Kansas Books

This is my third Gusewelle book, after the Rufas Cronicles and the one on cats. I love it and savor every word. I read one story a day and that is sufficient sustenance for the day's thoughts. I am in the process of ordering all his other books.

This is a history full of pictures of the little schools where people were educated when my grandparents grew up and when my parents started teaching. My dad taught in several different types of situations and thought the one-room country school was THE BEST. I felt saddened in this book when history demanded that these take a back seat and most died.

This is a fascinating book-- more like a diary, about Frank Stahl, an influential man who lived in Kansas Territory from 1841 to 1937. Stahl experienced numerous adventures, which are recorded in this book, such as fighting Indians, digging for gold, herding cattle, serving as a commanding officer in Arkansas, and fighting for prohibition and against gambling. What impressed me most about this book, is how many famous people he met through his journeys. He met "Wild Bill" Hickock numerous times, talked with Kit Carson, and even arrested Carrie Nation. Worthy of note is that this story is an autobiography of Frank M. Stahl, but it is told by Margaret Whittemore, who gathered information from his life from oral accounts and typewritten notes.

I love books like this that give a peek into bygone lives. Having grown up in Kansas, I found it particularly fascinating as it probably parallels my hometown's development (just different faces and buildings).
Here's an interview with the author from the University of Kansas' "OREAD":
Shortridge said looking at the photographs was similar to reading a novel, providing a detailed look at small-town life during the turn of the century.

"This is an opportunity to get a fairly intimate view of an experience that is in all of our pasts, captured in a very different way," he said.

In order to provide an accurate and in-depth description of the places and events photographed, Shortridge went to the archives of the Junction City Union newspaper.

"You could really make the picture come alive, because you had a newspaper reporter telling you about the context of the photo," he said. "You were able to get that richness that you might not have otherwise had."

Although Pennell captured a wide range of life in Junction City, Shortridge cautions readers about the limits of the collection.

"Pennell was middle class and male, and the world he photographed was biased toward those kinds of people," he said. "There are aspects of the society that didn't get photographed as often."

Shortridge's favorite photograph was taken the year the automobile debuted in Junction City.

"It's a photograph of a 1905 Cadillac all decked out in tissue paper and four people dressed in finery, with smiles on their faces that say all is right with the world," he said. "You get a sense that people felt very much in control of their own destiny."

This book, written by my Great Grandmother, shows exactly what kind of person she was. She always spoke her mind, and told things just as she saw them. I'm very happy that my Great Aunt and her thought to put her famous newspaper articles into a book so that future generations and her family could look back and see what her life and the rest of our family's lives were like. I recommend this book to anyone looking to read some real history told from someone who lived it.

I'm a HUGE fan of Baum.Always have been. Ever since I was a kid. Reading Baum in published order is an ever ongoing project with me. Now I'm not one who wants to take apart the wonderful stories and put all the elements into little boxes and find out what they are make of, but this book does something that is just the opposite. It takes the stories and looks at them in the order in which they were written! This book is a wonderful look at the "periods" in the Baum Canon. This is a great look at how say something like the Life and Adventures of Santa Clause and Queen XiXi of IX relate to each other. Great writing and research makes this book a MUST for any Baum collector.

Very readable, cogent and persuasive call to pastors, denominational leaders, lay leaders and members to partner together in ministry. The case is powerfully made for the WHOLE church to take the WHOLE gospel to the WHOLE world. Pastors were never raised up by God to be personal chaplains for lay people, but more like head coaches, trainers, equippers and division commanders to recruit, build up and deploy God's people into the field where real ministry takes place: outreach, community involvement, mercy ministries, cultural change agents, etc. The church rises and falls on leadership - and followership. Both are equal partners in the task God has called His church to do, and both need to be fully and cooperatively (not competitively or mutually exclusively) involved. A great tool for pastors to review the Biblical perspective and for lay leaders/members to be mobilized and encouraged.

This seemingly little book is packed with smoking and charcoaling recipes that will fill a lifetime with exellent meals, easy and fun techniques to produce delectable dishes. When you've tried them all, you'll be delighted to start over! Three sections each provide a comprehensive range of cooked meats with various degrees of preparation and time required. The rubs and marinades included are themselves worth many times the price of the book. This is so much fun!

As a member of the 233rd MP Company, I found this book to be an excellent representation of the unit's year in Baghdad. The book is well written; it not only highlights the 233rd, but represents all National Guard units that served in Baghdad that first year in Iraq.

For anyone who reads constitutional history it becomes apparent after a while that the constitution is all things to all scholars. Much of the insight that any new contextualization of the constitution offers to the reader depends on the background reading and expertise of the author.
David C. Hendrickson has read deeply in the theorists of international law that were influential in the founding period. Anyone who has read Madison, Jefferson, Wilson, Adams, etc.. knows the names of Pufendorf, Vattel and Grotius among others. They were the most influential writers on international law as well as important thinkers on natural law.
Hendrickson wants to place the understanding of the founding within that context of the thinking on international and natural law of the period.
His basic thesis is that the Constitution more than anything else was a peace pact between the different sections of the country. What the founders were working to avoid were the twin spectors of international anarchy and universal empire. International anarchy as in the war of every state or region against all or universal empire as in one of the European powers managing to ally themselves with one region and then coming to dominate it and all other regions. Or the seperate sections of the country aligning themselves with different European powers and thus becoming just another stage for the contest for dominance of those powers.
It is hard for us to imagine this now but it wasn't really until after the War of 1812 that the existence of this country was taken as a given by those powers. And while the Anti-Federalist railed hard against this point, one of the telling arguments for the Federalists during the ratification debates was that the "imbecility" of the government threatened us with dismemberment or absorption (as any close reader of the Federalist will attest).
Hendrickson feels that the men who created the constitution did so using what he calls the unionist paradigm. He wants us to see the national government created by the constituion as a system of states that came together to form a "federative" system. There were enumerated (or specific) powers for both the national government and those of the states. Both would act on individuals within their respective spheres.
So far this sounds a lot like some of the compact theories of the constitution that were popular in the early national period but Hendrickson feels that as a peace pact between regions it would be understood that individuals states or regions could not break from the union without expecting consequences.
One of the points that Hendrickson makes which is too little emphasized in the literature on the Constitution is that the Founders did not argue out all issues. They basically left many of the basic issue of governance (such as precisely what was meant by phrases such as "necessary and proper")to be hashed out by the early members of Congress and the President. They realized that to try to settle all of the details would be to never agree to anything in Philadelphia. The result was that Founders like Hamilton and Madison could work closely to secure ratification and only discover later just how differently they understood some of the points of the document.
Overall, Hendrickson has given us a powerfully relevant way to read the Constitution. Apparently, he plans a second volume to continue his reading of constituional understanding well into the antebellum period. To which I say, most excellent idea. Some of the more powerful ways of reading the Founding period that heve recently been offered have been by seeing that period in its contemporary international context. Max Edling recently offered a reading of the Federalist that locates it within the context of the development of the European nation states. Reading those two writers along with others working the same field (Peter Onuf for example) helps us to appreciate that even the best writers within the liberalism-republican debates (for my money, Zuckert and Banning) provide too narrow a focus for our understanding of the constitution. I am looking forward to reading Prof. Hendrickson second volume.