Plains Humanities Alliance: Great Books of the Great Plains

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Your search returned 114 entries:

Ambrose, Stephen
Eisenhower.
Published: Touchstone Books, 1991.
This comprehensive biography begins with Ike's Kansas boyhood and follows through his life as a World War II general and ultimately president of the United States.

Genre: Nonfiction - Biography
Subject: History, Military

Ascher, Carol
The Flood.
Published: Curbstone Press, 1996.
Against the backdrop of Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, and the Flood of 1951, Eva Hoffman comes of age. A precocious ten year old, daughter of a brooding psychiatrist recently immigrated to Topeka to work at the famous Menninger Clinic, Eva works hard to understand her parents' awkwardness in the new country, the race relations of her new community, and the role of charity and goodness after her mother takes in a "redneck" family from across the river. The accumulation these concurrent events make Eva's challenge great, her understanding deep.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Historical Fiction
Subject: African American

Averill, Thomas Fox
Secrets of the Tsil Café.
Published: BlueHen/Putnam, 2001.
This novel, set in Kansas City, explores the coming of age of Wes Hingler between the intensities of two kitchens and two cooks: his father runs the Tsil Cafe, and cooks only with foodstuffs indigenous to the Western Hemisphere before Columbus; his mother runs Buen AppeTito catering, specializing in Italian food.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Novel
Subject: Folklife - Cuisine

Averill, Thomas Fox
The Slow Air of Ewan MacPherson.
Published: BlueHen/Berkley, 2003.
Set in the fictional Scottish immigrant town of Glasgow, Kansas, this novel is both a coming of age and a love story with the backdrop of bagpiping, Robert Burns's poetry and single-malt Scotch.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Novel
Subject: European American, Folklife - Community Life

Averill, Thomas Fox
What Kansas Means to Me: 20th Century Writers on the Sunflower State.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1990.
This collection of affectionate pieces traces the positives of landscape, people, culture and history from the perspectives of such writers as William Allen White, Karl Menninger, Robert Day and William Least-Heat Moon.

Genre: Nonfiction - Creative Nonfiction/Essays
Subject: History, Nature & Environment

Bader, Robert Smith
The Great Kansas Bond Scandal.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1982.
In the midst of Depression, banker and confidence man Ronald Finney bilked the state of Kansas in addition to individual banks and depositors in excess of one million dollars. In what has become known as the "Great Bond Scandal," the author explores the genesis of the affair and the subsequent trial and aftermath. While outlining the scandal and fallout, the author offers a fascinating image of Kansas in the 1930s.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History

Bader, Robert
Hayseeds, Moralizers and Methodists: The Twentieth-Century Image of Kansas.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1988.
Bader's book traces the rise and fall of the cultural image of Kansas from within and outside the state. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Kansas was perceived as the forefront of political thought and a cultural barometer of the nation, the result of its history of populism, progressivism, and prohibition. The onset of the Depression and the devastation of agriculture during the Dust Bowl left Kansas weakened in the eyes of the nation, shifting its elevated status to the brunt of jokes and an object of cultural derision. Bader concludes the survey by urging people to reassess the often overlooked strengths of the state.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, Politics, Rural Life

Bailey, Beth
Sex in the Heartland.
Published: Harvard University Press, 1999.
In the 1960s American society and political institutions experienced fundamental changes. In contrast to general studies or local studies that focus on such places as Berkeley, San Francisco, or Greenwich Village, Beth Bailey examines how life and behavior in Lawrence, Kansas was transformed by the sixties. The author examines the social and cultural life of Lawrence, Kansas and argues that the social changes and sexual revolution that reshaped American life are more complicated than is generally believed. This is an essential book for those wishing to understand the roots of contemporary American society.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, Politics, Gender

Bair, Bruce
good land: or, My Life as a Farm Boy.
Published: Steerforth Press, 1997.
Journalist Bair grew up on a western Kansas wheat farm and writes a chip-on-the-shoulder account of life with a difficult father in a difficult landscape during a time of transition to bigger and bigger farms.

Genre: Nonfiction - Diary/Memoir/Autobiography
Subject: History, Rural Life

Bair, Julene
One Degree West: Reflections of a Plainsdaughter.
Published: Mid-List Press, 2000.
These essays meditate on the challenges of family dynamics, farming in western Kansas, and the complexity of gender roles that enter into both. This book provides a feminine perspective of the family story, which is also accounted in Bair's brother Bruce's sardonic memoir, Good Land.

Genre: Nonfiction - Creative Nonfiction/Essays
Subject: Gender, Rural Life

Baum, L. Frank
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Published: Dover, 1900.
Although this classic needs no introduction, the book should not be confused with the film. In the book, Kansas may be nightmare, but Oz is not a dream. And Dorothy, in her genuine desire to return home to reality, shows all the virtues of a true Kansas pioneer-she is practical, accepting, a believer in justice, democratic, focused and unflappable.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Novel, Children's Literature
Subject: Culture, Politics

Brackman, Barbara, and Cathy Dwiggins.
Backyard Visionaries: Grassroots Art in the Midwest.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1998.
The authors of this book are all members of the Kansas Grassroots Art Association-the oldest organization in the U.S. to work towards preserving sites of what is often called primitive, or outsider art. With more than 150 photographs of the familiar (Garden of Eden, Lucas) and the unfamiliar, this book is dedicated to help us understand, appreciate and preserve this unique form of art that seems to bloom all over the Great Plains.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: Art, Photography

Brackman, et. al.
Kansas Quilts and Quilters.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1993.
This book grew out of the Kansas Quilt Project: Documenting Quilts and Quiltmakers. Thoroughly researched and elegantly illustrated, the book moves from the historical past to the quilting groups of today. As the introduction claims, the history of quilts helps tell the history of women in Kansas.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, Hobbies, Folklife - Material Culture

Brown, John Gary
Soul in the Stone: Cemetery Art from America's Heartland.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1994.
John Gary Brown is a photographer and intrepid traveler to cemeteries all over the Midwest, motivated in part by his discoveries of the uniqueness of cemetery art: among them an Egyptian sphinx, a gigantic baseball, a salesman's suitcase, a rolltop desk, a car‑engine shrine and plexiglass‑enclosed dolls. The more traditional statuary-the hovering marble angels, the elaborate wrought‑iron crosses, the granite and marble-also tell their stories of grief and hope, of the deaths that prompt the desire not to be forgotten. Certainly, Brown finds the memorable.

