Here are 91 books that The Prairie Peninsula fans have personally recommended if you like
The Prairie Peninsula.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
The short answer is, a retired university professor (Fred) and the coordinator of Natural Areas for the University of Illinois (James). That answer, however, doesn’t give a clue as to how we came to write our book. Fred and his wife established a small three-acre prairie on their land in 2003. They then enlisted James and Grand Prairie Friends, the local conservation organization he headed at the time, to help manage the prairie. Eventually, Fred, who had photographically documented the growth of the prairie and the beauty to be found therein, proposed that he and James describe the prairie with photos so that others could also learn to enjoy it. The rest, as they say, is history.
Don’t know anything about prairie but want to learn? This slim volume is the perfect introduction. And Cindy Crosby is the perfect person to do the introducing. She is a steward supervisor for the Schulenberg Prairie at the Morton Arboretum, near Chicago, Illinois. In the course of her job, she has become a writer and teacher on the prairie. In this engaging volume, Crosby describes what the tallgrass prairie is, how it originated, how people have interacted with it over the millennia, and what you can find in a prairie.
More than a region on a map, North America's vast grasslands are an enduring place in the American heart. Unfolding along and beyond the Mississippi River, the tallgrass prairie has entranced and inspired its natives and newcomers as well as American artists and writers from Willa Cather to Mark Twain. The Tallgrass Prairie is a new introduction to the astonishing beauty and biodiversity of these iconic American spaces.
Like a walking tour with a literate friend and expert, Cindy Crosby's Tallgrass Prairie prepares travelers and armchair travelers for an adventure in the tallgrass. Crosby's engaging gateway assumes no prior knowledge…
The short answer is, a retired university professor (Fred) and the coordinator of Natural Areas for the University of Illinois (James). That answer, however, doesn’t give a clue as to how we came to write our book. Fred and his wife established a small three-acre prairie on their land in 2003. They then enlisted James and Grand Prairie Friends, the local conservation organization he headed at the time, to help manage the prairie. Eventually, Fred, who had photographically documented the growth of the prairie and the beauty to be found therein, proposed that he and James describe the prairie with photos so that others could also learn to enjoy it. The rest, as they say, is history.
A more detailed and scholarly book than Crosby’s, this book is a description of the origin, character, and fate of the tallgrass prairie in Iowa. It is essential reading for those who wish to understand what the Iowa prairie (and by extension the prairie of neighboring states as well) was like before being settled by Euro-Americans and converted to agricultural use in the 19th century, what is left of that prairie today, and conservation and restoration efforts to replace some of what was lost.
In ""The Emerald Horizon"", Cornelia Mutel combines lyrical writing with meticulous scientific research to portray the environmental past, present, and future of Iowa. In doing so, she ties all of Iowa's natural features into one comprehensive whole.Since so much of the tallgrass state has been transformed into an agricultural landscape, Mutel focuses on understanding today's natural environment by understanding yesterday's changes. After summarizing the geological, archaeological, and ecological features that shaped Iowa's modern landscape, she recreates the once-wild native communities that existed prior to Euroamerican settlement. Next she examines the dramatic changes that overtook native plant and animal communities as…
The short answer is, a retired university professor (Fred) and the coordinator of Natural Areas for the University of Illinois (James). That answer, however, doesn’t give a clue as to how we came to write our book. Fred and his wife established a small three-acre prairie on their land in 2003. They then enlisted James and Grand Prairie Friends, the local conservation organization he headed at the time, to help manage the prairie. Eventually, Fred, who had photographically documented the growth of the prairie and the beauty to be found therein, proposed that he and James describe the prairie with photos so that others could also learn to enjoy it. The rest, as they say, is history.
A beautiful and lyrical book, this sumptuous display of wonderful photographs by Frank Oberle is supplemented by text by John Madson. Madson describes in lyrical prose the reactions of early French explorers when they encountered prairie for the first time, and then recounts the subsequent settlement and plowing of the prairie. It is not really possible to get a true sense of what an open prairie must have been like 300 years ago, but this book will give readers a bit of its flavor.
