Download or read book The Book of Famous Iowans written by Douglas Bauer and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2014-11 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Will Vaughn, a man of late middle age living in Chicago with his second wife, remembers the month of June 1957 in his hometown, the rural village of New Holland, Iowa. More precisely, Will remembers just a few days of that month and the quick sequence of astonishing events that have colored, ever since, the logic of his heart and the moods of his mind. He tells of his stunningly beautiful young mother, Leanne, who liked to recall the years of the Second World War, during which she sang with a dance band in a lounge in Cheyenne, Wyoming. He tells too of his father, Lewis, a soldier in the war who one night saw the “resplendently sequined” Leanne step onstage and began at that instant to plot his courtship of her. But mostly what Will summons up in his intimate remembrance are those few catastrophic days in early June when he was “three months shy of twelve,” more than a decade after his parents have married and returned to the Vaughns’ home place, where Lewis farms his family’s land. For it is during those days that Leanne’s affair with a local man named Bobby Markum becomes known—first to Lewis and then, in a fiercely dramatic public confrontation, to young Will, to his beloved Grandmother Vaughn, and by nightfall to all the citizens of the town. The knowledge of such scandal, in so small a place, sets off a series of highly charged reactions, vivid consequences that surely determine the fates of every member of this unforgettable family. A tale of memory and hero worship and the restless pulse of longing, The Book of Famous Iowans examines those forces that define not only a state made up of a physical geography, but more important, those states of the wholly human spirit.
Download or read book Amazing Iowa Women written by Katy Swalwell and published by . This book was released on 2020-10 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by 'Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls' and 'Rad Women A to Z,' Iowa State education professor Katy Swalwell worked with over 25 Iowa women artists and RAYGUN to create an illustrated children's book that celebrates the incredible accomplishments through short biographies of a diverse set of women throughout Iowa's history. The book is available at raygunsite.com.
Download or read book Iowa the Definitive Collection written by Zachary Michael Jack and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Iowa, the Definitive Collection gathers for student, teacher, researcher, and leisure reader alike a rich harvest of Iowa lore as told by a bevy of its most famous and forgotten voices Iowa history as made and told by Iowans, for Iowans. Totaling over 500 browsable pages and nearly 100 highly readable, classic and contemporary selections, this mammoth compendium of Iowa history, literature, and lore captures the Hawkeye State more diversely and more comprehensively than ever before. Here is a book a big book of Iowa readings of every conceivable kind (campaign platforms, creeds, diaries, editorials, ethnographic studies, fictions, government documents, history, humor, journalism, legal opinions, letters, memoirs, pamphlets, speeches, travel narratives, and more) and of every historical vintage (from Black Hawk s lament on being ordered to move west to Iowa in 1831 to Iowa writer-anthropologist Robert Leonard s freshly-penned roll call of the many different Iowans he has known). Between these covers, world-famous sons and daughters of Iowa, including Carrie Chapman Catt, Bob Feller, Susan Glaspell, Herbert Hoover, Ted Kooser, Aldo Leopold, Glenn Miller, Wallace Stegner, Henry Wallace, Grant Wood, and many others join a chorus of forgotten or neglected native greats to tell the story of their home state as only Iowans can tell it. Perfect fodder for Iowa history and literature classes, book clubs, civic organizations, museums, libraries, and visitor centers across the Land Between Two Rivers, Iowa, the Definitive Collection offers a first-of-its-kind, popular documentary history suitable for singing loudly, proudly, and circumspectly across the State, and across generations.
Download or read book The Worlds Between Two Rivers written by Gretchen M. Bataille and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1978, this work reflected a range of views on Native Americans in Iowa: those of the Native Americans themselves, those of Euro-Americans, of lay people and professionals. This expanded edition reflects the recent changes encountered by Native American Indians in the region.
Download or read book The Twelve Days of Christmas in Iowa written by Susan Fitzpatrick Cornelison and published by Union Square Kids. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS IN IOWA . . . now in board This popular holiday book is now available in a sturdy board edition for very young children. The original text has been simplified to focus on the merry lyrics in this fun take on the classic Christmas song. It's a happy, festive way for families to celebrate the place where they live. What is Christmas in the Hawkeye State like? Find out all about Iowa during the holidays and its finest features--like 11 cows a-milking, 10 speedy cyclists, 6 covered bridges, and 2 hefty hogs
Download or read book Carnival in the Countryside written by Chris Rasmussen and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2015-08-15 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than a century and a half after its founding, the Iowa State Fair is the state's central institution, event, and symbol. During its annual run each August, the fair attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors who make the pilgrimage to the fairground to see the iconic butter cow, to ride the Old Mill, to walk through the livestock barns, and to people-watch. At the same time that they enjoy fried candy bars and roller coasters, Iowans also compete to raise the best corn and zucchinis, to make the best jams and jellies, to rear the finest sheep and goats, the largest cattle and hogs, and the handsomest horses. This tension between entertainment and agriculture goes back all the way to the fair's founding in the mid-1800s, as historian Chris Rasmussen shows in this thought-provoking history. The fair's founders had lofty aims: they sought to improve agriculture and foster a distinctively democratic American civilization. But from the start these noble intentions jostled up against people's desire to have fun and make money, honestly or otherwise--not least because the fair had to pay for itself. In short, the Iowa State Fair has as much to tell us about human nature and American history as it does about growing corn.
