Author: Virgil W. Dean
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 070061723X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
From radical abolitionist John Brown to presidential candidate Bob Dole to visionary environmentalist Wes Jackson, Kansas history is bursting with fascinating stories of individuals who made a difference to the nation and whose lives reveal much about our collective past. Prominent Kansas historian Virgil Dean has gathered a distinguished team of writers-Thomas Isern, Craig Miner, and others-who have crafted incisive portraits of 27 notable men and women, covering 150 years of Kansas and American history. Here are agitators who moved their fellow citizens to action over political, social, and economic problems: not only John Brown, but also proslavery agitator William H. Russell; Mary Elizabeth Lease, lecturer for the Farmers' Alliance and Populist Party; Gerald B. Winrod, a.k.a. the "Jayhawk Hitler"; and Esther Brown, who challenged segregation in public schools. Here, too, are motivators, like women's rights activist Clarina I. H. Nichols; William Allen White, the "Sage of Emporia"; and favorite sons Dwight D. Eisenhower and Bob Dole. Then there are the innovators, from trailblazers like Joseph G. McCoy, who changed the face of the cattle industry, and wheat king Theodore C. Henry to Wes Jackson, a pioneer in the sustainable agriculture movement, and the multitalented Gordon Parks, photographer, filmmaker, and author of The Learning Tree. Reformers and preachers, publishers and artists, these fascinating personalities are brought vividly back to life by Dean and his fellow authors. They offer a fresh and engaging look at many of the important themes of Kansas history-especially the state's identification with some of the great radical movements, including abolitionism, populism, and civil rights--and ultimately recapture the true spirit of Kansas and its meaning for the rest of the nation.

Author: Virgil W. Dean
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
From radical abolitionist John Brown to presidential candidate Bob Dole to visionary environmentalist Wes Jackson, Kansas history is bursting with fascinating stories of individuals who made a difference to the nation and whose lives reveal much about our collective past. Prominent Kansas historian Virgil Dean has gathered a distinguished team of writers - Thomas Isern, Craig Miner, and others - who have crafted incisive portraits of 27 notable men and women, covering 150 years of Kansas and American history. Here are agitators who moved their fellow citizens to action over political, social, and economic problems: not only John Brown, but also proslavery agitator William H. Russell; Mary Elizabeth Lease, lecturer for the Farmers' Alliance and Populist Party; Gerald B. Winrod, a.k.a. the Jayhawk Hitler; and Esther Brown, who challenged segregation in public schools.

Author: James E. Sherow
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806162937
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
One hundred fifty years ago the McCoy brothers of Springfield, Illinois, bet their fortunes on Abilene, Kansas, then just a slapdash way station. Instead of an endless horizon of prairie grasses, they saw a bustling outlet for hundreds of thousands of Texas Longhorns coming up the Chisholm Trail—and the youngest brother, Joseph, saw how a middleman could become wealthy in the process. This is the story of how that gamble paid off, transforming the cattle trade and, with it, the American landscape and diet. The Chisholm Trail follows McCoy’s vision and the effects of the Chisholm Trail from post–Civil War Texas and Kansas to the multimillion-dollar beef industry that remade the Great Plains, the American diet, and the national and international beef trade. At every step, both nature and humanity put roadblocks in McCoy’s way. Texas cattle fever had dampened the appetite for longhorns, while prairie fires, thunderstorms, blizzards, droughts, and floods roiled the land. Unscrupulous railroad managers, stiff competition from other brokers, Indians who resented the usurping of their grasslands, and farmers who preferred growing wheat to raising cattle all threatened to impede the McCoys’ vision for the trail. As author James E. Sherow shows, by confronting these obstacles, McCoy put his own stamp upon the land, and on eating habits as far away as New York City and London. Joseph McCoy’s enterprise forged links between cattlemen, entrepreneurs, and restaurateurs; between ecology, disease, and technology; and between local, national, and international markets. Tracing these connections, The Chisholm Trail shows in vivid terms how a gamble made in the face of uncontrollable natural factors indelibly changed the environment, reshaped the Kansas prairie into the nation’s stockyard, and transformed Plains Indian hunting grounds into the hub of a domestic farm culture.