Tallgrass Prairie is an inspired tribute to a uniquely American landscape. John Madson's elegant text blends history and natural science with observations drawn from a lifetime on the prairie. Noted photographer Frank Oberle's remarkable images are alive with the prairie's timeless grace-its yearly pageant of wildflowers, vast skies, wildlife, and wind-swept seas of grass. Tallgrass Prairie was published in partnership with The Nature Conservancy, for years a leader in efforts to preserve and restore native prairies. It includes a directory to the best remaining examples of tallgrass prairie throughout the country.
Nature writer Sharman Apt Russell tells stories of her experiences tracking wildlife—mostly mammals, from mountain lions to pocket mice—near her home in New Mexico, with lessons that hold true across North America. She guides readers through the basics of identifying tracks and signs, revealing a landscape filled with the marks…
The short answer is, a retired university professor (Fred) and the coordinator of Natural Areas for the University of Illinois (James). That answer, however, doesn’t give a clue as to how we came to write our book. Fred and his wife established a small three-acre prairie on their land in 2003. They then enlisted James and Grand Prairie Friends, the local conservation organization he headed at the time, to help manage the prairie. Eventually, Fred, who had photographically documented the growth of the prairie and the beauty to be found therein, proposed that he and James describe the prairie with photos so that others could also learn to enjoy it. The rest, as they say, is history.
The most scholarly and detailed book of our five choices, this book by Candice Savage, now in a revised edition, considers in depth not just the tallgrass prairie, but the entire sweep of North American grasslands. Savage recounts details that most people will never have thought of – such as how the bison were an integral part of the prairie ecosystem by creating buffalo wallows that persisted for years and provided shallow and temporary wetlands in what, to the west, was an otherwise dry environment. Start your exploration of prairie with this book or finish with it, but do not skip it. Its overview of the entire region puts the information in the other books into context.
Candace Savage's acclaimed and beautifully written guide to the ecology of the prairies, now revised and updated.
Praise for the previous edition of Prairie: "Impelled with its sense of the miraculous in nature."-Globe and Mail
This revised edition of Prairie features a new preface along with updated research on the effects of climate change on an increasingly vulnerable landscape.
It also offers new information on: * conservation of threatened species, including the black-tailed prairie dog and farmland birds; * grassland loss and conservation; * the health of rivers and the water table; * the effects of neonicotinoid insecticides on prairie…
My first true prairie encounter was during a class trip to Waubun Prairie in northern Minnesota. Such a wide sweep of verdant grassland splashed with beautiful color—I was instantly smitten! After years as a professional anthropologist and educator, I wrote Under Prairie Skies to celebrate the prairie and share the region’s early ethnobotanical history. I was pleased that several reviewers called the book “a love story.” My list of recommendations includes some which inspired me on that journey. It is an honor to highlight such superb communicators who share my love for the prairie.
This book is an absolute gem. I love it! Perhaps no other work has captured the majesty and recent history of this almost-extinct biome. Award-winning author John Madson’s poetic style won me over.
I am especially inspired by this description of the tallgrass prairie: “It was a flowing emerald in spring and summer when the boundless winds ran across it, a tawny ocean under the winds of autumn, and a stark and painful emptiness when the great long winds drove in from the northwest.”
