Magpie Rising

Magpie Rising PDF Author: Merrill Gilfillan
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803271074
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
The rolling, billowing, delicate landscape of Nebraska?s Sandhills; the tombstone of Billy the Kid?stolen so often that it must be caged and shackled?in Fort Sumner, New Mexico; an intercontinental ballistic missile trundling down a highway under heavy guard in Weld County, Colorado; cottonwoods and cranes, faded hotels and abandoned trailers painted aqua and purple; the ghosts of Pawnees, Cheyennes, and Kiowas and generations of settlers whose descendants now grouse in a cafä in Heimdahl, North Dakota, or roar off to a bikers convention in Sturgis, South Dakota. These are some of the things that catch Merrill Gilfillan?s eye and ear in this radiant collection of essays. ø Written with a poetic economy that often attains grandeur, Magpie Rising is an exhilarating tour of the Great Plains?its geography, wildlife, history, mythology, and food, its vast spaces and weirdly synchronous time. This is nature writing at its most evocative and insightful.

Magpie Rising

Magpie Rising PDF Author: Merrill Gilfillan
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803271074
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Get Book Here

Book Description
The rolling, billowing, delicate landscape of Nebraska?s Sandhills; the tombstone of Billy the Kid?stolen so often that it must be caged and shackled?in Fort Sumner, New Mexico; an intercontinental ballistic missile trundling down a highway under heavy guard in Weld County, Colorado; cottonwoods and cranes, faded hotels and abandoned trailers painted aqua and purple; the ghosts of Pawnees, Cheyennes, and Kiowas and generations of settlers whose descendants now grouse in a cafä in Heimdahl, North Dakota, or roar off to a bikers convention in Sturgis, South Dakota. These are some of the things that catch Merrill Gilfillan?s eye and ear in this radiant collection of essays. ø Written with a poetic economy that often attains grandeur, Magpie Rising is an exhilarating tour of the Great Plains?its geography, wildlife, history, mythology, and food, its vast spaces and weirdly synchronous time. This is nature writing at its most evocative and insightful.

Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Volume Two

Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Volume Two PDF Author: Philip A. Greasley
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253021162
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 1074

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Book Description
The Midwest has produced a robust literary heritage. Its authors have won half of the nation's Nobel Prizes for Literature plus a significant number of Pulitzer Prizes. This volume explores the rich racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity of the region. It also contains entries on 35 pivotal Midwestern literary works, literary genres, literary, cultural, historical, and social movements, state and city literatures, literary journals and magazines, as well as entries on science fiction, film, comic strips, graphic novels, and environmental writing. Prepared by a team of scholars, this second volume of the Dictionary of Midwestern Literature is a comprehensive resource that demonstrates the Midwest's continuing cultural vitality and the stature and distinctiveness of its literature.

Nourishing Waters, Comforting Sky

Nourishing Waters, Comforting Sky PDF Author: Stephen R. Jones
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496231570
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
In the Nebraska Sandhills, ranchers on horseback and in pickup trucks share the range with pronghorn antelope, burrowing owls, and long-billed curlews. The native grasses grow greener as the cattle grow fatter. Throughout the region, river otters and mink swim in streams nourished by springs bubbling up from the High Plains (Ogallala) aquifer. Over years of close observation, Stephen R. Jones has gotten to know the Nebraska Sandhills--the twenty-thousand-square-mile expanse of stunning prairie and thriving wetlands. He has felt the warm breath of a white-tailed doe guarding her spotted fawn, learned to communicate with a family of long-eared owls, and developed an improbable hiking relationship with a wild turkey. He has documented a breeding bird population that is growing more diverse and witnessed the long-awaited return of nesting trumpeter swans. These personal stories, accompanied by words of insight from Native American leaders, Sandhills ranchers, and grassland ecologists, help us envision a quiet relationship with the natural world.

The Big Empty

The Big Empty PDF Author: Ladette Randolph
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 080329011X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
A vast, barren landscape or a place of subtle natural beauty; the middle of nowhere or the gateway to the cultural and historical riches of the West; many things to many people and a cipher to many more?the great state of Nebraska is by force of circumstances a place of possibilities. What these possibilities are and what they promise are precisely what the writers of The Big Empty tell us. ø Exploring the state from its rural reaches to its urban engines, from its marvelous ecosystems to its myriad historical and cultural offerings, these narratives evoke Nebraska in all its facets. Writers as diverse as Ron Hansen, Ted Kooser, Michael Anania, Bob Kerrey, Mary Pipher, Delphine Red Shirt, and William Kloefkorn, among many others, bring a wealth of perspectives and styles to topics such as the Oregon Trail and the Cheyenne Exodus, farming and Internet cafäs, politics, weather, and family secrets. The result is a portrait whose broad strokes and rich detail capture the mysterious character of Nebraska.

