Download or read book It Happened in Iowa written by Tammy Partsch and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-05-01 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For most Americans, Iowa brings to mind endless acres of corn fields, one of the country’s longest-running state fairs, and American Gothic, but few may know how it serendipitously became the birthplace of the most iconic apple, why thousands of cyclists brave the Midwestern heat and humidity to cross the entire state one week each year, or how a former Des Moines sports announcer became one of the White House’s most popular residents. It Happened in Iowa goes behind the scenes to tell these stories and many more, in short episodes that reveal the intriguing people and events that have shaped the Hawkeye State.
Download or read book Iowa Curiosities written by Eric Jones and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2009-11-10 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Your round-trip ticket to the wildest, wackiest, most outrageous people, places, and things the Hawkeye State has to offer!
Download or read book An Ocean in Iowa written by Peter Hedges and published by RosettaBooks. This book was released on 2014-11-11 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “funny and supremely moving”novel about a seven-year-old navigating a world of turmoil by the author of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (Harper’s Bazaar). Seven-year-old Scotty Ocean decides that seven is going to be “his year.” But soon after his birthday, his artist-turned-alcoholic mother abandons the family—leaving Scotty and his two older sisters alone with their father. As his perfect year falls apart, Scotty begins to act out during school and takes a series of increasingly wild actions to try to win his mother back—and, when that doesn’t work, to replace her. Funny and deeply affecting, An Ocean in Iowa traces Scotty’s desperate attempt to hold on to his childhood while the foundation of his family disintegrates. As Scotty’s year as a seven-year-old flies by—and the dreaded eight approaches—Peter Hedges explores how Scotty sheds his childhood in a one-eighty of the year he hoped would be so perfect. Beautifully written, and with careful attention to period detail, this compelling coming-of-age novel sets the private turmoil of a disintegrating family against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and the turbulent 1960s. “A delightful romp through the age of seven with an endearing character who revels in life’s smallest details.” —The Christian Science Monitor
Download or read book Iowa Past to Present written by Dorothy Schwieder and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2002-04 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A textbook for fifth grade students which traces the history of Iowa from its earliest inhabitants to the coming of modern times.
Download or read book Laura Ingalls Wilder written by William Anderson and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2007-01-02 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From her pioneer days on the prairie to her golden years with her husband, Almanzo, and their daughter, Rose, Laura Ingalls Wilder has become a friend to all who have read about her adventures. This behind-the-scenes account chronicles the real events in Laura's life that inspired her to write her stories and also describes her life after the last Little House book ends.
Download or read book The Baseball Whisperer written by Michael Tackett and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2016-07-05 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Field of Dreams was only superficially about baseball. It was really about life. So is The Baseball Whisperer . . . with the added advantage of being all true.” —MLB.com From an award-winning journalist, this is the story of a legendary coach and the professional-caliber baseball program he built in America's heartland, where boys would come summer after summer to be molded into ballplayers—and men. Clarinda, Iowa, population 5,000, sits two hours from anything. There, between the cornfields and hog yards, is a ball field with a bronze bust of a man named Merl Eberly, who specialized in second chances and lost causes. The statue was a gift from one of Merl’s original long-shot projects, a skinny kid from the Los Angeles ghetto who would one day become a beloved Hall-of-Fame shortstop: Ozzie Smith. The Baseball Whisperer traces the “deeply engrossing” story (Booklist, starred review) of Merl Eberly and his Clarinda A’s baseball team, which he tended over the course of five decades, transforming them from a town team to a collegiate summer league powerhouse. Along with Ozzie Smith, future manager Bud Black, and star player Von Hayes, Merl developed scores of major league players. In the process, he taught them to be men, insisting on hard work, integrity, and responsibility. More than a book about ballplayers in the nation’s agricultural heartland, The Baseball Whisperer is the story of a coach who put character and dedication first, reminding us of the best, purest form of baseball excellence. “Mike Tackett, talented journalist and baseball lover, has hit the sweet spot of the bat with his first book. The Baseball Whisperer takes one coach and one small Iowa town and illuminates both a sport and the human spirit.” —David Maraniss, New York Times-bestselling author of Clemente and When Pride Still Mattered