Genre: Nonfiction - Creative Nonfiction/Essays
Subject: Art

Brown, Lauren
Grasslands (a National Audubon Society Nature Guide).
Published: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989.
This is the definitive field guide to the various grassland habitats throughout North America, with particular emphasis on the American Great Plains. In addition to including detailed descriptions of vegetation, wildlife, climate, physical features and range of grasslands, this book has an extensive collection of color photographs to aid in identification. Durable, portable, and informative, Grasslands is a great volume to take hiking, camping, and exploring.

Genre: Nonfiction - Reference
Subject: Travel, Nature & Environment

Buchanan, Rex, and James R. McCauley.
Roadside Kansas: A Traveler's Guide to Its Geology and Landmarks.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1987.
This guide travels along nine major by-ways of Kansas, pointing out geological formations and historical landmarks along the way. A compendium of information and anecdotes about old forts, frontier trails, sinkholes, limestone cliffs, and other interesting features, this book also includes an abundance of photographs and helpful maps.

Genre: Nonfiction - Travel
Subject: History, Travel

Buchanan, Rex
Kansas Geology: An Introduction to Landscapes, Rocks, Minerals, and Fossils.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1984.
Filled with photos, figures, drawings, and maps, this geological guide to the state is written for the general reader. This book is an accessible introduction to the geological features of Kansas and their formation, including sections on regional landscapes, sedimentary rocks, and the vast array of fossils to be found in the state.

Genre: Nonfiction - Reference
Subject: Nature & Environment, Hobbies

Cox, Thomas C.
Blacks in Topeka, Kansas, 1865-1915.
Published: Louisiana State University Press, 1982.
Thomas Cox probes deeper into exoduster migration in which thousands of ex-slaves migrated to Kansas to escape debt and racial animosity. Building on Nell Irvin Painter's pioneering work that is also on this list, the author traces not only the reasons and realities of the exodus to Kansas but also examines the development of the black community in Topeka.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, African American, Politics

Cable, Ted T., and Wayne Maley.
Driving across Kansas: A Guide to I-70.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 2003.
A mile-marker by mile-marker guide to landmarks, historical movements, industry, people and the significant events of Kansas as they intersect with the Interstate.

Genre: Nonfiction - Travel
Subject: Culture, History, Travel

Capote, Truman
In Cold Blood.
Published: Random House, 1965.
When persons unknown killed Herb Cluttter and his family in Holcomb, Kansas, in 1959, Capote set out for Kansas determined to write what he would call the "nonfiction novel." The result is a classic work in American letters that captures both our fascination with Middle America as a safe and innocent place, and as a place where violence can erupt as quickly and as devastatingly as a cyclone.

Genre: Fiction - Historical Fiction
Subject: Rural Life

Carey, Frank, and Jayni Nass.
The Kansas Cookbook.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1989.
After Charles Kuralt said that there was "nothing to eat" in the "gastronomic wasteland of America" between Kansas City and Denver, the authors of this book put out a call for recipes from Kansas. They serve up a wonderful season of Kansas's menus, from the traditional midwestern fare of fried chicken and cherry pies to the food that reflects the ethnic diversity of the state's population-from cassoulet to kabob to Croatioan povotica.

Genre: Nonfiction - Reference
Subject: Folklife - Cuisine, Hobbies

Castel, Albert
Civil War Kansas: Reaping the Whirlwind.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1997.
Kansas achieved statehood just two and a half months before the onset of the Civil War. A free state, Kansas was embattled from the east by slave state Missourians and many border skirmishes took place. In its infancy, the first four years of statehood, Kansas was forged by the experience of the Civil War.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, Politics, African American, Military

Clair, Maxine
Rattlebone.
Published: Penguin Books, 1994.
Clair's group of connected stories tell the coming of age of Irene Wilson in the context of her all black neighborhood, called Rattlebone, a part of Kansas City, Kansas, in the 1950s. In the course of the stories, Irene must weather racial prejudice, adulterous parents, death, her own budding sexuality, and challenges to her friendships-all towards realizing her own promise and standing up for herself.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Short Stories
Subject: History, African American

Coburn, Carol
Life at Four Corners.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1992.
Subtitled "Religion, Gender, and Education in a German-Lutheran Community, 1868-1945," Coburn's book about Block, Kansas, traces the power of ethnicity, religion and social cohesion in a small town. Coburn shows both the inner life of a rural community as well as the exterior pressures, particularly after World War II, that work against community.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, European American, Folklife - Community Life

Coldsmith, Don
Tallgrass.
Published: Bantam Books, 1997.
A saga of the tallgrass land of Kansas, this novel spans from the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadors through the nineteen-century pioneer boom. This story encompasses the lives of the native peoples, a freed slave who travels with the Corp of Discovery, as well as those who come to settle from other lands. Perhaps most importantly, Tallgrass tells the story of Kansas itself.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Historical Fiction
Subject: History, Native American, African American, European American

Collins, Joe, et. al.
Kansas Wildlife.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1991.
Because of its central location in North America, Kansas is home to an astonishing variety of wildlife. This guide offers 130 full color photographs accompanied by descriptions of habitats and behavior of the many species that inhabit the state.

Genre: Nonfiction - Reference
Subject: Nature & Environment, Photography

Connell, Evan S., Jr.
Mrs. Bridge and Mr. Bridge.
Published: North Point Press, 1959 and 1969.
Evan Connell, who grew up in Southeast Kansas, writes wonderfully insightful fiction about there and the University of Kansas (in The Anatomy Lesson) in addition to Kansas City's Country Club Plaza in the years between the world wars (in the classic 1959 Mrs. Bridge, and its companion Mr. Bridge, 1969). In a luxurious world of things and money, India Bridge and her husband Walter both yearn for more-more meaning, more intimacy, more understanding of themselves-and yet they are trapped by formalities, obligations, social pressure and niceties. These are deeply felt, yet satiric novels.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Novel
Subject: History, Society, European American

Cordier, Mary Hurlbut
Schoolwomen of the Prairies and Plains.
Published: University of New Mexico Press, 1992.
This book explores and celebrates the experiences of the women who educated the children in isolated, rural areas from the 1860s through the 1920s. Cordier provides a detailed portrait of the physical and social landscapes in which these women worked to meet their students' needs as well as to extend their own educations.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, European American, Folklife - Community Life

Cutler, Bruce
A West Wind Rises: Massacre at Marais des Cygnes.
Published: Center for Kansas Studies/Woodley Press, 1999.
In May of 1859, a band of Missourians rode into Kansas and perpetrated what became known as the Marais des Cygnes Massacre against eleven men they rounded up for being "Free‑staters." Bruce Cutler did a masterful job of research to create this narrative poem with multiple voices and perspectives.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Poetry
Subject: History

