West of Highway 81, there lies another Kansas. While it accounts
for two-thirds of the state's land area, it is sparsely populated
and nearly desert dry. Before 1940, it was still distinctly rural-a
place that some residents called the "Edge of the World."
Several generations of the Miner family have lived and farmed in
Ness County, providing Craig Miner with a rich and very personal
backdrop for this heartfelt and compelling portrait of western
Kansas. In Next Year Country he recounts the resilience of his
fellow Kansans through two depressions and the Dust Bowl, showing
how the region changed dramatically over fifty years-not for the
better, some might say.
In this striking regional history, Miner blends the voices of
real people with writings of small-town journalists to show life as
it was really lived from 1890 to 1940. He has fashioned a richly
textured look at determined individuals as they confronted the
vagaries of raw Nature and learned to adapt to the machine age. And
he captures the drama and vitality of rural and small-town life at
a time when children could die in a blizzard on their way home from
school, in a place where gaping holes of cellars and wells from
abandoned homesteads posed real hazards to nighttime travelers.
No mere nostalgic reverie, Miner's book chronicles the hard
challenges to these Kansans' ambitious efforts to create a regional
economy and society based on wheat, in an area once thought only
marginally suitable for cereal crops. His diverse topics include
the history of agricultural experiment stations, new approaches to
irrigation, and the impact of the tractor and the combine; the role
of women's clubs in developing culture, the growth of higher
education, and the rise of the secession movement; and how people
responded to pests, from prairie dogs to grasshoppers, and to
radical groups, from the IWW to the KKK.
"Next Year Country" depicts the kind of rugged individualism
that is often touted in America but seldom seen anymore, a
testament to how people dealt with both Nature and transformative
change. It is both a love song to Kansas and the best kind of
regional history, showing that life has to be taken on its own
terms to understand how people really lived.
General
Imprint: |
University Press of Kansas
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
September 2006 |
First published: |
September 2006 |
Authors: |
H. Craig Miner
|
Dimensions: |
229 x 152 x 32mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Hardcover
|
Pages: |
392 |
Edition: |
Annotated edition |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-7006-1476-9 |
Categories: |
Books >
Humanities >
History >
General
Books >
History >
General
|
LSN: |
0-7006-1476-1 |
Barcode: |
9780700614769 |
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!