Long out of print and much sought after by collectors, Lansden’s classic 1910 his­tory of Cairo remains valuable for the early history of the city. Its reprinting here, with a new Foreword by Clyde C. Walton, former Illinois State Historian, thus makes available again one of the finest examples of local history ever written, stressing as it does Cairo’s im­portant relations with its area and with the country—in Lansden’s words, “this part of the Valley of the Mississippi—this Illinois Country.”