Dallas, Sandra
The Persian Pickle Club.
Published: St. Martin's Griffin, 1995.
This novel celebrates the supportive network of a quilting circle in Depression-era Kansas. These women gather together to quilt, gossip, and help each other throughout historically and personally challenging times.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Novel
Subject: Folklife - Material Culture, Hobbies

Dancer, Daniel
The Four Seasons of Kansas.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 2001 (revised edition).
In 105 photographs, one of Kansas' best photographers captures the state in its four seasons. As Dancer himself says, "Much of my adventures in Kansas have been spent in pursuit of what I call 'wild space'-uncluttered landscapes that embody a quiet beauty that eludes the hurried and undiscriminating eye. Kansas abounds in such beauty, and the photographs I've chosen for this book are intended to celebrate its abundance and variety." Dancer accomplishes that celebrative goal.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: Photography, Art, Nature & Environment

Day, Robert
The Last Cattle Drive.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1977.
A rollicking, raucous novel set in 1970s Kansas, narrated by the tenderfoot school teacher Leo, who takes a summer job with a local rancher and ends up on a cattle drive from Gorham/Hays all the way to the Kansas City stockyards. Besides the wonderful humor and the accurate geography, the novel is an excellent introduction to the big differences between Eastern and Western Kansas.

Genre: Fiction - Historical Fiction
Subject: Cultural/Human Geography

Dickenson, James R
Home on the Range: A Century on the High Plains.
Published: Scribner, 1996.
Now a journalist in Washington, Dickenson grew up in McDonald, Kansas (pop. 200, Rawlins County, on US 36). He returned for family stories, for his own past and for the story of the Great Plains-its settlement, its depopulation, its stories of victory and defeat.

Genre: Nonfiction - Diary/Memoir/Autobiography
Subject: Rural Life

Dodd, Elizabeth
Archetypal Light.
Published: University of Nevada Press, 2001.
Populated with birdcall and bones, cottonwoods and canvases, this collection of poems gazes intensely at and listens intently to the natural world, rendering it with lyricism and deep respect.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Poetry
Subject: Nature & Environment

Dodd, Elizabeth
Prospect.
Published: The University of Utah Press, 2003.
This essay collection leads readers into complex and varied American landscapes, ranging from islands to prairies, mountains to marshes. Thoughtfully observed and finely detailed, Dodd's view of ecosystems and cultures radiates from the centering influence of her home in the Flint Hills of Kansas.

Genre: Nonfiction - Creative Nonfiction/Essays
Subject: Nature & Environment

Draper, Edythe Squier
As Grass.
Published: Center for Kansas Studies, 1994.
These six short stories, set in Southeast Kansas between the world wars, concern themselves with abused women and neglected children, poor blacks and other people at the fringes of the small towns and communities in which they live. Edythe Draper was well-published and honored as a story writer, then became the Oswego correspondent to the Parsons Sun in the last part of her life. An introduction by Jeffrey Ann Goudie puts Draper's stories in the context of her interesting and unusual life.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Short stories
Subject: African American, Rural Life

Dykstra, Robert R.
The Cattle Towns.
Published: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968.
In what remains a classic, Robert Dykstra explores the development and transformation of Kansas's cattle towns from the emergence of the cattle industry in the late-1850s to its heyday when cattle were driven north on trails to the cattle towns in the 1870s, to the relative decline that occurred with the arrival of the railroad and farmers. In addition to exploring economic development, Dykstra traces the development of local society and the dynamics of community building in the nineteenth-century cattle towns.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History

Eick, Gretchen Cassel
Dissent in Wichita: The Civil Rights Movement in the Midwest, 1954-72.
Published: University of Illinois Press, 2001.
Americans typically assume that the first sit-in protest occurred in 1960 at a local Woolworth drug store in Greensboro, North Carolina. Gretchen Cassel-Eick, however, situates the origins of a new phase in the civil rights in a boycott against a Wichita drugstore in 1958. She examines how the interplay between local and national politics caused fundamental social and political change in the 1960s.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, African American, Politics

Elliott, Harley
Darkness at Each Elbow.
Published: Hanging Loose Press, 1981
Salina poet and artist Harley Elliott writes with historical knowledge, keen sense of place and an imagination that shows anything is possible, whether it's "Walt Whitman Caught Stealing Corn," "Self Portrait As Crazy Horse," or "Struck In The Forehead By A Sparrow I Begin To Get A Clue."

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Poetry
Subject: Culture

Etcheson, Nicole
Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era.
Published: University Press of Kansas. 2004.
Etcheson's Bleeding Kansas is a keen examination of how the Kansas Territory became the proving grounds for the warring ideologies that fueled the nation's greatest internal conflict. This book goes beyond just the moral and economic considerations behind the free-state movement to look at concerns of the threat to self-governance and political liberties. Key events and figures, such as John Brown, Sam Jones, and Jim Lane, are also closely considered.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, African American
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Evans, Terry
The Inhabited Prairie.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1998.
Evans is known for her prairie photography; however, this collection of photographs distinguishes itself by not merely beholding only the landscape but by noticing the effects caused by its inhabitants. We can see how people have cut roads and fields into the land and examine the presence of cemeteries and grazing cattle and deer - all shaping and changing the environment.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: Photograph, Nature & Environment

Fairchild, B. H.
Art of the Lathe.
Published: Alice James Books, 1998.
Fairchild depicts the aspirations of working people-farmers, machinists, welders, even Latin professors. Not since Phillip Levine has there been such a thorough and probing exploration of work in America, particularly the work of the Midwest. Other Fairchild collections that capture a similar essence of Kansas and the Great Plains include The Arrival of the Future and Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest.

Genre: Nonfiction - Poetry
Subject: Society

Federal Writers' Project of the Work Projects Administration
The WPA Guide to 1930s Kansas.
Published: University Press of Kansas,1984.
During the "make work" of the 1930s, the WPA put writers, photographers, historians and folklorists to work creating state guides. The Kansas guide is full of history, folklore, songs, poetry, travel tips and all kinds of facts and lore about the state. The University Press of Kansas had the wisdom to reprint the guide, with an introduction by cultural geographer James Shortridge, and though some of what is here is dated or disappeared, the book is a wonderful document of what once was, and what, in ruin, shade, or survival, still is here.