Author: Marilyn S. Blackwell
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
This comprehensive portrait of nineteenth-century reformer Clarina Howard Nichols uncovers the fascinating story of a complex woman and reveals her important role in women's rights, antislavery, and westward expansion.

Author: John N. Mack
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786470291
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
As the Civil War ended, thousands of Union veterans imagined Kansas as a place to make a new beginning. Many veterans settled in the southeastern part of the state. In their struggle to establish lawful, ordered communities the settlers came into conflict with railroads intent on building through southeast Kansas to reach warm-water ports in Texas. To the settlers the railroads represented both a promise and a threat. By linking farmers and businessmen with eastern markets, the railroads guaranteed the prospects of economic gain. However, when they claimed rights to the land that settlers had already claimed, railroad monopolies were identified as a new manifestation of the same threat to republican values they had fought against in the recently concluded War. This book tells the story of the settlers' opposition to and victory over railroads and the impact on the evolution of political thought in Kansas and the American west.

Author: Donald P. Haider-Markel
Publisher: CQ Press
ISBN: 1452267359
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1124

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Book Description
An essential reference to and expert analysis of government and politics in all 50 states and the US territories This innovative and useful reference fills the need for practical information and conceptual analysis of the roles and functions of state government by providing accessible state-by-state and regional overviews of government and politics. Features include substantive essays; in-depth profiles of each of the fifty states, the District of Columbia, and all U.S. territories; an encyclopedic A to Z section with entries covering the overarching concepts, structures, and processes that are important to state and local government, and politics in general; and a detailed section on data and statistics emphasizing historical and demographic trends that have helped shape regional and state government and politics.

Author: R. Alton Lee
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496219805
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description
When Sunflowers Bloomed Red reveals the origins of agrarian radicalism in the late nineteenth-century United States. Great Plains radicals, particularly in Kansas, influenced the ideological principles of the Populist movement, the U.S. labor movement, American socialism, American syndicalism, and American communism into the mid-twentieth century. Known as the American Radical Tradition, members of the Greenback Labor Party and the Knights of Labor joined with Prohibitionists, agrarian Democrats, and progressive Republicans to form the Great Plains Populist Party (later the People's Party) in the 1890s. The Populists called for the expansion of the money supply through the free coinage of silver, federal ownership of the means of communication and transportation, the elimination of private banks, universal suffrage, and the direct election of U.S. senators. They also were the first political party to advocate for familiar features of modern life, such as the eight-hour workday for agrarian and industrial laborers, a graduated income tax system, and a federal reserve system to manage the nation's money supply. When the People's Party lost the hotly contested election of 1896, members of the party dissolved into socialist and other left-wing parties and often joined efforts with the national Progressive movement. When Sunflowers Bloomed Red offers readers entry into the Kansas radical tradition and shows how the Great Plains agrarian movement influenced and transformed politics and culture in the twentieth century and beyond.

Author: James E. Sherow
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1851097252
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
This unique survey of the environmental history of the grasslands in the United States explores the ecological, social, and economic networks enmeshing humans in this biome over the last 10,000 years. "Treeless, level, and semi-arid." Walter Prescott Webb's famous description of the Great Plains is really only part of their story. From their creation at the end of the Ice Age to the ongoing problems of depopulation, soil erosion, polluted streams, and depleted groundwater aquifers, human interaction with the prairies has often been controversial. Part of ABC-CLIO's Nature and Human Societies series, The Grasslands of the United States: An Environmental History explores the historical and ecological dimensions of human interaction with North America's grasslands. Examining issues as diverse as whether the arrival of the Paleo-Indians led to the extinction of the mammoth and the consequences of industrialization and genetically modified crops, this invaluable reference synthesizes literature from a wide range of authoritative sources to provide a fascinating guide to the environment of this biome.

