admission charge to see the exhibit on the third floor of the U-of-I’s Main Library.