Genre: Nonfiction - Reference
Subject: History, Cultural/Human Geography, Folklife - Community Life

Fitzgerald, Daniel
Ghost Towns of Kansas: A Traveler's Guide.
Published: The University Press of Kansas, 1988.
After the Kansas Territory was opened up for settlement in 1854, scores of towns sprouted up across the prairie. Many, however, fell victim to the frontier boom to bust economy, eventually dwindled and were abandoned. This traveler's guide is equipped with maps and directions to former town sites (many of which have reverted to pasture), as well as lots of black and white photos of the towns during their heydays. Fitzgerald includes intriguing stories of the towns' formations, like that of Octagon City whose inhabitants were allowed to purchase land at $1.25 an acre from the Vegetarian Settlement Company by signing an oath to swear off the consumption of alcohol, tobacco, and animal flesh.

Genre: Nonfiction - Travel
Subject: History, Travel, Cultural/Human Geography

Friedman, Lawrence J.
Menninger: The Family & the Clinic.
Published: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.
This book doubles as a biography for the Menninger family and a history of the world famous psychiatric clinic. This account takes the reader from the foundation of the clinic by brothers Karl and Will to its establishment as a corporation by Will's son, Roy. The once strong and prominent mental health care mecca has since left its long-time home in Topeka for Houston, Texas, but biography serves as a chronicle of its Kansas roots.

Genre: Nonfiction - Biography
Subject: History

Glenn, Andrea, ed.
Kansas in Color.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1982.
The photographs compiled, selected by Kansas! Magazine, are remarkable in their variety, emblematizing the seasons, subjects, and regions of Kansas. The book is introduced by Zula Bennington Greene, aka "Peggy of the Flint Hills," who wrote a deeply felt, eloquent and loving essay typical of those who admit the power of Kansas over them.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: Photography

Great Plains Flora Association
Flora of the Great Plains.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1986.
A descriptive compendium of all vascular plants that grow in the region, Flora of the Great Plains is the result of a massive and comprehensive specimen collection.

Genre: Nonfiction - Reference
Subject: Nature & Environment

Gress, Bob, and George Potts
Watching Kansas Wildlife: A Guide to 101 Sites.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1993.
Situated in the nation's center, Kansas affords wildlife enthusiasts a diverse cross-section of environments in which to observe a multitude of species. From marshland to grassland to woodland, one can see various fishes, insects, mammals, reptiles, and birds. This guide to 101 sites provides a list of types of animals that can be found, along with maps, photos, and directions to each site.

Genre: Nonfiction - Reference
Subject: Nature & Environment, Reference, Travel

Haldeman-Julius, Marcet and Emanuel
Dust & Short Works.
Published: Center for Kansas Studies, 1992.
As a writing couple, Emanual Julius, Jew, socialist and publisher of the Little Blue Books, and Marcet Haldeman, Christian and bank president, had unique insights into the Southeast Kansas town they called Fallon. Dust, a novel of pioneering, shows the terrible cost of materialism over the soul of a farmer. The short works are humorous portraits of small town life, including class, pretension and bourgeois happiness.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Novel, Short Stories
Subject: European American, Folklife - Community Life

Haywood, Robert C.
Cowtown Lawyers: Dodge City and its Attorneys, 1876-1886.
Published: Norman, 1988.
Adding additional plurality to the cast of characters associated with Dodge City and further debunking the stereotypical cow town atmosphere, Robert Haywood traces the rise of the judicial system and the bench and bar in Dodge City. In addition to exploring the apparatus of lawmaking, peacekeeping, and justice, Haywood examines the professional culture among lawyers and provides character and personal sketches of lawyers and judges in the legal system.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History

Haywood, C. Robert
Tough Daisies: Kansas Humor from "The Lane County Bachelor" to Bob Dole.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1995.
From the survival humor of the pioneers to the plight of contemporary Kansans trying to survive in a world which often makes them the butts of jokes, Kansans have had much to poke fun of, most generously themselves. Historian Haywood takes a look at our doctored postcards (jackelopes and wagon-sized potatoes), our political cartoons (Bob Dole's hatchet jobs), our songs (from "Beulah Land" to "Allergy Land"), our tall tales, our Dust Bowl exaggerations and our role as the place not to be from ("Gee, Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore." This is great Kansas history, all derived from the funny bone.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, Folklife - Oral Traditions/Humor, Folklife-Community Life

Haywood, Robert C.
Victorian West: Class and Culture in Kansas Cattle Towns.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1991.
Many readers interested in Kansas's history conflate Dodge City or Wichita with gun men and cattle depots rather than middle class people. Haywood explores how the arrival of middle class individuals seeking to establish booster institutions and associations, implement social reform, and cultivate the culture of gentility tamed the rougher cattle town culture that prevailed and made the cattle towns "civilized" outposts of Victorian middle class culture.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, European American, Folklife - Material Culture

Heitz, Lisa Hefner
Haunted Kansas.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1997.
Heitz has carefully and cleverly recounted the state's best tales, legends and ghost stories. The book haunts the memory with the eerie, the pathetic, the tragic and the bizarre. With folkloric study, with a good sense of place, this book adds to the understanding of Kansas.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Short Stories
Subject: Folklife - Oral Traditions/Humor

Heldrich, Philip
Good Friday.
Published: Texas Review Press, 2000.
These poems span the cultural and natural landscape of the Great Plains like a heat-blistered interstate. Heldrich finds the holy in the motels, taverns, and meat processing plants of Kansas and Oklahoma, the sacred in the migrating geese and streaking meteors in the sky above.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Poetry,
Subject: Rural Life, Nature & Environment

Herd, Stan
Crop Art and Earthworks.
Published: Harry N. Abrams, 1994.
Perhaps the world's most famous crop artist, Stan Herd makes his art on the canvas of acres of land, using a tractor and various crops to shape images that are best seen from the air. This collection of aerial photographs includes Herd's depictions of Van Gogh's sunflowers, Kansas aviator Amelia Earhart, and many others, which are visually stunning, in subject and scope.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: Art, Nature & Environment

Herring, Joseph B.
The Enduring Indians of Kansas: A Century and a Half of Acculturation.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1990.
In the mid-nineteenth century thousands of Native Americans were forced to leave their lands and move west of the Mississippi River, where they were settled in eastern Kansas. By the end of the century only a few hundred remained, mostly Kickapoo, Iowa, Potawatomi, Fox, Sac, and Chippawa. Herring makes the argument that it was through acculturation on their own terms that enabled these people to keep their promised lands and persist through generations in Kansas.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, Native American

Hind, Steven
In A Place With No Map.
Published: Center for Kansas Studies/Woodley Press, 1997
Steven Hind knows the Flint Hills of Kansas better than any other poet, and he writes of his territory with plain language ("Prairie: you were born a member of a tribe who took to the lean feast in that name"), genuine affection ("the land says because you love me, your job is to stay with the world"), and tremendous insight ("Nail-stained houses/ float like arks/ on the empty fields./ How many harvests/justify their grim doors?").

