"This collection of eleven short stories and one novella reintroduces a superb regional writer whose fiction, though firmly planted in the soil of the Midwest, stretches in significance to include all human drama"--Back cover.

"Featuring stories and essays by both classic and contemporary regional authors, including Willa Cather, Hamlin Garland, Paul Engle, Constance Vogel, and Ted Kooser, Christmas on the Great Plains offers unique geographic, historical, and cultural perspectives on winter's holiday celebrations and traditions - from Iutefisk and julebukking to sleighbells and twinkling lights - that will be appreciated by anyone who has braved the wintry plains."--Jacket....

""Elemental" is the perfect word to describe George Olson's watercolor drawings of the plants of the tallgrass prairie. In The Elemental Prairie, the combination of Olson's luminous drawings and John Madson's essay "The Running Country" encourages us to look at the prairie world with newly appreciative eyes." "For some years George Olson has focused almost exclusively on the grasses and wildflowers of the North American prairie, meticulously reproducing...

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...

Now back in print with a new essay, this classic of Iowa history focuses on the Old Order Amish Mennonites, the state's most distinctive religious minority. Sociologist Elmer Schwieder and historian Dorothy Schwieder began their research with the largest group of Old Order Amish in the state, the community near Kalona in Johnson and Washington counties, in April 1970; they extended their studies and friendships in later years to other Old Order settlements...

"In 2010, while editing a report on the effects of climate change in Iowa, ecologist Cornelia Mutel came to grips with the magnitude and urgency of the problem. She already knew the basics: greenhouse gas emissions and global average temperatures are rising on a trajectory that could, within decades, propel us beyond far-reaching, irreversible atmospheric changes; the results could devastate the environment that enables humans to thrive. The more...