Download or read book Sunday Afternoon on the Porch written by Jim Heynen and published by Bureau Oak Book. This book was released on 2008 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1939, just before graduating from high school in the small town of Ridgeway in northeast Iowa, Everett Kuntz spent his entire savings of $12.50 on a 35mm Argus AF camera. He made a camera case from a worn-out boot, scraps from a tin can, and a clasp from his mother's purse. For the next several years, especially during the summers when he worked on his parents' dairy farm, he clicked the shutter of his trusty Argus all around the quiet town. Everett bought movie reel film in bulk from a mail-order house, rolled his own film, and developed it in a closet at home, but he never had the money to print his photographs. More than two thousand negatives stayed in a box while he married, raised a family, and worked as an electrical engineer in the Twin Cities. When he became ill with cancer in the fall of 2002--sixty years after he had developed the last of his bulk film--Everett opened his time capsule and printed the images from his youth. He died in 2003, having brought his childhood town back to life just as he was leaving it. A sense of peace radiates from these images. Whether skinny-dipping in the Turkey River, wheelbarrow-racing, threshing oats, milking cows, visiting with relatives after church, or hanging out at the drugstore or the movies, Ridgeway's hardworking citizens are modest and trusting and luminous in their graceful harmony and their unguarded affection for each other. Visiting the town in 2006 as he was writing the text to accompany these photographs, Jim Heynen crafted vignettes that perfectly complement these rediscovered images by blending fact and fiction to give context and voice to Ridgeway's citizens.
Download or read book Little Heathens written by Mildred Armstrong Kalish and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2008-04-29 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I tell of a time, a place, and a way of life long gone. For many years I have had the urge to describe that treasure trove, lest it vanish forever. So, partly in response to the basic human instinct to share feelings and experiences, and partly for the sheer joy and excitement of it all, I report on my early life. It was quite a romp. So begins Mildred Kalish’s story of growing up on her grandparents’ Iowa farm during the depths of the Great Depression. With her father banished from the household for mysterious transgressions, five-year-old Mildred and her family could easily have been overwhelmed by the challenge of simply trying to survive. This, however, is not a tale of suffering. Kalish counts herself among the lucky of that era. She had caring grandparents who possessed—and valiantly tried to impose—all the pioneer virtues of their forebears, teachers who inspired and befriended her, and a barnyard full of animals ready to be tamed and loved. She and her siblings and their cousins from the farm across the way played as hard as they worked, running barefoot through the fields, as free and wild as they dared. Filled with recipes and how-tos for everything from catching and skinning a rabbit to preparing homemade skin and hair beautifiers, apple cream pie, and the world’s best head cheese (start by scrubbing the head of the pig until it is pink and clean), Little Heathens portrays a world of hardship and hard work tempered by simple rewards. There was the unsurpassed flavor of tender new dandelion greens harvested as soon as the snow melted; the taste of crystal clear marble-sized balls of honey robbed from a bumblebee nest; the sweet smell from the body of a lamb sleeping on sun-warmed grass; and the magical quality of oat shocking under the light of a full harvest moon. Little Heathens offers a loving but realistic portrait of a “hearty-handshake Methodist” family that gave its members a remarkable legacy of kinship, kindness, and remembered pleasures. Recounted in a luminous narrative filled with tenderness and humor, Kalish’s memoir of her childhood shows how the right stuff can make even the bleakest of times seem like “quite a romp.”
Download or read book The Indians of Iowa written by Lance M. Foster and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2009-10 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An overview of Iowa's Native American tribes that discusses their history, culture, language, and traditions, and includes illustrations.
