Old Cowtown Museum

Old Cowtown Museum originally started as a shrine to the pioneers and founders of Wichita. It later reinvented itself according to Hollywood's version of the Old West. After the peak of Western films, the museum once again updated its theme to reflect Wichita's agricultural history. In recent years, Old Cowtown Museum has become a nationally recognized and accredited living history museum. A product of 1950s Old West nostalgia, it has become one of the most beloved of all of Wichita's museums and institutions. Inside this book is the story of how Old Cowtown Museum became the regional and cultural attraction it is today, along with images of the museum throughout its 66-year history, including people, events, and stories, many of which have never been published before.

Food historian Cynthia Clampitt pens the epic story of what happened when Mesoamerican farmers bred a nondescript grass into a staff of life so prolific, so protean, that it represents nothing less than one of humankind's greatest achievements. Blending history with expert reportage, she traces the disparate threads that have woven corn into the fabric of our diet, politics, economy, science, and cuisine. At the same time she explores its future as a source of energy and the foundation of seemingly limitless green technologies. The result is a bourbon-to-biofuels portrait of the astonishing plant that sustains the world.

Discover the old West when you visit Old Cowtown, a unique open-air history museum located in Wichita, Kansas. Stroll wooden sidewalks, visit 1870s homes and businesses and experience life in a Kansas cattle town.

This updated edition of Defining Memory: Local Museums and the Construction of History in America’s Changing Communities offers readers multiple lenses for viewing and discussing local institutions. New chapters are included in a section titled “Museums Moving Forward,” which analyzes the ways in which local museums have come to adopt digital technologies in selecting items for exhibitions as well as the complexities of creating institutions devoted to marginalized histories. In addition to the new chapters, the second edition updates existing chapters, presenting changes to the museums discussed. It features expanded discussions of how local museums treat (or ignore) racial and ethnic diversity and concludes with a look at how business relationships, political events, and the economy affect what is shown and how it is displayed in local museums.

Located a long way from any ports of call, Wichita is perhaps the last place where you'd expect to find a diverse culinary scene. From its early days as a rough-and-tumble cow town on the Chisholm Trail, the city first achieved dining sophistication through the efforts of the Thursday Afternoon Cooking Club, now the oldest such club in the United States. Steakhouses in the north end invented and popularized what some consider the city's signature dish: garlic salad. Waves of immigrants from three parts of the world--Mexico, Lebanon and Vietnam--stamped the dining habits of residents with dishes such as piratas, shawarma and Saigon Oriental Restaurant's famous No. 49. Author Joe Stumpe tells these stories and more while providing nearly two hundred prize recipes from restaurants and home cooks.