This collection of twenty-two essays, a product of recent revivals of interest in both Midwestern history and intellectual history, argues for the contributions of interior thinkers and ideas in forming an American identity. The Midwest has been characterized as a fertile seedbed for the germination of great thinkers, but a wasteland for their further growth. The Sower and the Seer reveals that representation to be false. In fact, the region has sustained many innovative minds and been the locus of extraordinary intellectualism. It has also been the site of shifting interpretations—to some a frontier, to others a colonized space, a breadbasket, a crossroads, a heartland. As agrarian reformed (and Michigander) Liberty Hyde Bailey expressed in his 1916 poem “Sower and Seer,” the Midwestern landscape has given rise to significant visionaries, just as their knowledge has nourished and shaped the region. The essays gathered for this collection examine individual thinkers, writers, and leaders, as well as movements and ideas that shaped the Midwest, including rural school consolidation, women’s literary societies, Progressive-era urban planning, and Midwestern radical liberalism. While disparate in subject and style, these essays taken together establish the irrefutable significance of the intellectual history of the American Midwest.

This co-edited collection breaks new ground by bringing together several leading scholars to explore the substantial body of work produced by Padraic Colum (1881–1972) who was a poet, a novelist, a dramatist, a biographer, a writer of fiction for adults and children, and a collector of folklore. The awards, honours, and distinction conferred upon him and his work throughout his life and career, as well as retrospectively, give an indication of the significant and wide-ranging appeal and influence of Colum not only as an Irish writer and storyteller but also as a literary figure entrusted with the myths and legends of other cultures and nations. Despite such achievements, he has received comparatively little critical or scholarly attention to date. This volume showcases the richness of Colum’s work by subjecting it to a rigorous literary and theoretical examination and is the first combined and detailed analysis of both his children’s and adult texts.

"Nature-study not only educates, but it educates nature-ward; and nature is ever our companion, whether we will or no. Even though we are determined to shut ourselves in an office, nature sends her messengers. The light, the dark, the moon, the cloud, the rain, the wind, the falling leaf, the fly, the bouquet, the bird, the cockroach-they are all ours. If one is to be happy, he must be in sympathy with common things. He must live in harmony with his environment. One cannot be happy yonder nor tomorrow: he is happy here and now, or never. Our stock of knowledge of common things should be great. Few of us can travel. We must know the things at home."—from "The Meaning of the Nature-study Movement" "To feel that one is a useful and cooperating part in nature is to give one kinship, and to open the mind to the great resources and the high enthusiasms. Here arise the fundamental common relations. Here arise also the great emotions and conceptions of sublimity and grandeur, of majesty and awe, the uplift of vast desires—when one contemplates the earth and the universe and desires to take them into the soul and to express oneself in their terms; and here also the responsible practices of life take root."—from The Holy Earth Before Wendell Berry and Aldo Leopold, there was the horticulturalist and botanist Liberty Hyde Bailey (1858–1954). For Wendell Berry, Bailey was a revelation, a symbol of the nature-minded agrarianism Berry himself popularized. For Aldo Leopold, Bailey offered a model of the scholar-essayist-naturalist. In his revolutionary work of eco-theology, The Holy Earth, Bailey challenged the anthropomorphism—the people-centeredness—of a vulnerable world. A trained scientist writing in the lyrical tradition of Emerson, Burroughs, and Muir, Bailey offered the twentieth century its first exquisitely interdisciplinary biocentric worldview; this Michigan farmer's son defined the intellectual and spiritual foundations of what would become the environmental movement. For nearly a half century, Bailey dominated matters agricultural, environmental, and scientific in the United States. He worked both to improve the lives of rural folk and to preserve the land from which they earned their livelihood. Along the way, he popularized nature study in U.S. classrooms, lobbied successfully for women's rights on and off the farm, and bulwarked Teddy Roosevelt's pioneering conservationism. Here for the first time is an anthology of Bailey's most important writings suitable for the general and scholarly reader alike. Carefully selected and annotated by Zachary Michael Jack, this book offers a comprehensive introduction to Bailey's celebrated and revolutionary thinking on the urgent environmental, agrarian, educational, and ecospiritual dilemmas of his day and our own. Culled from ten of Bailey's most influential works, these lyrical selections highlight Bailey's contributions to the nature-study and the Country Life movements. Published on the one-hundredth anniversary of Bailey's groundbreaking report on behalf of the Country Life Commission, Liberty Hyde Bailey: Essential Agrarian and Environmental Writings will inspire a new generation of nature writers, environmentalists, and those who share with Bailey a profound understanding of the elegance and power of the natural world and humanity's place within it.

An Irish magazine of independent thought.

For over a decade the Sower's Seeds books have been a wonderful resource for teachers, preachers, and anyone who has to speak in front of an audience. Now author Brian Cavanaugh has revised and expanded his original volume--with twenty new stories--for old fans as well as a whole new audience. He includes stories of inspiration, warmth, and insight arranged around numerous universal themes ranging from awareness, compassion, perseverance, and wisdom, to such unusual themes as baseball, Thomas Edison, hospitality, and risk-taking. While the majority of stories are anonymous, there are some attributed to well known names like Zig Ziglar, Mickey Mantle, and Theodore Roosevelt. Years before there was Chicken Soup, Sower's Seeds was making readers laugh, cry, and come away with a warm heart. The newest book--like the others in the series--is ideal both for quiet inspiration and for handy, on-the-run fun. This is storytelling at its best.

Mr. Bowen's aim is to place in perspective the enormous range of Colum's work, as has not been done before, and to assess critically its literary and historical position. Drawing upon his intimate knowledge of Colum's writings, Bowen rates Colum's plays as something less than the masterpieces they were thought to be, and he gives a valuable reading of Colum's novels and especially useful categorization and evaluation of Colum's children's literature.

David Schnasa Jacobsen takes a broad thematic approach to Mark’s Gospel, while at the same time giving exegetical and homiletical insights about individual pericopes in their narrative context. By helping preachers and students make connections between the various lections from Mark throughout Year B in their sermons and studies, they and their parishioners will have a deeper appreciation of Mark’s unique interpretation of the Christ Event and how that influences their approach to living the Christian faith in today’s world.

What was the original purpose of the Gospel of Matthew? For whom was it written? In this magisterial two-volume commentary, Walter Wilson interprets Matthew as a catechetical work that expresses the ideological and institutional concerns of a faction of disaffected Jewish followers of Jesus in the late first century CE. Wilson’s compelling thesis frames Matthew’s Gospel as not only a continuation of the biblical story but also as a didactic narrative intended to shape the commitments and identity of a particular group that saw itself as a beleaguered, dissident minority. Thus, the text clarifies Jesus’s essential Jewish character as the “Son of David” while also portraying him in opposition to prominent religious leaders of his day—most notably the Pharisees—and open to cordial association with non-Jews. Through meticulous engagement with the Greek text of the Gospel, as well as relevant primary sources and secondary literature, Wilson offers a wealth of insight into the first book of the New Testament. After an introduction exploring the background of the text, its genre and literary features, and its theological orientation, Wilson explicates each passage of the Gospel with thorough commentary on the intended message to first-century readers about topics like morality, liturgy, mission, group discipline, and eschatology. Scholars, students, pastors, and all readers interested in what makes the Gospel of Matthew distinctive among the Synoptics will appreciate and benefit from Wilson’s deep contextualization of the text, informed by his years of studying the New Testament and Christian origins.