Download or read book Denison Iowa written by Dale Maharidge and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Through Maharidge's plainspoken prose and Williamson's photography, we are privy to a sweeping perspective layered with a microscopic depth of observation, and a searingly honest portrait tempered by heartfelt compassion. Denison, Iowa is a book about a small town at a critical time in our history."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Shoeless Joe written by W. P. Kinsella and published by Rosetta Books. This book was released on 2014-01-09 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The novel that inspired Field of Dreams: “A lyrical, seductive, and altogether winning concoction.” —The New York Times Book Review One of Sports Illustrated’s 100 Greatest Sports Books “If you build it, he will come.” When Ray Kinsella hears these mysterious words spoken in the voice of an Iowa baseball announcer, he is inspired to carve a baseball diamond in his cornfield. It is a tribute to his hero, the legendary Shoeless Joe Jackson, whose reputation was forever tarnished by the scandalous 1919 World Series. What follows is a timeless story that is “not so much about baseball as it is about dreams, magic, life, and what is quintessentially American” (The Philadelphia Inquirer). “A triumph of hope.” —The Boston Globe “A moonlit novel about baseball, dreams, family, the land, and literature.” —Sports Illustrated
Download or read book History of the Spirit Lake Massacre and Captivity of Miss Abbie Gardner written by Abbie Gardner-Sharp and published by . This book was released on 1885 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Spirit Lake Massacre written by Thomas Teakle and published by . This book was released on 1918 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Princesses of Iowa written by M. Molly Backes and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2012-05-08 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After being involved in a drunk driving accident in the spring, Paige Sheridan spends the summer in Paris as an au-pair and then returns to her suburban Iowa existence for her senior year of high school, where she begins to wonder if she wants more out life than being popular, having a handsome boyfriend and all the latest clothes, and being a member of the social elite.
Download or read book Midnight Assassin written by Patricia L. Bryan and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2007-08-15 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the night of December 1,1900, Iowa farmer John Hossack was attacked and killed while he slept at home beside his wife, Margaret. On April 11, 1901, after five days of testimony before an all-male jury, Margaret Hossack was found guilty of his murder and sentenced to life in prison. One year later, she was released on bail to await a retrial; jurors at this second trial could not reach a decision, and she was freed. She died August 25, 1916, leaving the mystery of her husband's death unsolved. The Hossack tragedy is a compelling one and the issues surrounding their domestic problems are still relevant today, Margaret's composure and stoicism, developed during years of spousal abuse, were seen as evidence of unfeminine behavior, while John Hossack--known to be a cruel and dangerous man--was hailed as a respectable husband and father. Midnight Assassin also introduces us to Susan Glaspell, a journalist who reported on the Hossack murder for the Des Moines Daily, who used these events as the basis for her classic short story, " A Jury of Her Peers", and the famous play Trifles. Based on almost a decade of research, Midnight Assassin is a riveting story of loneliness, fear, and suffering in the rural Midwest.
Download or read book Annals of Iowa written by and published by . This book was released on 1863 with total page 1178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The 50 Greatest Plays in Iowa Hawkeyes Football History written by Michael Maxwell and published by 50 Greatest Plays. This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a series that explores the logic-defying comebacks and tough losses, the dramatic interceptions, fumbles, game-winning field goals, and touchdowns that shape a fan’s greatest memories of their beloved team, this book does not disappoint as the ultimate collector’s item for Hawkeyes fans. It chronicles the most famous moments in the University of Iowa’s football history, including Warren Holloway's miraculous game-ending catch in the Capital One Bowl; "The Kick," Rob Houghtlin's game-winning 29-yard field goal against Michigan in 1985; Gordon Locke's one-yard touchdown plunge to hand Notre Dame their first loss in three years; and Chuck Long's touchdown run in the closing minute to clinch a comeback win over Michigan State. The descriptions of each play are accompanied with game information and quotes from participants, players, and observers with firsthand accounts.