“It was a flowing emerald in spring and summer when the boundless winds ran across it, a tawny ocean under the winds of autumn, and a stark and painful emptiness when the great long winds drove in from the northwest. It was Beulahland for many; Gehenna for some. It was the tall prairie.”—from the “Prologue”
Originally published in 1982, Where the Sky Began, John Madson’s landmark publication, introduced readers across the nation to the wonders of the tallgrass prairie, sparking the current interest in prairie restoration. Now back in print, this classic tome will serve as inspiration to those just…
As an expert in grass ecology and champion of sustainable design, John Greenlee has created meadows not only in the United States, but throughout the world for over 30 years. Some of his most notable gardens include the Getty Museum, the Norton Simon Museum in Los Angeles, and the savannas at Walt Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Florida. In addition to his consulting and design work for commercial and residential clients, John Greenlee enjoys sharing his knowledge by giving several presentations and lectures throughout the year on the use of natural lawns, native grasses, and meadow restoration.
I’ve been waiting almost thirty years for this book to show up, but it was clearly worth the wait. It is without a doubt the most important reference on creating prairies and identifying prairie plants.
I wasn’t disappointed and you won’t be either. My friend Neil Diboll is perhaps the most knowledgeable prairie pundit in North America. He has always been one of my greatest inspirations and together we have seen many of the endangered prairies across North America.
A comprehensive and beautifully illustrated reference for all gardeners passionate about native plants and prairie restoration.
The Gardener's Guide to Prairie Plants is the one-stop compendium for all gardeners aspiring to use native prairie plants in their gardens. Neil Diboll and Hilary Cox-two renowned prairie gardeners-compile more than four decades' worth of research to offer a wide-ranging and definitive reference for starting and maintaining prairie and meadow gardens and restorations. Alongside detailed synopses of plant life cycles, meticulous range maps, and sweeping overviews of natural history, Diboll and Cox also include photographs of 148 prairie plants in every stage of…
Citizen Scientist begins with this extraordinary statement by the Keeper of Entomology at the London Museum of Natural History, “Study any obscure insect for a week and you will then know more than anyone else on the planet.”
As the author chases the obscure Western red-bellied tiger beetle across New…
I’m an author of YA fiction who spent his earlier years “wiggling dollies” (as the Brits say) in the trenches of Jim Henson’s Muppet world and then spent a decade writing children’s television of the PBS kind. After writing my first kids’ novel (Out of Patience), I never looked back. OK, I did glance back for the inspiration for a second novel…
The “deep map” that Least Heat-Moon unfolds for us in this revelatory book is the history of Chase County, Kansas, home of the largest and least corrupted stand of tallgrass in America. He takes us with him—by car, on foot, and in mind—as he explores this story-rich land, its plants, animals, and the homespun people who have struggled to occupy this forbidding landscape.
In one breath, he reminds us it was the tall grasses of the African savannah that first made humankind stand up. In another, he tells us that the humans who peer across America’s tall grasses have “prairie eyes.” In “a place where you see twenty miles sitting down,” you have prairie eyes if you take in the horizon with stoic calm, knowing it can bring the deliverance of rain or the destruction of a tornado, dust storm, prairie fire (the “red buffalo”), or locusts.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. By the author of Blue Highways, PrairyErth is “a majestic survey of land and time and people in a single county of the Kansas plains” (Hungry Mind Review).
William Least Heat-Moon travels by car and on foot into the core of our continent, focusing on the landscape and history of Chase County—a sparsely populated tallgrass prairie in the Flint Hills of central Kansas—exploring its land, plants, animals, and people until this small place feels as large as the universe.
Called a “modern-day Walden” by the Chicago Sun-Times, PrairyErth is a journey through place, through time, and…
I’ve always enjoyed both gardening and children. As a former Virginia Master Gardener and Homeschool mom, and a current Lancaster National Wildlife Federation Habitat Steward, I now find myself encouraging others to look at gardening in a new light – not only as a way to decorate their yards, but also as a means to provide habitat for our diminishing wildlife population. I try to show how you can have both beauty and function at the same time and how much fun it is to engage children in this essential activity. I love books that show what a difference one person – even a young child – can make in the world.
