William B. Friedricks is pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of his­to­ry and for­mer direc­tor of the Iowa His­to­ry Cen­ter at Simp­son Col­lege in Indi­anola, Iowa, where he taught for thir­ty-three years. His first book, Hen­ry E. Hunt­ing­ton and the Cre­ation of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, won the His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety of South­ern California’s Don­ald Pflueger Award for the out­stand­ing book on South­ern Cal­i­for­nia his­to­ry. Since then, he has writ­ten eight books focus­ing on Iowa top­ics, includ­ing his­to­ries of the Des Moines Reg­is­ter, the Iowa State Fair’s Blue Rib­bon Foun­da­tion, and sev­er­al biogra­phies. He was the recip­i­ent of Human­i­ties Iowa’s Iowa His­to­ry Prize. Friedricks lives with his wife Jack­ie in West Des Moines.