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Poetry
Subject: Nature & Environment, Rural Life

Hope, Holly
Garden City: Dreams in a Kansas Town.
Published: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988.
In this personal look at her home town, Holly Hope moves, like many Kansans do about the state, between respect and ridicule, sarcasm and admiration, cynicism and nostalgia, rejection and romance. Garden City is a finely detailed and interesting look at the traditions, history and culture of one of the most interesting Western Kansas towns.

Genre: Nonfiction - Diary/Memoir/Autobiography
Subject: Rural Life, Cultural/Human Geography

Hoy, Jim, ed.
Prairie Poetry: Cowboy Verse of Kansas.
Published: Wichita Eagle and Beacon Press, 1995.
For years, Jim Hoy, who was raised in the Flint Hills of Kansas in a ranching family, has been collecting the folklore, stories and poetry of cowboys. These verses are full of the lives of past and present cowboys and versifiers inspired by the land, the horses and cattle, the humor and tall tales that accompany the range, the cattle drive and the ranch.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Poetry
Subject: Rural Life, Folklife - Oral Traditions

Hughes, Langston
Not Without Laughter.
Published: Scribner's 1930, reprint 1995.
Hughes' novel is set in Stanton (Lawrence), Kansas, around the time of the First World War. Young Sandy Rodgers, who is African-American, comes of age in a time of racial prejudice. He has many influences and philosophies clamoring for attention in his life, and finally he sets out to live up to his grandmother's dream that he will someday become a great man and help the whole black race.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Historical Fiction
Subject: African American

Inge, William
Four Plays.
Published: Grove Press 1958, reprint 1990.
With Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, Inge ruled as one of the princes of Broadway during the 1950s. His four plays are "Come Back, Little Sheba," "Picnic" (which won the Pulitzer Prize), "Bus Stop" and "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs." Though not as popular as they once were, Inge's plays still reveal the essential heart of Kansans and the Kansas small town of the 1920s.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Plays
Subject: Folklife - Community Life

Ise, John
Sod and Stubble.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1996.
John Ise, long-time economics professor at the University of Kansas, first published the account of his parents' lives in central Kansas in 1936. Sixty years later, Von Rothenberger created an unabridged and annotated edition, complete with photographs and family records. What remains true to both editions is the gritty, hopeful story of two people making a home near Downs, Kansas, between 1873-1909. These pioneers came not only to live but also to make a better living for their children, and nine of the eleven surviving Ise kids left the farm for higher education.

Genre: Nonfiction - Diary/Memoir/Autobiography
Subject: History, Cultural/Human Geography, European American

Johnsgard, Paul A.
Prairie Birds: Fragile Splendor in the Great Plains.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 2001.
Ornithologist Johnsgard describes the habitats, migratory patterns, behavior, and appearance of thirty-three species of prairie birds. This guide offers a list of sanctuaries and preserves, extensive drawings, and graphic keys to birdsongs.

Genre: Nonfiction - Reference
Subject: Nature & Environment, Hobbies

Johnson, Osa
I Married Adventure.
Published: Kodansh International, 1997.
In 1910 seventeen-year-old Osa married Martin Johnson in Chanute, Kansas, and soon after they embarked on over twenty years of adventure together. These Kansans became famous to a public eager to view the documentary films and photographs of exotic locales, such as Borneo, Kenya, the Congo, and New Hebrides. Originally published in 1940, this book is Osa's personal account of their many travels and experiences.

Genre: Nonfiction - Diary/Memoir/Autobiography
Subject: Travel

Junker, Patricia, et. al.
John Steuart Curry: Inventing the Middle West.
Published: Hudson Hills Press, 1998.
One of the three most influential American Regionalist of the twentieth century, native Kansan Curry, along with Iowan Grant Wood and Missourian Thomas Hart Benton, documented rural and small town life in the Midwest in vivid paintings and murals. As well as his many narrative artworks showing the daily life of plains people, he also painted interpretations of political and cultural histories, including the famous Kansas statehouse mural of the tornadic, charismatic John Brown, brandishing both Bible and rifle. A number of scholarly essays about the art and influence of John Steuart Curry accompany these plates.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: Art

Killoren, Robert, ed.
Late Harvest: Plains and Prairie Poets.
Published: BookMark Press, 1977.
In addition to offering selections of poetry by Robert Bly, Bruce Cutler, Dave Etter, James Hearst, Dan Jaffe, John Knoepfle, Ted Kooser, Thomas McGrath, and William Stafford, this collection includes a critical essay on the work of each of these influential Plains poets.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Poetry, Nonfiction - Creative Nonfiction/Essays
Subject: Culture

Koch, William E.
Folklore from Kansas: Customs, Beliefs, and Superstitions.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1980.
William Koch was the primary collector of Kansas folklore items for years, and in this volume of over 5,000 items, the reader sees both the universality of our folklore and the particularity of its expression in Kansas. Here, over half the items are related to health, weather and luck, not surprising for a state that still relies so heavily on agricultural production for its economy and well-being.

Genre: Nonfiction - Reference
Subject: Folklife - Oral Traditions/Humor, Rural Life

Lambert, Don
The Life & Art of Elizabeth "Grandma" Layton.
Published: WRS Publishing, 1995.
When Don Lambert first saw the self-portrait contour drawings of Elizabeth Layton he knew he was looking at genius. Layton, who called herself "Grandma," and who had used her drawing to bring her out of a years-long depression, went on to exhibits at the Smithsonian and in Paris, France. Her work is revealing, deeply-felt, wonderfully funny and full of commentary about women, politics, history and culture.

Genre: Nonfiction - Biography
Subject: Art, Gender

Least Heat-Moon, William
PrairyErth (a deep map).
Published: Houghton Mifflin, 1991.
Heat -Moon explores Chase County in the Flint Hills of Kansas, what many Americans consider to be "fly-over country," via dirt and gravel roads, providing a "deep map" of the grassland landscape. This book celebrates the beauty of the state and admires the character of its people while dispelling the stereotypes that are often held by outsiders.