As I garden and explore our yard with my grandchildren, together, we have fun continually learning which plants provide for our various wildlife visitors. This beautifully illustrated story shows how each of us, in planting certain native plants can draw the animal friends that rely upon the various flora that used to cover our prairies. I can very much relate to wanting to add more and more plants to my garden so that I attract more and more species of wildlife. The only drawback to this story…it does not help to keep my ‘plant lust’ in check!
Author Phyllis Root and illustrator Betsy Bowen last explored the vast, boggy peatlands of northern Minnesota in their book Big Belching Bog. Now, in Plant a Pocket of Prairie, Root and Bowen take young readers on a trip to another of Minnesota's important ecosystems: the prairie.
Once covering almost 40 percent of the United States, native prairie is today one of the most endangered ecosystems in the world. Plant a Pocket of Prairie teaches children how changes in one part of the system affect every other part: when prairie plants are destroyed, the animals who eat those plants and live…
My administrative career covered a mix of legal and hospital work which provided a wealth of real-life scenarios to fuel my own convoluted story ideas. Thrilled to take early retirement and pursue a writing career, I have since published five romantic suspense novels. I strive to produce quality stories on par with the countless amazing romantic suspense authors I have enjoyed since my teen years. Storyline prompts surround us. A dark bunkie, screaming neighbor, or even an oddly shaped bag of garbage can trigger my suspicion. My favorite spot to walk is the peaceful shores of Lake Huron, where my twisted imagination soars, and my best stories come to life.
Diverse characters who feel like friends; a picturesque town that will have you checking Google maps for your next road trip; a murder; an unexpected love story; what is not to love about this book?
This is my favorite read of the year. I still envision the characters months after reading, as if I visited “Beautiful” on a wild adventure to solve a mystery and met an eclectic bunch of new travel mates along the way. The ending will surprise you in more ways than one. An easy, solid 5+ stars for this one.
International chef Jake Hardy has it all. Celebrity, thriving career, plenty of friends, a happy family and faithful dog. Until one day when a tragic accident tears it all apart. Struggling to recover, Hardy finds himself in a strange new world—a snow-swept prairie town that time forgot—a place where nothing makes sense. Cold is beautiful. Simple is complex. And doubts begin to surface about whether Jake’s tragedy was truly an accident after all. As the sun sets in the Land of Living Skies, Hardy and his glamourous, seventy-eight-year-old transgender neighbour find themselves ensnared in multiple murders separated by decades. In…
Everybody knows that all animals—bats, bears, sharks, ponies, and people—start out as a single cell: the fertilized egg. But how does something no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence give rise to the remarkable complexity of each of these creatures?
I am drawn to stories about “the olden days,” non-fiction, fiction, or first-hand storytelling by homesteaders who came from away to settle on the prairies. Perhaps it is a way to recall my own farm childhood, a way to recall both joyful and unhappy times. When my brother taught me to climb (and get down from) the apple tree. The realization the pet steer who followed me around all summer and occasionally let me ride on his back while he grazed would be met by the mobile butcher truck in the fall. Hardships and simple joys, the life lessons, the banal work done for the family and farm to survive.
One of my absolute favourite storytellers, Guy Vanderhaege can transport the reader into his imagined world with the first sentence.
This historical prairie fiction, the fully conceived characters and storyline, and that important rural farm setting makes this book a favourite that I have often re-read.
The complicated dark and sometimes comedic entanglements of family, the disconnects and reconnections because of mistruths, misunderstandings, lost opportunities, and redemption are woven in an intriguing, believable fabric that will break a reader’s heart.
It is the summer of 1959, and in a prairie town in Saskatchewan, Alec Monkman waits for his estranged daughter to come home, with the grandson he has never seen. But this is an uneasy reunion. Fiercely independent, Vera has been on her own since running away at nineteen – first to the army, and then to Toronto. Now, for the sake of her young son, she must swallow her pride and return home after seventeen years. As the story gradually unfolds, the past confronts the present in unexpected ways as the silence surrounding Vera’s brother is finally shattered and…
