"Homesteading the Plains offers a bold new look at the history of homesteading, overturning what for decades has been the orthodox scholarly view. The authors begin by noting the striking disparity between the public's perception of homesteading as a cherished part of our national narrative and most scholars' harshly negative and dismissive treatment. Homesteading the Plains reexamines old data and draws from newly available digitized records to reassess the current interpretation's four principal tenets: homesteading was a minor factor in farm formation, with most Western farmers purchasing their land; most homesteaders failed to prove up their claims; the homesteading process was rife with corruption and fraud; and homesteading caused Indian land dispossession. Using data instead of anecdotes and focusing mainly on the nineteenth century, Homesteading the Plainsdemonstrates that the first three tenets are wrong and the fourth only partially true. In short, the public's perception of homesteading is perhaps more accurate than the one scholars have constructed. Homesteading the Plainsprovides the basis for an understanding of homesteading that is startlingly different from current scholarly orthodoxy. "--

Wow!Great job of bringing this man [Tom] and his times to lifeDefinitely a winner! Megan Smolenyak, chief genealogist for Ancestry.com, author of Who Do You Think You Are?, and consultant to the TV series of the same name. Millions of settlers flocked westward for homesteads, taking advantage of the free land opened to settlement by the expanding railroads. Few remained there, but author Judy Cooks family never lost faith in the land. Cooks Dakota roots inspire this compelling story of her grandparents homesteading experiences in North Dakota. If This Land Could Talk provides a riveting look at three generations of life on the northern plains, where Cook spent her formative years. Her candid portrayal brings to life her four grandparents, who carved a living from the inhospitable prairie, and her parents, who continued to farm on the same land. She offers a poignant yet entertaining glimpse into her ancestors daily lives. The author recounts growing up on the same land in the 1950s, shaped by a way of life long since vanished. Based on meticulous research, personal experiences, and stories passed from family to family, If This Land Could Talk resonates with a powerful sense of place, an enduring love of the land, and reverence for the family.

After thirty-three years, Paula Chamlee returned home to photograph and write about the farm where she grew up on the High Plains of the Texas Panhandle. This document provides a look at her home place and reveals a way of life and value system that are quickly vanishing. It attempts to evoke the flavour of farm life in the twentieth century.

Winner of the 2006 Caroline Bancroft History Prize "Impressively researched and highly readable, Barbara Handy-Marchello's analysis of North Dakota farm women's roles will become the standard by which other works on the subject will be judged." Paula M. Nelson, author of The Prairie Winnows Out Its Own In Women of the Northern Plains, Barbara Handy-Marchello tells the stories of the unsung heroes of North Dakota's settlement era: the farm women. As the men struggled to raise and sell wheat, the women focused on barnyard labor--raising chickens and cows and selling eggs and butter--to feed and clothe their families and maintain their households through booms and busts. Handy-Marchello details the hopes and fears, the challenges and successes of these women--from the Great Dakota Boom of the 1870s and '80s to the impending depression and drought of the 1930s. Women of the frontier willingly faced drudgery and loneliness, cramped and unconventional living quarters, the threat of prairie fires and fierce blizzards, and the isolation of homesteads located miles from the nearest neighbor. Despite these daunting realities, Dakota farm women cultivated communities among their distant neighbors, shared food and shelter with travelers, developed varied income sources, and raised large families, always keeping in sight the ultimate goal: to provide the next generation with rich, workable land. Enlivened by interviews with pioneer families as well as diaries, memoirs, and other primary sources, Women of the Northern Plains uncovers the significant and changing roles of Dakota farm women who were true partners to their husbands, their efforts marking the difference between success and failure for their families. Barbara Handy-Marchello is a history professor at the University of North Dakota. She has written articles on rural women and is the co-author of A History of the NDSU Seedstocks Project. She lives near Fargo, North Dakota.

Printed in color. U.S. History is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of most introductory courses. The text provides a balanced approach to U.S. history, considering the people, events, and ideas that have shaped the United States from both the top down (politics, economics, diplomacy) and bottom up (eyewitness accounts, lived experience). U.S. History covers key forces that form the American experience, with particular attention to issues of race, class, and gender.

America's Great Plains once possessed one of the grandest wildlife spectacles of the world, equaled only by such places as the Serengeti, the Masai Mara, or the veld of South Africa. Pronghorn antelope, gray wolves, bison, coyotes, wild horses, and grizzly bears: less than two hundred years ago these creatures existed in such abundance that John James Audubon was moved to write, "it is impossible to describe or even conceive the vast multitudes of these animals." In a work that is at once a lyrical evocation of that lost splendor and a detailed natural history of these charismatic species of the historic Great Plains, veteran naturalist and outdoorsman Dan Flores draws a vivid portrait of each of these animals in their glory—and tells the harrowing story of what happened to them at the hands of market hunters and ranchers and ultimately a federal killing program in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Great Plains with its wildlife intact dazzled Americans and Europeans alike, prompting numerous literary tributes. American Serengeti takes its place alongside these celebratory works, showing us the grazers and predators of the plains against the vast opalescent distances, the blue mountains shimmering on the horizon, the great rippling tracts of yellowed grasslands. Far from the empty "flyover country" of recent times, this landscape is alive with a complex ecology at least 20,000 years old—a continental patrimony whose wonders may not be entirely lost, as recent efforts hold out hope of partial restoration of these historic species. Written by an author who has done breakthrough work on the histories of several of these animals—including bison, wild horses, and coyotes—American Serengeti is as rigorous in its research as it is intimate in its sense of wonder—the most deeply informed, closely observed view we have of the Great Plains' wild heritage.

Drawing on newly uncovered archives, The Only Wonderful Things offers a groundbreaking look at American novelist Willa Cather's creative process by arguing that the writer's life partner, magazine editor Edith Lewis, had a crucial impact on Cather's literary work.