Prairie University

Founded in 1869, the University of Nebraska was given the awesome responsibility of educating a new state barely connected by roads and rail lines. Established as a comprehensive university, uniting the arts and sciences, commerce and agriculture, and open to all regardless of "age, sex, color, or nationality," it has as its motto Literis dedicata et omnibus artibus--dedicated to letters and all the arts. The University at first was confined to four city blocks and didn't have a building until 1871. Cows grazed the campus. But soon the high aspirations of the state began to be realized. Nebraska boasted the first department of psychology west of the Mississippi River, and its faculty included national prominent scholars like botanist Charles Bessey and linguist A. H. Edgren (later a member of the Nobel Commission). Willa Cather, Roscoe Pound, Mari Sandoz, and Louise Pound ranked among its early graduates. And it developed a reputation for excellence in collegiate athletics. Written by a beloved member of the faculty, this history shows both why Robert E. Knoll is so devoted to the University as well as the tests such devotion must endure. Its history is hardly one of placid growth and unimpeded progress. Its regents, administration, faculty, and students have periodically fought one another: sometimes over matters as crucial as the University's purpose, shape, and destination. More often, battles waged over personalities. It is to these personalities that Knoll directs most of his attention. The author focuses on the men and women who made a difference, for good or ill. He locates the University's place in the changing intellectual and academic context of the United States and charts its passage through hard times and prosperity. He notes the contributions of the University to Nebraska, from the early experiments in sugar beet cultivation to the national fame of its football team. Most important, its education of generations of Nebraskans has lifted state goals and achievement, and its outreach has made the University an international community.

Outline: The natural and environmental history of the Great Plains.

The second edition of Prairie Directory of North America is a comprehensive guide to locating North American public prairies, grasslands, and savannas.

Matt White's connections with both prairie plants and prairie people are evident in the stories of discovery and inspiration he tells as he tracks the ever dwindling parcels of tallgrass prairie in northeast Texas. In his search, he stumbles upon some unexpected fragments of virgin land, as well as some remarkable tales of both destruction and stewardship.

A pioneer and leader in the preservation and restoration of native Midwest prairies since the 1930s, the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum has a stellar collection of prairie plant species, including horsetails, ferns, rushes, sedges, grasses, shrubs, vines, and wildflowers. This guide illustrates and describes more than 360 native and introduced species that grow and bloom on the Arboretum prairies and also briefly discusses or mentions many additional species, infraspecific taxa, and hybrids. Its intent is to increase awareness and respect for remaining small prairie remnants, motivate readers to work for prairie preservation and restoration, and encourage the planting of native species in yards and gardens. Botanist and taxonomist Theodore S. Cochrane has written the text to engage a variety of readers: prairie enthusiasts, gardeners, amateur botanists, younger students learning about plants, and college students and professionals. Nomenclature follows in part the new APG classification system. Richly illustrated with detailed color photographs by Claudia S. Lipke and botanical illustrations and maps by Kandis Elliot, the guide provides a beautiful and informative sample of the flora of the Arboretum and of the southern Wisconsin prairie landscape. Many of the plants, of course, are also found throughout the upper Midwestern United States and in adjacent southern Canada.

In this lavishly illustrated volume, Richard E. McCabe, Bart W. O'Gara and Henry M. Reeves explore the fascinating relationship of pronghorn with people in early America, from prehistoric evidence through the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876. The only one of fourteen pronghorn-like genera to survive the great extinction brought on by human migration into North America, the pronghorn has a long and unique history of interaction with humans on the continent, a history that until now has largely remained unwritten. With nearly 150 black-and-white photographs, 16 pages of color illustrations, plus original artwork by Daniel P. Metz, Prairie Ghost: Pronghorn and Human Interaction in Early America tells the intriguing story of humans and these elusive big game mammals in an informative and entertaining fashion that will appeal to historians, biologists, sportsmen and the general reader alike.

Thirty-five years and many acres after planting his first patch of prairie flowers, Carl Kurtz is considered one of the deans of the great tallgrass prairie revival. The Prairie Enthusiast called the 2001 edition of his book a “readable and understandable introduction to prairie and the general steps in carrying out a reconstruction.” Now this second edition reflects his increased experience with reconstructing and restoring prairie grasslands. Kurtz has completely revised every chapter of the first edition, from site selection and harvest to soil preparation, seeding, postplanting mowing, burning, and growth and development. He has written new chapters on establishing prairie in old pastureland and on the judicious use of herbicides, including a table that shows particular problem species, the types of herbicides that are most effective at controlling them, and the timing and method of treatment. New photographs illustrate species and steps, and Kurtz has expanded the question-and-answer section and updated the references and the section on midwestern seed sources and services. Tallgrass prairie is critical wildlife habitat and an important element in flood control and stream water treatment. The process of reconstructing and restoring prairie grasslands has made great strides in recent decades. Carl Kurtz’s indispensable, step-by-step guide to creating a diverse and well-established prairie community provides both directions and encouragement for individual landowners as well as land managers working with government agencies and nonprofit organizations that have taken up the task of reconstructing and restoring native grasslands.

Telling an inspiring, largely unknown story, Thursday Night Lights recounts how African American high school football programs produced championship teams and outstanding players during the Jim Crow era.

Student radicals and hippies—in Oklahoma? Though most scholarship about 1960s-era student activism and the counterculture focuses on the East and West Coasts, Oklahoma’s college campuses did see significant activism and “dropping out.” In Prairie Power, Sarah Eppler Janda fills a gap in the historical record by connecting the activism of Oklahoma students and the experience of hippies to a state and a national history from which they have been absent. Janda shows that participants in both student activism and retreat from conformist society sought connections to Oklahoma’s past while forging new paths for themselves. She shows that Oklahoma students linked their activism with the grassroots socialist radicalism and World War I–era anti-draft protest of their grandparents’ generation, citing Woody Guthrie, Oscar Ameringer, and the Wobblies as role models. Many movement organizers in Oklahoma, especially those in the University of Oklahoma’s chapter of Students for a Democratic Society and the anti-war movement, fit into a larger midwestern and southwestern activist mentality of “prairie power”: a blend of free-speech advocacy, countercultural expression, and anarchist tendencies that set them apart from most East Coast student activists. Janda also reveals the vehemence with which state officials sought to repress campus “agitators,” and discusses Oklahomans who chose to retreat from the mainstream rather than fight to change it. Like their student activist counterparts, Oklahoma hippies sought inspiration from older precedents, including the back-to-the-land movement and the search for authenticity, but also Christian evangelicalism and traditional gender roles. Drawing on underground newspapers and declassified FBI documents, as well as interviews the author conducted with former activists and government officials, Prairie Power will appeal to those interested in Oklahoma’s history and the counterculture and political dissent in the 1960s.

"Chris Helzer illustrates the beauty and diversity of prairie through an impressive series of photographs, all taken within the same meter of prairie. During his year-long project, he photographed 113 plant and animal species within that tiny plot, and capture numerous other images that document the splendor of diverse grasslands. His natural history writing tells the story of his personal journey during the project and the stories of the characters he found within his chosen square meter of prairie"--