Author: Sarah Janssen
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1510777628
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 3463

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Book Description
#1 New York Times Bestseller! Get thousands of facts at your fingertips with this essential resource: sports, pop culture, science and technology, U.S. history and government, world geography, business, and so much more. The World Almanac® is America’s bestselling reference book of all time, with more than 83 million copies sold. For more than 150 years, this compendium of information has been the authoritative source for school, library, business, and home. The 2024 edition of The World Almanac reviews the biggest events of 2023 and will be your go-to source for questions on any topic in the upcoming year. Praised as a “treasure trove of political, economic, scientific and educational statistics and information” by The Wall Street Journal, The World Almanac and Book of Facts will answer all of your trivia needs effortlessly. Features include: Special Feature: Election 2024: A new feature covers all voters need to know going into the 2024 presidential election season, including primary and caucus dates, candidate profiles, campaign finance numbers, and more. 2023—Top 10 News Topics: The editors of The World Almanac list the top stories that held the world's attention in 2023, from wildfires and earthquakes to Israel, Ukraine, and the U.S. Congress. 2023—Year in Sports: Hundreds of pages of trivia and statistics that are essential for any sports fan, featuring complete coverage of the 2022 FIFA Men's World Cup, 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup, and 2023 World Series. 2023—Year in Pictures: Striking full-color images from around the world in 2023, covering news, entertainment, science, and sports. 2023—Offbeat News Stories: The World Almanac editors found some of the strangest news stories of the year. World Almanac Editors' Picks: Time Capsule: The World Almanac lists the items that most came to symbolize the year 2023, including a Swiftie-created friendship bracelet and the House Speaker's gavel. The World at a Glance: This annual feature of The World Almanac provides a quick look at the surprising stats and curious facts that define the changing world. Other Highlights: Stats and graphics across dozens of chapters show how the pandemic continues to affect the economy, work, family life, education, and culture. Plus more new data to help understand the world, including housing costs, public schools and test scores, streaming TV and movie ratings, and much more.

Author: Sarah Janssen
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1510766553
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 3365

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Book Description
A 2021 USA Today Bestseller! Get thousands of facts at your fingertips with this essential resource: business, the arts and pop culture, science and technology, U.S. history and government, world geography, sports, and so much more. The World Almanac® is America’s bestselling reference book of all time, with more than 83 million copies sold. For more than 150 years, this compendium of information has been the authoritative source for school, library, business, and home. The 2022 edition of The World Almanac reviews the biggest events of 2021 and will be your go-to source for questions on any topic in the upcoming year. Praised as a “treasure trove of political, economic, scientific and educational statistics and information” by The Wall Street Journal, The World Almanac and Book of Facts will answer all of your trivia needs effortlessly. Features include: Special Feature: Coronavirus Status Report: A special section provides up-to-the-minute information about the world’s largest public health crisis in at least a century. Statistical data and graphics across dozens of chapters show how the pandemic continues to affect the economy, work, family life, education, and culture. Special Feature: 20 Years in Afghanistan: The World Almanac provides history, data, and other context for the end of America's longest war and the future of Afghanistan and its people. 2021—Top 10 News Topics: The editors of The World Almanac list the top stories that held the world's attention in 2021. 2021—Year in Sports: Hundreds of pages of trivia and statistics that are essential for any sports fan, featuring complete coverage of the Olympic Games in Tokyo and the sports world's ongoing adaptations to the coronavirus pandemic, and much more. 2021—Year in Pictures: Striking full-color images from around the world in 2021, covering news, entertainment, science, and sports. 2021—Offbeat News Stories: The World Almanac editors found some of the strangest news stories of the year. World Almanac Editors' Picks: Time Capsule: The World Almanac lists the items that most came to symbolize the year 2021, from news and sports to pop culture. World Almanac Editors' Picks: Memorable Recent Sports Scandals: From a trash-can banging, sign-stealing scandal to the doping of horses and humans, World Almanac editors select some of the sports world's biggest black marks from the last 20 years. The World at a Glance: This annual feature of The World Almanac provides a quick look at the surprising stats and curious facts that define the changing world. The Biden Administration: Complete coverage of the presidential transition in Washington, DC, including cabinet-level leadership and the filling of other key administration roles. Other New Highlights: First data available from the 2020 Census, congressional appropriation and redistricting, and much more.