Between the Nebraska border and Osage County, Oklahoma, are the Flint Hills of Kansas, and growing on those hills the last of the tallgrass prairie that once ranged from Canada to Texas, and on those fields of bluestem, cattle graze—and tending the cattle, someone like Jim Hoy, whose people have ranched there from, well, not quite time immemorial, but pretty darn close. Hoy has always called the Flint Hills home and over the decades he has made a study of them—their tough terrain and quiet beauty, their distinctive folk life and cattle culture—and marshaled his observations to bring the Flint Hills home to readers in a singular way. These essays are Hoy’s Flint Hills, combining family lore and anecdotes of ranching life with reflections on the region’s rich history and nature. Whether it’s weaning calves or shoeing horses, checking in on a local legend or a night of high school basketball in nearby Cassoday, encountering a coyote or a badger or surveying what’s happened to the tallgrass prairie over time, summoning cowboy traditions or parsing the place’s plant life or rock formations, he has something to say—and you can bet it’s well worth hearing. With his keen eye, understated wit, and store of knowledge, Hoy makes his Flint Hills come alive, and in the telling, live on.

An interpretative study of the image of Kansas, focusing primarily on the twentieth-century, and looking at how the national reputation of the state has wavered from being renowned for cultural aggressiveness and societal confidence to being perceived as drab and backward.

Few women have had a more significant impact on the development and growth of Lawrence, Kansas, and the University of Kansas than Elizabeth Miller Watkins. Elizabeth Josephine Miller was born in Ohio in 1861 and moved with her family to Lawrence when she was a child. She attended the University of Kansas’s preparatory school in the 1870s but could not complete her education when a family financial crisis forced her to seek employment. She started working at the J. B. Watkins Land and Mortgage Company in 1887 as a secretary and in 1909 she married the company’s founder and owner, Jabez Watkins. Together the Watkinses dedicated themselves to philanthropy and were committed to giving all their wealth, as Elizabeth said, “for the good of humanity, chiefly here in Lawrence.” Jabez died in 1921, leaving Elizabeth to manage the family fortune alone. Elizabeth wished to give women the opportunity for higher education that she herself had never received. In 1925, the Kansas Board of Regents approved her request to have a women’s scholarship hall built at KU. Watkins Hall, named in memory of her late husband, was constructed close to Elizabeth’s home—now the chancellor’s residence—and was followed a decade later by the construction of Miller Hall in 1936. As two of the twelve scholarship halls at the University of Kansas today, Watkins and Miller Halls are home to a vibrant cohort of young female scholars and an active alumnae community who continue the philanthropic vision of Elizabeth Miller Watkins. In 1929, Elizabeth donated $200,000 for the new Lawrence Memorial Hospital to be built at 3rd and Maine, where it remains today. She also established the first on-campus healthcare provider, Watkins Memorial Hospital, at the University of Kansas (now Twente Hall) in 1931. In this engaging biography, Mary Dresser Burchill and Norma Decker Hoagland’s extensive research successfully paints a portrait of a remarkable woman whose generosity endures at KU and in Lawrence and brings to light the astonishing legacy of one of the city’s leading philanthropists.

A former rodeo queen abandons her dreams in order to care for her deceased father's ranch and her two half-siblings, only to realize with the help of a young new pastor that God can turn even the most dire circumstances into seeds of hope.

compiled and written by the Federal Writers' Project of the Work Projects Administration for the State of Kansas ... Sponsored by the State Department of Education.

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.

The Flint Hills stretch across eighty-two thousand square miles of American history in a long, rocked-up, grassed-up finger pointing from the Oklahoma border all the way to Nebraska. This history winds though the mythos of the cowboy, climbing among families built on fierce independence, respect for the land and the water, and stubborn refusal to sacrifice a way of life to enforced economic change. These stories tell the hard truths of hard people whose traditional values have carried them, have helped them prosper for five generations. Ancestral land belongs these days only to those willing to fight for it. Heaven's own sunsets wait only for the strong and the certain. The world would do well to know these hills and those who live here.

Dont Let the Devil Steal Your Song! With 20 Essentials for Finding Your Sweet Spot deals with redeeming unfulfilled expectations. This personal testimony addresses the process of walking away from the world and finding Christ, coping with a parents Alzheimers and death, inner healing after parental divorce, and navigating complex family relationships.

Will an Alpha Cowboy earn a second chance at love in this sexy, small-town western? He’s a down-home rancher… Axel Hansen is Prairie’s fickle Casanova and resident prankster. Ten years ago, he wanted nothing more than to settle down on the family ranch with his college sweetheart. But his adrenaline junkie girlfriend, Haley, chose her profession over love. She’s the thrill seeker who broke his heart… Meteorologist Haley Cooper has devoted her career to facing down tornadoes and saving lives. She’s finally offered the promotion of a lifetime, but it means boarding at the last place on Earth she thought she’d see again and facing down her biggest regret. Will lightning strike twice for love? Axel jumps at the chance to help Haley with her research, and before they know it, they’re caught in the crosswinds of love and obligation. But as devastating tornadoes rip through the area, they’ll have to confront their feelings for each other and decide if their love can weather any storm.