Download or read book The Stuff of Fiction written by Douglas Bauer and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2006-08-09 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A master storyteller and teacher talks about the tools of the fiction writer's craft
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 Dexterity written by Douglas Bauer and published by Owl Books. This book was released on 1989 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A paperback edition of an acclaimed new American writer's first novel offers a superbly written tale that presents unique and special insights into the nature of the human spirit, creating palpably real characters. Reprint. NYT.
Download or read book The Very Air written by Douglas Bauer and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2014-11 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Luther Mathias sells “snake oil” in scrubby West Texas dirt towns. He learns that substance is never a substitute for style and eventually develops his own remedies that promise to cure any ailment a man might suffer. In time, his imagination and ambition combine to mold him into medicine’s version of Elmer Gantry: loved and hated, imponderably wealthy and famous, powerful and pursued. The Very Air is a compelling exploration of human motives and hidden meanings. It is a detailed picture of America’s myth of the rugged individual in the psychological and narrative tradition of The Great Gatsby and Citizen Kane. With a resonant sense of the period and culture, Douglas Bauer evokes the freewheeling feel of the old Southwest in the charlatans of our own era. The Very Air shows, through storytelling both exhilarating and chilling, that the past is prologue and that our personal histories indeed shape the course of our individual futures.
Download or read book Driftless written by Danny Wilcox Frazier and published by Center for Documentary Studies. This book was released on 2007 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the third biennial Center for Documentary Studies/Honickman First Book Prize Robert Frank, Prize Judge In Driftless, Danny Wilcox Frazier's dramatic black-and-white photographs portray a changing Midwest of vanishing towns and transformed landscapes. As rural economies fail, people, resources, and services are migrating to the coasts and cities, as though the heart of America were being emptied. Frazier's arresting photographs take us into Iowa's abandoned places and illuminate the lives of those people who stay behind and continue to live there: young people at leisure, fishermen on the Mississippi, veterans on Memorial Day, Amish women playing cards, as well as more recent arrivals: Lubavitcher Hasidic Jews at prayer, Latinos at work in the fields. Frazier's camera finds these newcomers while it also captures activities that seemingly have gone on forever: harvesting and hunting, celebrating and socializing, praying and surviving. This collection of photographs is a portrait of contemporary rural Iowa, but it is also more that that. It shows what is happening in many rural and out-of-the-way communities all over the United States, where people find ways to get by in the wake of closing factories and the demise of family farms. Taken by a true insider who has lived in Iowa his entire life, Frazier's photographs are rich in emotion and give expression to the hopes and desires of the people who remain, whose needs and wants are complicated by the economic realities remaking rural America. Poetic and dark but illuminated with flashes of insight, Frazier's stunning images evoke the brilliance of Robert Frank's The Americans. To view an image gallery, click here.
Download or read book A Culinary History of Iowa written by Darcy Dougherty Maulsby and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2018-08-06 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume serves up a bountiful combination of local history, classic recipes, and colorful Midwestern food lore. Iowa’s delectable cuisine is quintessentially midwestern, grounded in its rich farming heritage and spiced with diverse ethnic influences. Classics like fresh sweet corn and breaded pork tenderloins are found on menus and in home kitchens across the state. At the world-famous Iowa State Fair, a dizzying array of food on a stick commands a nationwide cult following. From Maid-Rites to the moveable feast known as RAGBRAI, A Culinary History of Iowa reveals the remarkable stories behind Iowa originals. Find recipes for favorites ranging from classic Iowa ham balls and Steak de Burgo to homemade cinnamon rolls—served with chili, of course!
Download or read book The Sacred Cause of Union written by Thomas R. Baker and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2016-11-15 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sacred Causeof Union highlights Iowans’ important role in reuniting the nation when the battle over slavery tore it asunder. In this first-ever survey of the state’s Civil War history, Thomas Baker interweaves economics, politics, army recruitment, battlefield performance, and government administration. Scattered across more than a dozen states and territories, Iowa’s fighting men marched long distances and won battles against larger rebel armies despite having little food or shelter and sometimes poor equipment. On their own initiative, the state’s women ventured south to the battlefields to tend to the sick and injured, and farm families produced mountains of food to feed hungry federal armies. In the absence of a coordinated military supply system, women’s volunteer organizations were instrumental in delivering food, clothing, medicines, and other supplies to those who needed them. All of these efforts contributed mightily to the Union victory and catapulted Iowa into the top circle of most influential states in the nation. To shed light on how individual Iowans experienced the war, the book profiles six state residents. Three were well-known. Annie Wittenmyer, a divorced woman with roots in Virginia, led the state’s efforts to ship clothing and food to the soldiers. Alexander Clark, a Muscatine businessman and the son of former slaves, eloquently championed the rights of African Americans. Cyrus Carpenter, a Pennsylvania-born land surveyor anxious to make his fortune, served in the army and then headed the state’s Radical Republican faction after the war, ultimately being elected governor. Three never became famous. Ben Stevens, a young, unemployed carpenter, fought in an Iowa regiment at Shiloh, and then transferred to a Louisiana African American regiment so that he could lead the former slaves into battle. Farm boy Abner Dunham defended the Sunken Road at the Battle of Shiloh, before spending seven grim months in Confederate prison camps. The young Charles Musser faced pressure from his neighbors to enlist and from his parents to remain at home to work on the farm. Soon after he signed on to serve the Union, he discovered that his older brother had joined the Confederate Army. Through the letters and lives of these six Iowans, Thomas Baker shows how the Civil War transformed the state at the same time that Iowans transformed the nation.
