The author of the beloved Coming Home Crazy returns to his hometown and investigates - through the lens of small-town life - what community means to us and the rigid definitions we give to "success" and "failure". Growing up, Bill Holm could define failure easily; it was "to die in Minneota". But when he returned to his hometown ("a very small dot on the ghost of an ocean of grass") twenty years later - jobless, broke, and divorced - he began to uncover its lost histories and to discover more of himself and of our time. By stepping out of the mainstream into what others regard as a backwater, Holm began to question the pace of our culture and how, in the rush to get ahead, we've lost our roots. Whether tracking the forbidden recipes of Holm's parents or spilling the beans on the scandalous affair of Hester and Art, The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth celebrates the connections between us that we both fear and desire. By finding that which is meaningful in the seemingly insignificant, Holm delights us with stories of his town and of our need to belong.

A Midwesterner contemplates the view of America from a remote Icelandic village: “A pleasure to read and ponder.” —Booklist (starred review) A Minnesotan of Icelandic ancestry, Bill Holm had traveled all over the world, gathering material for a number of rich and memorable books. Then he decided to journey to the land his family had long ago left behind for the United States, and moved into a town with one general store in a nation of a few hundred thousand people. This book recounts his time at Brimnes, his fisherman’s cottage on the shore of a creek in northern Iceland. There, he embarks on a very different life in a very different world, and from thousands of miles away, considers the fate of America—“my home, my citizenship, my burden”—in these provocative, compelling essays. “A master storyteller.” —Los Angeles Times “Bill Holm’s life in [this] place of spare beauty will make readers wish they had a Brimnes where they could restore their souls.” —Pioneer Press (St. Paul)

Chronicles the history of Kansas from 1854 to 2000, discussing how specific people and events shaped the culture of the state.

In his first book, Kling, best known for his popular commentaries on National Public Radios "All Things Considered" and his storytelling stage shows like "Tales from the Charred Underbelly of the Yule Log," now delivers a collection of hilarious, often tender, autobiographical stories.

Connects the metaphor of home that runs through the stories of our faith with the deep desire to belong and to feel wanted. The author writes, “One of the characters in Robert Frost’s ‘Death of a Hired Man’ says, ‘Home is that place where, when you go there, they have to let you in.’ I have found that place in my marriage, around our dining room table for Thursday Night Dinners, with friends who have helped me make a mosaic out of the shards of my fractured past. Home, for me, means to belong, to feel wanted.” As a writer, chef, and minister, Brasher-Cunningham has spoken to churches, taught cooking classes, hosted dinners, and found as many ways as possible to get people together to talk about food and faith. That discussion turns often to what it means to live life together, which is an entry point to talk about what it means to feel at home together.

"Tom Hennen's poetry is work of the highest order... I'm reminded again how deeply the earth inhabits us.” —Jim Harrison

Given in honor of District Governor Hugh Summers and Mrs. Ahnise Summers by the Rotary Club of Aggieland with matching support from the Sara and John H. Lindsey '44 Fund, Texas A & M University Press, 2004.