Genre: Nonfiction - Creative Nonfiction/Essays
Subject: Nature & Environment, Society

Lehrer, Jim
Kick the Can.
Published: Ballantine Books, 1989.
Blinded by a childhood game of Kick the Can, One-Eyed Mack is unable to pursue his dream of following his father's profession to be a state trooper. Instead, he opts for more wayward adventure. This picaresque novel by PBS news anchor and Kansas native, Jim Lehrer, explores the sensibilities and politics of the Midwest.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Fiction
Subject: Folklife - Community Life, Politics

Low, Denise
New and Selected Poems, 1980-1999.
Published: Penthe Publishing, 1999.
This collection spans eight books of poetry and almost twenty years of writing by one of Kansas' pre-eminent poets. These deeply meditative poems are populated with Kansan towns and sweeping prairie landscapes.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Poetry
Subject: Nature & Environment, Rural Life, Native American, Asian American

Low, Denise
Touching the Sky.
Published: Penthe Publishing, 1994.
Fifth-generation Kansan Denise Low assembles a cohesive collection of essays that celebrate life in Kansas. From depictions of the Haskell Indian Nations Earthwork Medicine wheel to meditations on the vernacular in Kansas literature, Low gets at the heart of life in the state. The essays are accompanied by the evocative Flint Hills photography of George Kren.

Genre: Nonfiction - Creative Nonfiction/Essays
Subject: Native Americans, Photography, Hobbies, Folklife - Material Culture

McCoy, Sondra Van Meter, and Jan E. Hults.
1001 Kansas Place Names.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1989.
From Abilene to Zurich, this guide provides insight to the name origins of Kansas towns, counties, rivers and landmarks. Kansas founders, speculators and pioneers took names from Native Americans, the Old Country, and historical figures and gave them to the burgeoning settlements and newly discovered natural features of the state.

Genre: Nonfiction - Reference
Subject: History

McNall, Scott G.
The Road to Rebellion: Class Formation and Kansas Populism, 1865-1900.
Published: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
Scott McNall examines the Kansan social and economic landscape that included figureheads such as Mary Elizabeth Lease and "Sockless" Jerry Simpson to explain why the contentious national, state, and local political debates of the 1890s largely dissipated by the early 1900s. The author offers an engaging look into not only Kansas politics but also the broader political and economic cultures of the Gilded Age. The author argues that although farmers united to formulate a class identity and articulate political and economic visions that contrasted the Republican agenda, the agrarian nature of the platform hindered widespread class appeal.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, Politics, Cultural/Human Geography

Miner, Craig
Kansas: The History of the Sunflower State, 1854-2000.
Published: University Press of Kansas 2002.
This most recent history of the state chronicles Kansas from the Kansas-Nebraska Act to the turn of the millennium, covering every major cultural and historical event in between and demonstrating the state's rich and varied heritage.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History

Miner, Craig
West of Wichita.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1986.
The challenges of early Plains settlers-extreme weather, grasshopper plagues, Indian raids, and high mortality rates-are placed in the context of the economic climate of the period.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, European American

Monhollon, Rusty L.
This is America? The Sixties in Lawrence, Kansas.
Published: Palgrave, 2002.
This book represents the author's attempt to understand both the social and political upheaval of the 1960s and also its historical legacy. The author provides greater insight and understanding of the national milieu by examining social change and politics in Lawrence as a microcosm. Although local details altered Lawrence's experience in subtle ways from the experience of urban centers, at stake in the 1960s in Lawrence, as elsewhere, was a struggle to define fundamental American social and political values.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, African American, Politics

Moriarty, Laura
The Center of Everything.
Published: Hyperion Press, 2003.
Young Evelyn Bucknow lives with her irresponsible and immature mother, Tina, in a small Kansas town. Her coming-of-age story demonstrates the resilience of a girl who manages to thrive despite poverty and disadvantage.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Novel
Subject: Rural Life

Moses, Edwin
One Smart Kid.
Published: MacMillan, 1982.
When a stranger comes to Fox Creek, Kansas, and checks into the local motel, he and the proprietor, a widow and friend of Marvin Hollowell, the novel's thirteen year-old narrator, come under the suspicion of the town gossips. This book dramatizes the troubles that ensue when McCarthy-ism strikes the heart of America.

Genre: Nonfiction - Historical Fiction
Subject: Politics, Rural Life

Napier, Rita
Kansas and the West: New Perspectives.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 2003
A fine group of contributors that tackles the myths of the West and shows the complex interchange between people, places and themes in light of race, class, gender and environment.

Genre: Nonfiction - Creative Nonfiction/Essays
Subject: History, Gender, Nature & Environment, Society

Nelson, Antonya
Living to Tell.
Published: Scribner, 2000.
Winston Mabie returns to the rambling family home in Wichita, Kansas, after five years in prison for the death of his grandmother (he was driving her, and was drunk, and she was killed in the accident he caused). Also living at home are the Mabie's two adult daughters, one who has cancer and small children, the other who has a disastrous love life. All the Mabies work for and against their sense of family, and their moves towards forgiveness and love make for rich insight and heart-wrenching truths about how we live our lives.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Novel
Subject: Society

Painter, Nell Irvin
Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction.
Published: Alfred A Knopf, 1977.
Escaping virulent Southern racism and in search of land and opportunity, African-Americans in the spring of 1879 migrated northwest to Kansas where they established new lives throughout the state. Irvin-Painter traces the roots of the migration of African-Americans from the South - known as the exodusters - and places their experience within their broader regional and national social context. In doing so, the author exhumed the exoduster experience from historical obscurity in the 1970s.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, African American

Parks, Gordon
The Learning Tree.
Published: Fawcett Crest (Ballantine Publishing Group), 1963.
Parks calls his coming of age story, set in Southeast Kansas between 1924-1928, a "novel from life." Gordon Parks has said he was lucky to survive Kansas, and the violence and racial prejudice in the novel-Parks grew up in Fort Scott-prove him right. On the other hand, Kansas is where Newt Winger learns the important lessons of courage, bravery, truth-telling-where he finds the tools to propel him to a better life after the death of his mother.

Genre: Fiction - Historical Fiction
Subject: African American, Society

Penner, Mil
Section 27: A Century on a Family Farm.
Published: The University Press of Kansas, 2002.
In Section 27, Mil Penner chronicles his family's more than century-long stewardship of a farm in MacPherson County, Kansas. Part celebration and part elegy, this memoir traces the personal consequences of American agriculture's historical arc, beginning with Penner's great-grandfather busting sod in 1874 with a walking plow drawn by a team of horses and following through the increasing mechanization and specialization of twentieth century farming practices

Genre: Nonfiction, Diary/Memoir/Autobiography
Subject: History, Rural Life, Nature & Environment

Pickard, Nancy
Bum Steer.
Published: Pocket Books, 1990.
Fairway, Kansas, mystery writer Nancy Pickard brought her Massachusetts detective Jenny Cain to the Kansas Flint Hills for this traditional who-dun-it. But her love of place shines, and the story integrates the beauty and charm of the largest unspoiled grasslands in Kansas and the nation.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Mystery & Crime
Subject: Nature & Environment

Rampersad, Arnold
The Life of Langston Hughes Volume I: I Too, Sing America.
Published: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Hughes scholar and biographer Rampersad covers the poet's Kansas boyhood in the early part of this biography, providing an account of his formative years in Topeka and Lawrence. This volume follows Hughes' life until the early 1940s.

