I have published more than twenty books and hundreds of articles. But not one of those books and articles inspired the kind of devotion I felt toward The Power of Gratitude. In a way, this book encapsulates a lifetime of writing. It is the book I believe I was called to write.
This book is likewise a memoir that reveals the deeply engrained gratitude felt by the author.
This gratitude is not a passing nostalgia but a fundamental pillar of the author’s life—a pillar that defines her entire life and injects it with an unchanging joy. Schwielder is an engaging writer who draws the reader into the circle of gratitude that encompasses Schwielder’s memories of her childhood in a small South Dakota town.
Schwielder, along with Johnson, gives us tangible proof of the joys of gratitude.
In this unusual blend of chronological and personal history. Dorothy Hubbard Schwieder combines scholarly sources with family memories to create a loving and informed history of Presho, South Dakota, and her family's life there from the time of settlement in 1905 to the mid 1950s. Schwieder tells the story of this small town in the West River country, with its harsh and unpredictable physical environment, through the activities of her father, Walter Hubbard, and his family of ten children. Walter Hubbard's experiences as a business owner and town builder and his attitudes toward work, education, and family both reflected and…
I heard Lucas speak on a panel discussion my university had about the Ogallala Aquifer. That put his book—and his tremendously poignant examination of climate change, environmental loss, and human/land interactions in my corner of the world—on my radar.
He included several well-referenced facts I’ve subsequently worked into conversations about environmental damage in our region, as well as a deeply personal accounting of his own family’s contributions to aquifer depletion and our collective complicity in the destruction that will echo in our ecosystem forever.
I am grateful to Bessire for his courage candor, and compassion, for taking an honest look at what has been done to the Plains and what that means for people in this place, and for inviting his readers to journey from willful ignorance to thoughtful reflection to principled action… together.
Finalist for the National Book Award An intimate reckoning with aquifer depletion in America's heartland
The Ogallala aquifer has nourished life on the American Great Plains for millennia. But less than a century of unsustainable irrigation farming has taxed much of the aquifer beyond repair. The imminent depletion of the Ogallala and other aquifers around the world is a defining planetary crisis of our times. Running Out offers a uniquely personal account of aquifer depletion and the deeper layers through which it gains meaning and force.
Anthropologist Lucas Bessire journeyed back to western Kansas, where five generations of his family…
Born in Baghdad and raised in America, I come from an ancient lineage of people called the Chaldeans (Neo-Babylonians who still speak Aramaic). The first book I read was Gone with the Wind, at age nine, in Arabic. We lived in Jordan at the time, awaiting a visa to the United States and Scarlett O’Hara’s land and people were my impressions of what America would look like. But Michigan in the 1980s was not Georgia in the 1860s. Still, that book proved that great storytelling transcends ethnicity, age, and gender. So in my writing and film career, I have focused on the art of storytelling as I share the stories my people, culture, and heritage.
Native Americans have played a strong role in my life over the decades, especially as teachers of wisdom.
Reading Medicine Womanfor the first time, I immediately connected with Lynn’s Native American teachers, Agnes and Ruby and learned a great deal through her journey to find her inner power. Her teachers brought forth ancient knowledge by way of the sacred feminine which felt familiar to my heart and soul, familiar to my indigenous people, the Chaldeans, Neo-Babylonians who still speak Aramaic.
Each time I re-read this book, I find something new that speaks to me.
Lynn V. Andrews takes the reader with her as she goes on inward journeys with the help of the Sisterhood of the Shields, and relates the stories of others.
Join her as she is initiated into the Sisterhood and creates her own shield, which will show her the nature of her spiritual path (Spirit Woman). Follow her to the Yucatan, where the medicine wheel leads her, and she is faced with the terrifying reality of the butterfly tree (Jaguar Woman). Enter the Dreamtime with her, where she emerges in medieval England as Catherine, and encounters the Grandmother, who offers to…
Jim Rasenberger is a writer and author of four books - Revolver, The Brilliant Disaster; America, 1908, and High Steel. He has contributed to the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Smithsonian, and other publications. A native of Washington, DC, he lives in New York City.
A thrilling if bumpy ride through 1846, as DeVoto tracks multiple stories of Americans who headed west at the start of the great migration. Like Webb’s Great Plains, this book — published in 1942 — is a little dated in places, but DeVoto’s vivid descriptions and strong opinions make it highly enjoyable. The general subject is the “period when the manifold possibilities of chance were shaped to converge into the inevitable,” writes DeVoto. More plainly, the book is about "some people who went west in 1846." Many of them died on the way. Some found fortune. Altogether, they left behind extraordinary history.
Year of Decision 1846 tells many fascinating stories of the U.S. explorers who began the western march from the Mississippi to the Pacific, from Canada to the annexation of Texas, California, and the southwest lands from Mexico. It is the penultimate book of a trilogy which includes Across the Wide Missouri (for which DeVoto won both the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes) and The Course of Empire. DeVoto's narrative covers the expanding Western frontier, the Mormons, the Donner party, Fremont's exploration, the Army of the West, and takes readers into Native American tribal life.
I love to read
about animals and Fox and I moved me deeply.
Raven, a young biologist,
lives alone in an isolated cabin. One afternoon, Fox appears mysteriously.
Delighted, she reads to him from The Little Prince, which also features a
fox. After that, Fox joins her each day at the same time.
In the course of their
magical and touching relationship Fox helps Bell feel at home in the world and
appreciate the power of friendship.
Having lived in many countries, I, too, can
feel homeless and would appreciate a Fox by my side and, in a way, through this
book, I do have one.
