In prose as clean and beautiful as the stark prairie setting, The Plain Sense of Things tells the stories of three generations of a western Nebraska family. These tales of sorrow and hope are connect
“Longing itself is nothing but the heart’s open spaces,” writes Mari L’Esperance. And in the open spaces at the heart of these poems is a mother who has disappeared. In a worl
Stretching from western Texas and eastern New Mexico up through Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas, and into Canada, the vast western plains often appear sparse and d
Native America, Discovered and Conquered takes a fresh look at American history through the lens of the Doctrine of Discovery—the legal basis that Europeans and Americans used to lay claim to t
Arising in two separate streams high in the Rockies and flowing east across the plains to meet the Missouri near Omaha, Nebraska, the Platte River is a microcosm of the geologic, plant, animal, and hu
In the center of the rural boomtown of Soda Springs, Idaho, stands the historic Enders Hotel, Cafe, and Bar, a three-story brick building that has been many things to many people. But to one family w
Their father’s favorite saying, between drinks and blows, was, “Life holds only bad surprises, and the last one will be death.” And now, Colin observes of the man sprawled under all
It was at Wounded Knee, huddled under a night sky lit by military flares and the searchlights of armored personnel carriers, that Vietnam vet Woody Kipp realized that he, as an American Indian, had be
Hard Airis a book about extraordinary flying—flying under conditions that keep fighters on the carrier deck and rockets on the launch pad—a book about rescue missions and long, lone
Food has functioned both as a source of continuity and as a subject of adaptation over the course of human history. Onions have been a staple of the European diet since the Paleolithic era; by contras
Field of Schemes is a play-by-play account of how the drive for new sports stadiums and arenas drains $2 billion a year from public treasuries for the sake of private profit. While the millionaires wh
Restoring the Burnt Child is the second volume in William Kloefkorn’s four-part memoir, which will cover the four elements: water, fire, earth, and air. Negotiating the no man’s land betw
Crazy Horse, the legendary military leader of the Oglala Sioux whose personal power and social nonconformity contributed to his reputation as being “strange,” fought in many famous battles, including
In Young, Black, Rich, and Famous, Todd Boyd chronicles how basketball and hip hop have gone from being reviled by the American mainstream in the 1970s to being embraced and imitated globally today.
Mythology of the Blackfoot Indians, originally published in 1908 by the American Museum of Natural History, introduces such figures as Old Man, Scar-Face, Blood-Clot, and the Seven Brothers. Included
A long time ago, fire belonged only to the animals in the land above, not to those on the earth below. Curlew, keeper of the sky world, guarded fire and kept it from the earth. Coyote, however, devis
One eats meat. The other doesn’t. Both are professional chefs. And both have recipes that make a deliciously persuasive case for each chef’s point of view. In a delightful culinary turn o
The Seven Years’ War was the world’s first global conflict, spanning five continents and the critical sea lanes that connected them. This book is the fullest account ever written of the F
In 1961 President John F. Kennedy challenged the United States to land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth before the end of the decade. It seemed like an impossible mission and one that
The rivers, canyons, and prairies of the Columbia Basin are the homeland of the Nez Perce. The Nez Perce, or Nimiipuu, inhabited much of what is now north central Idaho and portions of Oregon and Was
On the cold, dark night of March 9, 1916, Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa—el jaguar—and his band of marauders crossed the border and raided the tiny town of Columbus, New Mexico. It wa
The American West is the only book-length historical overview of the post-1900 American West. This balanced, comprehensive account of the modern West skillfully delineates the changes and resulting c
First published in the dark days immediately before World War II, Capital City is Mari Sandoz’s angriest and most political novel. Like many important American novels of the 1930s—John St
The American West of the 1930s and 1940s was still a place of prospectors, cowboys, ranchers, and mountaineers, one that demanded backbreaking, lonely, and dangerous work. Still, midcentury pioneers s
Who would guess that Godzilla, the Invisible Man, Elvis, Donald Duck, Ted Williams, and the Three Stooges might have something to say about the love and loss that shape the way we see the world? And y
The Words and Music of Frank Zappa moves beyond the details of Frank Zappa’s life (1940–93) toward a focused treatment of the rock and pop songs of this great American composer. Today Zap
In the heartland of the United States 150 years ago, where racism and hatred were common, a community decided there could be a different America. Here schools and churches were completely integrated,
Sam Moses, a motorsports writer for Sports Illustrated, was assigned to go racing and write about what happened. Fast Guys, Rich Guys, and Idiots is a personal odyssey that peers over the cliff of cha
At the extreme tip of South America, Staten Island has piercing Antarctic winds, lonely coasts assaulted by breakers, and sailors lost as their vessels smash on the dark rocks. Now that civilization
When David Innes and Abner Perry set out to search for mineral deposits in Perry's newly invented Mechanical Prospectro, they never dreamed of discovering the beautiful, terrifying world of Pellucidar
A vast, barren landscape or a place of subtle natural beauty; the middle of nowhere or the gateway to the cultural and historical riches of the West; many things to many people and a cipher to many mo
In 1901, Philadelphia's celebrity female journalist stepped off a train in Blackfoot, Montana, and into a world of living legends. The miners and frontiersmen, Indians and trappers that Caroline Lock
Published by the University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, and Yad Vashem, JerusalemIn 1939, the Nazi regime’s plans for redrawing the demographic map of Eastern Europe entailed the expulsion of millions
The second edition of The Complete Roadside Guide to Nebraska represents a major enlargement and revision of the first edition, making this the most comprehensive guide to the state ever written. The
In the fall of 2005 the streets of France were rocked by civil disturbances on a scale unseen for decades. Only months earlier Azouz Begag, France’s first minister for equal opportunities and first-ev
In Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book American readers, gardeners, and food lovers will find everything they've always wanted to know about the history and romance of seventy-five different vegetables, fro
Rick Bass is one of the foremost writers of his generation, charging headlong past the hard surface of modern life to illuminate human beings and their relationship to the natural world. Platte River
Day after day, night after night, desperate men come to sit in the black chair next to Charles Barber’s desk in a basement office at Bellevue and tell of their travails, of prison and disease, of viol
Until the last two centuries, the human landscapes of the Great Plains were shaped solely by Native Americans, and since then the region has continued to be defined by the enduring presence of its ind
Recently appointed as the new U. S. Poet Laureate, Ted Kooser has been writing and publishing poetry for more than forty years. In the pages of The Poetry Home Repair Manual, Kooser brings those deca