Download or read book The Fields written by Erin Young and published by Flatiron Books. This book was released on 2022-01-25 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A breakneck procedural that is beautifully written and masterfully crafted, Erin Young's The Fields is a dynamite debut—crime fiction at its very finest. Some things don't stay buried. It starts with a body—a young woman found dead in an Iowa cornfield, on one of the few family farms still managing to compete with the giants of Big Agriculture. When Sergeant Riley Fisher, newly promoted to head of investigations for the Black Hawk County Sheriff’s Office, arrives on the scene, an already horrific crime becomes personal when she discovers the victim was a childhood friend, connected to a dark past she thought she’d left behind. The investigation grows complicated as more victims are found. Drawn deeper in, Riley soon discovers implications far beyond her Midwest town.
Download or read book A Long Way from Home written by Tom Brokaw and published by Random House. This book was released on 2002-11-05 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reflections on America and the American experience as he has lived and observed it by the bestselling author of The Greatest Generation, whose iconic career in journalism has spanned more than fifty years From his parents’ life in the Thirties, on to his boyhood along the Missouri River and on the prairies of South Dakota in the Forties, into his early journalism career in the Fifties and the tumultuous Sixties, up to the present, this personal story is a reflection on America in our time. Tom Brokaw writes about growing up and coming of age in the heartland, and of the family, the people, the culture and the values that shaped him then and still do today. His father, Red Brokaw, a genius with machines, followed the instincts of Tom’s mother Jean, and took the risk of moving his small family from an Army base to Pickstown, South Dakota, where Red got a job as a heavy equipment operator in the Army Corps of Engineers’ project building the Ft. Randall dam along the Missouri River. Tom Brokaw describes how this move became the pivotal decision in their lives, as the Brokaw family, along with others after World War II, began to live out the American Dream: community, relative prosperity, middle class pleasures and good educations for their children. “Along the river and in the surrounding hills, I had a Tom Sawyer boyhood,” Brokaw writes; and as he describes his own pilgrimage as it unfolded—from childhood to love, marriage, the early days in broadcast journalism, and beyond—he also reflects on what brought him and so many Americans of his generation to lead lives a long way from home, yet forever affected by it. Praise for A Long Way from Home “[A] love letter to the . . . people and places that enriched a ‘Tom Sawyer boyhood.’ Brokaw . . . has a knack for delivering quirky observations on small-town life. . . . Bottom line: Tom’s terrific.”—People “Breezy and straightforward . . . much like the assertive TV newsman himself.”—Los Angeles Times “Brokaw writes with disarming honesty.”—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution “Brokaw evokes a sense of community, a pride of citizenship, and a confidence in American ideals that will impress his readers.”—Richmond Times-Dispatch
Download or read book The Book of Iowa Films written by Marty Knepper and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2014-08-04 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first comprehensive history of films made in or about Iowa. It reflects some twenty years of collecting, lecturing, and talking with some of Iowa's current generation of independent filmmakers. It covers the span from 1918 to 2013 and gives important background information on dozens of high profile films such as the STATE FAIR films of 1933 and 1945, THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY, FIELD OF DREAMS, and many others. It is designed as a companion for the State Historical Society's blockbuster "Hollywood in the Heartland" exhibition in Des Moines that is scheduled to run at least through 2016. The book has an interpretive essay covering the entire history as well as paragraph length descriptions of each film. A user-friendly feature is the Index of Films, which makes it easy to locate discussions of individual films. Marty Knepper is a featured commentator on video screens in the "Hollywood in the Heartland" exhibition.
Download or read book Iowa Gardens of the Past written by Beth Cody and published by . This book was released on 2019-10-28 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There's something about vintage garden photos: preserved moments of beauty from gardens long gone. Iowa Gardens of the Past features 300+ color and grayscale images of beautiful Iowa gardens, together with lovely seed catalog art, from the mid-nineteenth century through 1980. From impressive mansion grounds to humble flower-filled farmsteads, they include: Victorian-style flower bedding; formal rose gardens; exotic Japanese-style gardens; midcentury modern landscaping. Discover how Iowans coped with severe weather events, economic depressions, world wars, grasshopper plagues and Dutch Elm Disease. Despite these challenges, Iowans have made countless gardens of great beauty. Now these gardens can be admired and enjoyed once again, in these hauntingly beautiful images of Iowa Gardens of the Past.