Winner of the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award * 2022 Nautilus Book Awards Gold Winner * Shortlisted for the John Burroughs Medal * Finalist for the Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize * Shortlisted for a Reading the West Book Award
A Christian Science Monitor Best Book of the Year * 2021 Summer Reading Pick by BUZZFEED * NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW * KIRKUS * TIME MAGAZINE * GOOD MORNING AMERICA * PEOPLE MAGAZINE * THE WASHINGTON POST
“The book everyone will be talking about … full of tenderness and understanding.”―The New York…
As a journalist, the Little Bighorn fascinates me because it has all the elements of a great story: larger-than-life characters, conflict, fighting against the odds, and mystery. I turned that fascination into research when I left newspapering to pursue a Ph.D. at the University of Texas. I wrote a number of articles about press coverage of Custer and the Last Stand, and this research eventually led to two books, most recently a biography of Custer focusing on his artistic personality, especially his writing career. I’ve continued to explore the history of war reporting, always looking for topics that make good stories.
This dual-biography has the best description of Custer’s death ever written. Of course, no one knows exactly what happened, and that sense of mystery is one of the reasons it has become part of American lore. But master historian Stephen Ambrose uses the available evidence to speculate in a few beautifully written paragraphs what brought Custer to his legendary defeat and how he might have reacted to it in his last moments. The comparative stories of Custer and Crazy Horse leading to the battle is a fast-paced tale that will make you keep turning pages, forgetting you know how it will end. But the book is more than fine writing. The dual-biography format is the perfect vehicle for Ambrose to explain the clash of cultures that led to tragic conflict.
A New York Times bestseller from the author of Band of Brothers: The biography of two fighters forever linked by history and the battle at Little Bighorn.
On the sparkling morning of June 25, 1876, 611 men of the United States 7th Cavalry rode toward the banks of Little Bighorn in the Montana Territory, where three thousand Indians stood waiting for battle. The lives of two great warriors would soon be forever linked throughout history: Crazy Horse, leader of the Oglala Sioux, and General George Armstrong Custer. Both were men of aggression and supreme courage. Both became leaders in their…
As a child I was drawn to the forest by its aesthetics. I felt as if I were wandering through a masterpiece painting. As I grew older, I wanted to know more about the many working parts of nature. I quickly learned this: If I wanted to know nature intimately, I needed to know what the Native Americans knew. After years of study and honing skills, I undertook seasonal, self-imposed “survival trips” in remote areas of the National Forest. As an adult I served as a naturalist for the Georgia Conservancy, wilderness director for High Meadows Camp, and as director of my own wilderness school – Medicine Bow – in the Appalachian Mountains.
The McPhersons cover a lot of ground: tool making, hide tanning, fire making, cooking, traps, containers, shelters, all of it geared mostly toward the Great Plains since they live in Kansas. I found the accompanying photographs to be a big plus, making the skills easier to replicate for the reader. The voice of the authors is personable and believable.
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…
Jim Rasenberger is a writer and author of four books - Revolver, The Brilliant Disaster; America, 1908, and High Steel. He has contributed to the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Smithsonian, and other publications. A native of Washington, DC, he lives in New York City.
Originally published in 1932, this remains one of the most accessible and thought-provoking books ever written about the American West. Webb’s work rises to the level of literature, especially when describing early encounters by white Americans with the landscape and native people they met west of the 98th meridian. Few writers have captured so vividly the expansion of America from the humid and forested east to the arid west of the Great Plains. Some of Webb’s conclusions may feel a little dated, but this remains a very compelling and rewarding book.
This classic description of the interaction between the vast central plains of America and the people who lived there has, since its first publication in 1931, been one of the most influential, widely known, and controversial works in western history. Arguing that "the Great Plains environment. . .constitutes a geographic unity whose influences have been so powerful as to put a characteristic mark upon everything that survives within its borders," Webb singles out the revolver, barbed wire, and the windmill as evidence of the new phase of civilization required for settlement of that arid, treeless region. Webb draws on history,…
I love being outdoors and I’ve been fortunate to spend much of life under the open sky, both professionally and personally. Learning about the landscapes I’ve visited on my outdoor adventures or helped protect through my professional conservation and writing work is both fulfilling and inspiring. Skilled writers deepen my understanding of the diverse, intricate, and complicated natural world. Whether I’m reading to better understand the policies and histories that have shaped our public lands or about the adventurers who inspire me to get out there, I always find immense value and enjoyment when reading about the landscapes we share.
If you combined a personal essay with a compelling travelogue and wove in thoroughly researched history, you’d get Ian Frazier’s book The Great Plains. Frazier’s excellent writing immediately pulled me into his rambles across one of the least visited, and least understood, portions of our country. I learned so much about the Great Plains without even trying by simply reading this great book. If you’re already a fan, or if you’ve never really considered the Great Plains, this book will enlighten and inspire you to learn more and maybe even visit this sprawling, and important, American landscape.
Most travelers only fly over the Great Plains--but Ian Frazier, ever the intrepid and wide-eyed wanderer, is not your average traveler. A hilarious and fascinating look at the great middle of our nation.
With his unique blend of intrepidity, tongue-in-cheek humor, and wide-eyed wonder, Ian Frazier takes us on a journey of more than 25,000 miles up and down and across the vast and myth-inspiring Great Plains. A travelogue, a work of scholarship, and a western adventure, Great Plains takes us from the site of Sitting Bull's cabin, to an abandoned house once terrorized by Bonnie and Clyde,…