Genre: Nonfiction - Biography
Subject: African American

Rawley, James A.
Race and Politics: "Bleeding Kansas" and the Coming of the Civil War.
Published: University of Nebraska, 1979.
Prolific author and historian James A. Rawley synthesizes the central role of racial prejudice in defining the 1850s political debate and explores the integral role Kansas played in national politics from 1854 to 1858.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, Politics

Reichman, O. J.
Konza Prairie: A Tallgrass Natural History.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1987.
The Konza Prairie, covering over 8,600 acres in the Flint Hills of Kansas, is the largest uncultivated and preserved tract of tallgrass prairie in the nation. Biologist Reichman explores the tallgrass ecosystem, its wildlife, and the crucial processes-fire, weather, photosynthesis-by which the prairie persists. The text is accompanied by stunning color photographs.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: Nature & Environment, Photography

Ruby, Lois
Steal Away Home.
Published: Simon & Schuster, 1999.
Twelve-year-old Dana is helping her parents renovate a Lawrence, Kansas, house into a bed and breakfast when she discovers a skeleton and a diary, and finds the Quaker roots of a house once a part of the Underground Railroad. Ruby is a fine writer, living in Wichita, Kansas, and her books combine history and sense of place with good writing and satisfying plots.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Children's Literature
Subject: History

Rutledge, Carol Brunner
Dying and Living on the Kansas Prairie.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1994.
This is a fine and moving diary of the three months before the death of the author's mother and the drives across the Kansas Flint Hills from Topeka to Hope, Kansas, to visit, to reflect, to grieve and to come to peace. By turns descriptive, meditative, narrative and philosophical, Rutledge's book is at times intensely personal, and most often universally important.

Genre: Nonfiction - Diary/Memoir/Autobiography
Subject: Religion & Spirituality

Sachs, David, and George Ehrlich.
Guide to Kansas Architecture.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1996.
The authors have compiled a collection of over 700 structures throughout the state, providing maps and addresses for the curious traveler. From the stately to the quirky, from the courthouse to the barn, this book offers an interesting, diverse view of the history and culture behind the buildings of Kansas.

Genre: Nonfiction - Reference
Subject: Architecture, Travel

Schulz, Constance, ed.
Bust to Boom: Documentary Photographs of Kansas, 1936-1949.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1996.
Many never-before published photographs commissioned by the Farm Security Administration, the Office of War Information, and Standard Oil of New Jersey are assembled here, chronicling Kansas through the Dust Bowl devastation to the economy-boosting war years. Daniel Worster's introduction offers an historical context for these striking photos by some of the era's most respected photographers of railroad workers, drought-ravaged wheat fields, and waning rural life.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: Photography, History, Rural Life

Shannon, George
Climbing Kansas Mountains.
Published: Bradbury Press (McMillan), New York, 1993.
Gorgeously illustrated by Lawrence artist Thomas B. Allen, this story about young Sam, whose dad takes him to climb a Kansas mountain-a grain elevator. There he sees a different view of his little farm town and the fields that surround it. This book celebrates the quiet beauty of the Kansas landscape and the bond between a father and son.

Genre: Fiction and Literature Children's Literature
Subject: Nature & Environment, Culture

Sheldon, William
Retrieving Old Bones.
Published: Woodley Memorial Press, 2002.
Hutchinson poet Bill Sheldon explores the elegiac landscape of memory in this collection: walks on dirt roads, the companionship of dogs, cold days hunting quail, the loss of a child. A thoughtful reverence pervades these poems.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Poetry
Subject: Rural Life

Shortridge, James R.
Our Town on the Plains: J.J. Pennel's Photographs of Junction City, Kansas, 1893-1922.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 2000.
J. J. Pennel's photographs of Junction City, Kansas from 1893-1922 capture the lives of a people and town undergoing profound transformation. As railroads and then automobiles replaced carriages, local life was gradually transformed by the increased penetration of national markets, politics, and culture, into local life. Pennel's work earned state and national recognition both during his lifetime and beyond. In addition to the widely know collection of photos, many of which present timeless images of small town life in the Midwest a century ago, James Shortridge's prose provides a wonderfully detailed historical and cultural analysis that deepens one's understanding of the meaning of the photos.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, Photography

Shortridge, James R.
Peopling the Plains: Who Settled Where in Frontier Kansas.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1995
This history of immigration to Kansas is nicely graphed and tabled and mapped. For anyone who wants to know who settled in Kansas, and why, and how they persisted or failed, this book covers it all: land speculation, railroad promotion, homesteading laws, political and social movements, geography, weather and just plain stubbornness.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: Cultural/Human Geography, History

Shortridge, James R.
The Middle West: Its Meaning in American Culture.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1989.
A cultural geographer at the University of Kansas, James R. Shortridge has long been as interested in the perceptions as well as the realities of place. In this attempt to define the underlying character of the Middle West as a region, Shortridge examines the contradictory images of heartland, pastoral paradise, metaphor, and rural backwater.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: Cultural/Human Geography, Nature & Environment

Smiley, Jane
The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton.
Published: Knopf, 1998.
Lidie Harkness, an awkward, soon-to-be spinster from Quincy, Illinois, meets Bostonian abolitionist Thomas Newton, who fires her heart, her need for change, her adventuring spirit. They marry, and off they go to Lawrence, Kansas Territory, where in just over a year's time Lidie homesteads, loses Thomas, dresses as a man as she seeks revenge in Missouri for Thomas' murder, and finally ends up back home, saying that, "after K.T., . . . nothing ever surprised" her again. Extremely well-researched, the book is written like the travelogues of the mid-19th century.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Historical Fiction
Subject: History

Stafford, Kim
Early Morning: Remembering My Father, William Stafford.
Published: Graywolf Press, 2002.
In a finely written book that is part biography of his father, part explication of his father's work, part memoir of his own relationship with his father, Kim Stafford gives a beautiful portrait of a man and his family and their fundamental relationship to Kansas and Oregon.