In the Country of the Kaw

In the Country of the Kaw PDF Author: James H. Locklear
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700636412
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Gathering its waters from the plains of Colorado, Kansas, and Nebraska, the Kaw is truly America’s prairie river; the only one to arise entirely on the Great Plains and traverse all three major grasslands—shortgrass, mixed-grass, and tallgrass prairies. James Locklear’s In the Country of the Kaw is a joyous exploration of the realm of the Kaw River, which stretches from the High Plains of Colorado to the Kansas City metropolitan area. The book’s first section profiles geology, landforms, and the region’s woodlands and grasslands. The second explores the rich biological diversity associated with the land and its inhabitants’ remarkable adaptations to the environment and each other. The final section is a collection of stories of human interaction with the landscape, how nature has shaped culture and culture nature. Locklear finds “astonishments” at every turn. In the Country of the Kaw is also a call to seek the flourishing of the natural and human communities of the region. Locklear describes staggering, human-wrought environmental degradations, but also finds great hope in the resilience of Nature and the inspiring work of conservation, preservation, restoration, and renewal being accomplished by individuals and organizations throughout the region. Locklear’s relationship with the country of the Kaw stretches from his childhood in Kansas City in the 1960s to his current professional life as a botanist working in the Great Plains. A half century of rambling and rooting around in this region has given him a deep awe and affection for its uniqueness and goodness, which he conveys to the reader on every page.

Rivers & Birds

Rivers & Birds PDF Author: Merrill Gilfillan
Publisher: Big Earth Publishing
ISBN: 9781555662967
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
In his latest collection, he indulges his passion for birds, for rivers, and for places--and people--off the beaten pathways. He wanders apple orchards in Washington State, sand dunes on Massachusetts' lovely Plum Island, forest paths in the rainy Catskills, and he meanders along the banks of the Mississippi River.

A Great Plains Reader

A Great Plains Reader PDF Author: Diane Dufva Quantic
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803288539
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 756

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Book Description
The Great Plains are as rich and integral a part of American literature as they are of the North American landscape. In this volume the stories, poems, and essays that have defined the region evoke the world of the American prairie from the days of Native history to the realities of life on a present-day reservation.

Conversations with Jim Harrison, Revised and Updated

Conversations with Jim Harrison, Revised and Updated PDF Author: Robert DeMott
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496819667
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
Conversations with Jim Harrison, Revised and Updated offers a judicious selection of interviews spanning the writing career of Jim Harrison (1937–2016) from its beginnings in the 1960s to the last interview he gave weeks before his death in March 2016. Harrison labeled himself and lived as a “quadra-schizoid” writer. He worked in fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and screenwriting, and he published more than forty books that attracted an international following. These interviews supply a lively narrative of his progress as a major contemporary American author. This collection showcases Harrison's pet peeves, his candor and humility, his sense of humor, and his patience. He does not shy from his authorial obsessions, especially his efforts to hone the novella, for which he is considered a contemporary master, or the frequency with which he defied polite narrative conventions and created memorable, resolute female characters. Each conversation attests to the depth and range of Harrison’s considerable intellectual and political preoccupations, his fierce social and ecological conscience, his aesthetic beliefs, and his stylistic orientations in poetry and prose.

The Landscape of Home

The Landscape of Home PDF Author: Jeff Lee
Publisher: Big Earth Publishing
ISBN: 9781555663933
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
An anthology of some of the most evocative writing focusing on our vast natural heritage, along with pieces that address pressing land issues facing the West. This collection not only paints a vivid portrait of life in the Rocky Mountains, it also presents some of the finest nonfiction writing to be found in America today. This is a perfect selection that is bound to sink reader's roots deeper in the landscape of home.

The Magpie Society: One for Sorrow

The Magpie Society: One for Sorrow PDF Author: Amy McCulloch
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241402360
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
"A nail-biting page turner written with cinematic sparkle" - Jennifer Niven, bestselling author of All The Bright Places "Think Serial at Malory Towers" - Katie Lowe, author of The Furies Welcome to the Magpie Society... Tragedy has struck Illumen Hall, a prestigious boarding school of tradition and achievement. The body of student Lola Radcliffe is discovered on the beach, and on her back someone has tattooed an elaborate magpie. For new student Audrey, it's just another strange and unsettling thing about her new surroundings. For her roommate Ivy, the death of her friend Lola is something she's desperate to get past - and Audrey's presence isn't helping. But the two girls are thrown together when a mysterious podcast airs, with a sinister headline: I KNOW WHO KILLED LOLA. AND ONE OF YOU IS NEXT. This edition includes the spine-chilling first chapter of THE MAGPIE SOCIETY: TWO FOR JOY.