Showing results for "The Prairie" in United States

At a remote little inn not far from the Kansas homestead of Laura Ingalls Wilder lived the Bender family. These pioneers welcomed unwary visitors with jackrabbit stew and a sledgehammer to the skull. In time, their apple orchard gave up its secrets - a burial ground for their mutilated victims, each stripped of their possessions. The devilish enterprise on “Hell’s Half-Acre” would earn the Bloody Benders an undying place in the annals of American infamy. But it was the mysterious fate of eldest daughter, Kate, that would make them the stuff of mythic campfire prairie tales.

Originally published in six volumes, which sold more than one million copies, Carl Sandburg’s Abraham Lincoln was praised as the most noteworthy historical biography of Sandburg’s generation. He later distilled this monumental work into one volume that critics and readers alike consider his greatest work of nonfiction, as well as the most distinguished, authoritative biography of Lincoln ever published.

Growing up in an Illinois prairie town, Sandburg listened to stories of old-timers who had known Lincoln. By the time this single-volume edition was competed, he had spent a lifetime studying, researching, and writing about our 16th president.

On Sunday, December 7, 1862, two armies collided at an obscure Arkansas hamlet named Prairie Grove in a desperate battle that effectively ended Confederate offensive operations west of the Mississippi River. In Fields of Blood, historian William L. Shea offers a gripping narrative of the events surrounding Prairie Grove, one of the great unsung battles of the Civil War.

When Dave Caughren, a local banker, sought treatment for stomach ulcers, his doctor recommended walking and golf as a partial remedy. That suggestion inspired Dave to gather a team of town leaders to build a nine-hole golf course on the shores of Sauk Lake in 1921.

Prairie Gothic is full of Texas lore. Erickson tells the story of people in the context of a specific place. This place, instrumental in shaping their lives, is the flatland prairie of northwestern Texas that has gone by various names (High Plains, South Plains, Staked Plains, and Llano Estacado). One branch of Erickson's family arrived in Texas in 1858. Erickson's family interacts with significant historical figures, such as Cynthia Ann Parker, and includes members of the Estacado Quaker colony.

In the tradition of memoirs such as Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life and Ivan Doig's This House of Sky, these essays bring a storyteller's gifts to life's dramas, large and small. Following his award-winning turn on his hometown of Dodge City, Rebein takes us back to the high plains world where his family has farmed and ranched since the 1920s. It is a world populated by feedlot cowboys, stock-car drivers, and farm kids dreaming of basketball glory.

The North American prairie is an ecological marvel. One cubic yard of prairie sod contains so many organisms that it rivals the tropical rainforest for biological diversity. And like the rainforest, it showcases nature’s prodigious talent for symbiosis. The lush carpet of grasses feeds a huge population of grazing animals and is home to some of the nation's most iconic creatures--bison, elk, wolves, pronghorn, prairie dogs, and bald eagles.

In 1983 Chicago elected Harold Washington as the city's first black mayor. This is the story of Washington's improbable victory over Jane Byrne, heir to the late Richard J. Daley's political empire, and over Daley's eldest son. It's the story of a coalition outside the party's mainstream coming to power and ruling in the country's most political of cities. In Fire on the Prairie, Gary Rivlin reveals the personalities and philosophies of those who were at the center of events, from black separatists such as Lu Palmer to community organizers such as Jesse Jackson....

At first, Erika Bolstad knew only one thing about her great-grandmother, Anna: she was a homesteader on the North Dakota prairies in the early 1900s before her husband committed her to an asylum under mysterious circumstances. As Erika's mother was dying, she revealed more: their family still owned the mineral rights to Anna's land—and oil companies were interested in the black gold beneath the prairies. Their family, Erika learned, could get rich thanks to the legacy of a woman nearly lost to history.

The New York Times bestselling author of The Greatest Generation tells the inspiring, deeply personal story of his own family's greatest generation: his parents, who embodied the can-do spirit that enabled them to survive the Great Depression and World War II, and to help build the American century.

This meticulously researched book tells the story of Midwestern agriculture during a period of epochal change in farm technology, farm management, and farm life. The hard work, tight communities, and values that had characterized the family farm were replaced by large corporate enterprises with massive acreages, high-tech methods, and global outlooks. While many decry this change as loss, Nordin and Scott find a net gain. This is their richly detailed account of one of the great transformations in American life.

Gruesome Illinois is a collection of true-life stories, most of them rescued from old newspaper accounts published over 100 years ago. Only a few of the events in this book - such as the Monmouth ax murders - have ever made it into print, except maybe in musky, old county histories. Even then, they are lucky to rate a paragraph.