Genre: Nonfiction - Diary/Memoir/Autobiography
Subject: Culture

Stafford, William. Denise Low, ed.
Kansas Poems of William Stafford.
Published: Woodley Press, 1990.
William Stafford, winner of the National Book Award for Traveling Through the Dark, was born in Hutchinson, Kansas, in 1914. One of the foremost and prolific poets of the 20th Century, Stafford maintained a special affection for Kansas and the Great Plains.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Poetry
Subject: Culture, Nature & Environment

Stafford, William
The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems.
Published: Graywolf Press, 1998.
After William Stafford's death in 1993, the poet's estate and Graywolf Press put together this 250-page collection of some of his best work, from his first book, West of Your City (1960) to the poetry written right up until the day he died. The simple language of complicated life, the respect for the landscape of Kansas and the Great Plains and the welcoming inclusiveness in these poems are the region's quintessence.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Poetry
Subject: Nature & Environment

Stratton, Joanna
Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontier.
Published: Simon and Schuster, 1981.
A detailed portrait of women's lives on the Kansas frontier, Stratton's book is bolstered by the numerous autobiographical accounts of homesteaders, Native Americans, and immigrants, who detailed their challenges and experiences of pioneering. This book was one of the first to truly acknowledge the extent to which women influenced and contributed to the settling of the territory.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, European American, Gender

Stuewe, Paul, ed.
Kansas Revisited: Historical Images and Perspectives, Second Edition.
Published: Division of Continuing Education, University of Kansas, 1998.
Paul Stuewe, who teaches history at Lawrence High School, has put together a wonderful collection of historical articles about Kansas, from its environment and geography, from its settlement to its future, from its historical prominence to its struggle with the Depression and Dust Bowl. Stuewe's work represents one of the best overviews of Kansas through a series of "case studies."

Genre: Nonfiction - Creative Nonfiction/Essays
Subject: History, Cultural/Human Geography, Politics, Nature & Environment, African American

Sudlow, Robert
Landscapes in Kansas.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1987.
One of Kansas' best-known and best-loved artists explores his paintings and drawings and speaks to his ideas about art and the Kansas landscape.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: Art, Nature & Landscape

Svobida, Lawrence
Farming the Dust Bowl: A First-hand Account from Kansas.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1986.
First published in 1941, Farming the Dust Bowl is Lawrence Svobida's autobiographical account of Kansan farm life during the Dirty Thirties. In addition to detailing the devastation, Svobida also argued for better agricultural practices, making him an early voice in the conservation movement. Historian R. Douglas Hurt introduces this new edition.

Genre: Nonfiction - Diary/Memoir/Autobiography
Subject: History, Nature & Environment

Unrau, William
The Kansa Indians: The History of the Wind People, 1673-1873.
Published: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971.
Unrau makes a study of the Kansa Indians, tracing them from their origins in the eastern United States to their settlement along the Kansas River and ultimately through their last forced migration to the Indian Territory in 1873.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, Native American, European American

Voss, Ralph F
A Life of William Inge: The Strains of Triumph.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1989.
Although Inge was one America's best-known playwrights in the 1950s, and won the Pulitzer for Picnic and the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Splendor in the Grass, his life-long struggles with alcohol and his unresolved homosexuality haunted him up until his suicide in 1973. This biography has the depth of understanding, the cultivated sympathy, the insights and the readability to help all Midwesterners appreciate the life of a man who said so much about us, and rendered so well our accents, ambitions, struggles and triumphs.

Genre: Nonfiction - Biography
Subject: Art, Gender

West, Elliott
Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1998.
Elliot West offers a panoramic look at the intersection of the environment, indigenous peoples, goldseekers, farmers, and merchants that collided on the Kansas prairies in the late-1850s and mid-1860s. Combining fine structural analysis with vivid description, West, provides a rich portrait of how the Plains had already been fundamentally changed before the Civil War.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: History, Native American, European American, Nature & Environment

White, William Allen, and Sally Foreman Griffith, eds.
The Autobiography of William Allen White.
Published: Simon Publications, 2001.
Both a personal story and an historical account of Kansas and the nation, this Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography of the famous editor of The Emporia Gazette details his life as a journalist, family man, and political commentator.

Genre: Nonfiction - Diary/Memoir/Autobiography
Subject: History, Rural Life

Wilder, Laura Ingalls
Little House on the Prairie.
Published: Avon, 2003.
Beloved classics of children's literature, the Little House series tells the story of the Ingalls family life on the Great Plains frontier. This title, popularized by the 1970s television series, tells of Pa's decision to leave the Big Woods of Wisconsin for the less-crowded Kansas prairie. Wilder's account of the long covered wagon trek, the Ingalls' hard work to establish a new home, and the uncertain encounters with the neighboring Osage Indians offers adventure for readers, young and old.

Genre: Fiction - Historical Fiction, Children's Literature
Subject: History, European American, Native American

Wilson, Paul E.
A Time to Lose: Representing Kansas in Brown v. Board of Education.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1995.
Paul Wilson was an assistant attorney general in Kansas when he was assigned "to defend the indefensible"-the policy of "separate but equal" school segregation being challenged by the NAACP legal team headed by Thurgood Marshall. His account is wide-ranging and smart as he reviews 1950s Kansas, the politics of race in America, and the odd role Kansas played as both defender of school segregation and planners for school desegregation.

Genre: Nonfiction - Diary/Memoir/Autobiography
Subject: History, Politics, European American, African American

Wolfe, Edgar
Widow Man.
Published: Center for Kansas Studies/Woodley Press, 2003.
Just re-released for its 50th anniversary, Ed Wolfe's novel is set in the Argentine district of Kansas City, Kansas. In it, Tom Way, a white man newly widowed by his black wife, must decide whether to move from his mostly black neighborhood, or whether to stay. A new courtship, with Tunsie, another black woman, helps him make up his mind. This short novel, published around the time of Brown v. Board of Education, is a remarkably human look at race and class, segregation and coming together.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Novel
Subject: Society, African American, European American

Wood, John
The Gates of the Elect Kingdom.
Published: University of Iowa Press, 1997.
The long title poem of this collection is the narrative about the fictional, though utterly believable, figure of Wilhelm Johannes Hoade, a messianic utopianist settled in the fertile and hopeful land of Kansas. Set in the progressive mid-nineteenth century, the Hoadites are called from their native Germany to "God-touched" Kansas, awaiting the arrival of Christ.

Genre: Fiction and Literature - Poetry
Subject: History, European American

Wood, Raymond, ed.
Archaeology on the Great Plains.
Published: University Press of Kansas, 1996.
For almost 12,000 years before the arrival of Europeans, farmers and nomadic hunters inhabited the Great Plains. The contributors to this book use archaeological artifacts to show how the native plains peoples adapted to the climate and environment of the North American grasslands. Maps and illustrations detail the various patterns of settlement and cultural practices of the peoples.

Genre: Nonfiction - Monograph
Subject: Cultural/Human Geography, History, Native American, Nature & Landscape