A new coffee table book featuring Traverse City’s founding father is now available – joining a list of local history tomes that local booksellers say make for excellent holiday gifts. Perry Hannah’s Gifts: Then and Now is an account of Hannah’s contributions to the Traverse City community, complete with photos and descriptions of what some of the town’s most iconic buildings looked like and were used for in the early twentieth century.

Peg Jonkhoff, co-owner of Reynolds-Jonkhoff Funeral Home (housed in the Perry Hannah house on Sixth Street), championed the book project with the help of her fellow Traverse City history enthusiast Fred Hoisington, a former city planner and historic walking tour guide who impersonated Hannah himself during tours.

“The purposes of the book are threefold,” says Jonkhoff. “To highlight the gifts and achievements that memorialize Mr. Hannah as our founding father in a then and now format; to paint an indelible picture, via an impossible tour, of the gift that is most associated with Mr. and Mrs. Hannah, their magnificent mansion on Sixth Street; and to acknowledge those who deserve credit for saving and continuing to care for his iconic gifts as means to preserve his legacy and the City’s heritage.”

Sponsors of the book’s publication include The Minervini Group, Fifth Third Bank and WTCM Radio. Proceeds from sales of the book will be used to build and place a bronze statue of Perry Hannah in Hannah Park at the corner of Sixth and Union streets in downtown Traverse City.

Meanwhile, according to Jill Beauchamp at Horizon Books, you can’t go wrong if you consider either Perry Hannah’s Gifts or one of several local history books:

LELAND, MICHIGAN’S HISTORIC FISHERY FISHTOWN, by Laurie Kay Sommers
Arbutus Press, $19.95, Published June 2012
A history of Fishtown in Leland describes this rare and vibrant maritime landscape of weathered fishing shanties and fish tugs, tucked in along the Lake Michigan shoreline. Fishtown has witnessed the heyday of fishing and the trials of the changing Great Lakes but continues to be an active commercial fishing hub.

PINE NUTS: RECOLLECTIONS OF SUMMERS AT INTERLOCHEN, by Thom Field
Thom Feild Design, $14, Published August 2006
A small-press book originally released in August 2006, Pine Nuts appeals to a wide audience that includes Interlochen alumni, former staff and faculty, and anyone else interested in the arts or arts education.

TRAVERSE CITY, MICHIGAN: A HISTORICAL NARRATIVE, 1850-2013, by Richard Fidler
Richard Fidler, $22.95, Published September 2013
Fidler chronicles the rollercoaster of growth and decline Traverse City has experienced since it was inhabited solely by Odawa Indians in 1850. Follow the narrative to understand the many economic trials that the northwest lower Michigan has seen.

POSSESSED, by Philip J. Crowley and Kenneth C. Wylie
Sunstone Press, $24.95, Published August 2013
This mystery is based on events that occurred in Kalkaska in the seventies. Read Crowley and Wylie’s fictionalized account of a case involving abuse, neglect, and a woman’s ability to stand up for herself.