Michigan Technological University Social Sciences Professor Emeritus Larry Lankton is best known for his landmark work on how mining shaped the Keweenaw Peninsula. His latest book is a departure that digs deep into the car culture that shaped America—with a nod to the “small army” of Michigan Tech undergraduates who proved essential to his research on the long highway to publication.
Lankton is hoping that Michigan Tech alumni, especially Huskies who took his Automobile in America course, will show up for the launch of Motor City Boomer: The Car Culture That Defined a Generation, recently released by Wayne State University Press. Author events include an Aug. 30 author’s talk at The Henry Ford in Dearborn, where Lankton served as a curator before coming to Michigan Tech in 1981.
Meet the Author
Lankton will give a series of talks and signings in August and September.
Signings
- Aug. 15, 11 a.m.-2 p.m., Copper World, Calumet, Michigan
- Aug. 16, 2-4 p.m., Grandpa’s Barn, Copper Harbor, Michigan
Talks
- Aug. 19, 6 p.m., Quincy Mine, Hancock, Michigan
- Aug. 22, 2 p.m., Michigan Iron Industry Museum Negaunee, Michigan
- Aug. 30, 2 p.m., The Henry Ford Dearborn, Michigan
- Sept. 2, 6:30 p.m., Ella Sharp Museum, Jackson, Michigan
- Sept. 5, 2 p.m., Danville Public Library, Danville, Illinois
As a 30-year member of the social sciences department, Lankton taught Modern American History, An Introduction to Material Culture, The Copper Country, and a seminar for first-year students in addition to the Automobile in America course he created that’s still offered at Tech.
Lankton’s academic research focused on the history of mining, labor, and technological development in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, home to a copper mining boom that pre-dated the California gold rush. In 1991, Oxford University Press released his book Cradle to Grave: Life, Work, and Death at the Lake Superior Copper Mines. Along with numerous other accolades, the book won the Great Lakes History Prize and established him as one of the pre-eminent experts on the history of the Copper Country and its mining heritage, as well as an authority on industrial history in general. In 1997, Oxford Press also published Beyond the Boundaries: Life and Landscape at the Lake Superior Copper Mines, 1840-1875.
Lankton, the 1992 Michigan Tech Research Award winner, also authored 1982’s Old Reliable, a collaboration with Charles K. Hyde covering the history of Quincy Mine, and 2010’s Hollowed Ground: Copper Mining and Community Building on Lake Superior, 1840s–1990s, the latter published by Wayne State University Press.
Motor City Boomer harkens back to Detroit’s automotive heyday, when chrome, horsepower, and an ever-changing cavalcade of car models in every color of the rainbow enticed Americans to hit the highway. The 1950s and ’60s come to life through historic photographs, an exploration of the influence car culture had on everything from music and fashion to friendships and dating, and Lankton’s own keen, often humorous, firsthand insights. Born in Jackson, Michigan, in 1947, he grew up a stone’s throw from the Motor City. The son of a machinist, Lankton’s obsession with machines and the way machinery and humans function together started long before he developed his academic focus on the history of technology. Lankton said Motor City Boomer is as much an “auto-biography” of the places and people who impacted his relationship to the automobile as it is a cultural history of the 20th century’s most important technological object.
Lankton said the ‘50s and ‘60s were quite possibly the two most important decades in the history of the automobile in America.
“Cars changed, the nation changed, and I grew up in those times,” Lankton said. ”I had an opportunity to document the automobile’s influence on the national level, and at the same time write a personal memoir about how the car was integrated into my life and my family’s life.”
In addition to giving thanks for the undergraduates in his course who “volunteered” to photocopy vintage car advertisements from Time and Life magazines that spanned 1950 to 1969, Lankton got help from numerous other Huskies, including Isabella Lenz, a recent scientific and technical communications graduate and Michigan Tech women’s basketball player who managed his image files. He specifically thanks 2008 physics graduate Stephanie Aho “who happened to be the best student in one of my classes” for driving to Northern Michigan University to conduct other vital research, along with John Schneiderhan, a technologist at Michigan Tech’s Van Pelt and Opie Library.
Lankton is excited to invite readers to ride shotgun with him through 20 years of his life—especially the Huskies he taught through the years. “By conservative estimate, my auto course alone enrolled 3,000-3,500 MTU students,” he said. “They listened to lectures like ‘Success and Excess in the Chromed Ugly Era.’ They watched the films ‘American Graffiti’ and ‘Cars.’ They listened to car songs like ‘Wake Up Little Susie,’ ‘GTO,’ and ‘Beep-Beep.’ It would be great to see some of them show up at my book discussion at The Henry Ford or any of my other events!”
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