North Dakota Books

Having a strong bias for all things "Norwegian", I couldn't wait to get this book. I enjoyed "Grass of the Earth" and the pioneer story it told. Ms Raaen lived a life that very few could handle. The two books she wrote are a living testament to the struggles that our forefathers bore as immigrants and settlers in a hostile land. It was real life on the prairie of North Dakota in the late 1800's. The Raaen family did not always make good choices and the consequences (good and bad) are laid out for us in the books Ms Raaen wrote.

Reading Barron's study of rural life makes one sympathetic to the animals on a safari tour, overhearing a guide's explanation of the savage beasts' interaction with their native environment. A fascinating and well-documented history, it is nonetheless an outsider's view; the perspective of a man who considered himself a coastal resident even while attending Oberlin College. (Or so Barron's class reunion report on Oberlin's webpage suggests.)

Barron's society, even while in transformation, is sharply delineated between farm, village, and city populations, each with its own set of needs and unique social values. In spite of the collection of case histories, the individual is entirely absent from Barron's work, as people in his history act exclusively as representatives of their communities.

In Barron's safari tour, rural people are prey, and the predators are much sexier. Every new institution, from the graded school to the farmers' grain cooperative, is either forced from the outside or a response to threats. The farmers, he constantly suggests, are only interested in preserving the values and lifestyle of the past, even begrudging students the new-fangled invention of clean toilets. When farmers do accept modern convenience it is because they are lured by shiny things - mantle clocks or free movie tickets - rather than because they believe in the need for change. Although agricultural cooperatives, good roads, and consolidated schools improved the quality of rural life, Barron never suggests that improvement was desired or planned by those involved.

Ironically, the transformed society is now traditional. Barron's book, in a sense, is a collection of "just-so" stories, explaining the origins of the Farm Bureau or the small-town social gathering. The "cruising" teenagers of Vincennes, Indiana may be alien to Barron, but they have their roots in the great transformation of the 1920s. And here is its appeal in the Midwest: it's the opportunity for the lion to step out of the safari park and say, "oh, that's what's going on!"

But Barron is writing about people, not lions, and yet his people behave more instinctively than rationally. He constantly refers to "unadorned, agrarian virtues," without ever explaining the virtues, or how they guide decisions. Fear of change seems to be the farmer's only motivation. The outsiders are either benevolent experts or fierce competitors, but only they display the capacity for rational planning rather than response. A Midwestern reader, or one from the rural north, may read Barron's work and enjoy the history, but I fear that readers from larger cities will be left looking on farmlands and their residents as exotic, backward, marginalized, and very, very, different.

Mobil guides in general have some of the info you need for your stay but I prefer location specific guides more. They only list a few of each (hotels, restaurants, attractions etc.) Overall it was helpful but I wouldn't use it by itself. There isn't enough info about each area.

The book begins with a young Dakota Indian boy being told of the changes that occur in nature and in life by his father and ends with him continuing the "moon-stick" tradition he was taught despite it being a different time. Changes in nature and in the lives of the Sioux come with each new moon of the Sioux year. A "moon-counting stick" is used to keep track of each moon and is replaced every Spring, which is when the Sioux year begins. The illustrations in this book capture the changes of the seasons through color, from the brighter, fresher colors of spring to the warmer, deeper colors of autumn. Each season and corresponding Sioux activity is described poetically in an attempt to convey the spirit and feeling of the season and the people as they read nature's signs. I loved the use of color and poetry to capture the mood of each season and the mood of the Sioux, summertime sewing circles with strawberries to color leather leggings and the white of snow as "blinding" with the "biting" cold. I hesitate to give it 5 stars only because the phrase "the Great Spirit" is used, insinuating the Sioux believed in one great governing spirit when in fact, many spirits were acknowledged, each playing a role and in conjunction with each other. I did enjoy the universal lessons mentioned in the text, such as the need to recognize the presence of cycles in nature and life and to accept change as a part of life. An excellent book for introducing children to the seasons in general and specifically the Sioux view of the seasons. Also good for introducing the concepts of change and cycles.

Being written for young people, Standing Bear's account of his Lakota childhood is necessarily sanitized and romanticized. Its focus is on the domestic life of his people. Mention is often made of the courage of the warriors but there is no description of any military action. An incident is related of an enemy warrior stumbling into the village. We are told that he was well treated and quickly released. It is hard to believe that that was typical treatment of an enemy. Similarly, the more adult themes of courtship and sexuality are largely ignored. What we are left with is a treasure trove of homely detail: how cooking was accomplished in the absence of metal pots, how the boys caught turtles in the creek, what games they played. This is the very warp and weft of everyday life that gets left out of the broad-sweep histories that concentrate on great battles and famous lives.

Standing Bear may not always be totally reliable, any more than any other commentator - for example, his account of leather tanning, which was strictly women's work, did not quite ring true for me. (Not that I have ever tanned a buffalo hide - I just doubt it can be done in quite the way he describes). All the same this remains an essential work, packed full as it is of fascinating detail, for anyone interested in understanding the lifestyle of the Sioux, and is a perfect gift for a youngster who expresses an interest in American Indians.

I have only slight connections with North Dakota, but I have always been interested in the state, and its interesting and different political history. This book has good chapters on early days in North Dakota, and on the wild times politically from 1915 to 1960. A better book is A History of North Dakota, by Elwyn B. Robinson, which I read with much appreciation Mar 7, 1989. Even this book says Robinson's book is the best history of North Dakota. I thought this book was a little overly defensive about North Dakota, but it is full of interesting facts. For instance I did not know that Senator Nye, when he heard about Pearl Harbor, went ahead and delivered his prepared speech anyway, castigating the Administration for its foreign policy. Of course, the next day he voted for war just like nearly everybody else. I know this book came out in 1977 and I would like to read a more recent history of North Dakota. Is there one?

I used this book to aid me in teaching a recent lesson on North Dakota and the Great Plains. I found it to be a good reference for everything from the ice ages, to Native Americans, to modern agricultural techniques. This is an interesting book.

Godley came out of Chicago with a bankroll, twenty hired killers and a plan. He would find and bring back the greatest Wild West spectacle of all time - the bones of Crazy Horse.

For pleasure he brought his beautiful blonde mistress. For insurance he hired Joe Kidd, a sadist with a sheriff's star. Jim Beckett was an adopted Indian Chief and famous mountain man, he was a hero rapidly slipping into insanity, who wanted to stop Godley. Slocum was hired by Godley as a tracker and he soon became the man in the middle with his own agenda; to steal the bankroll.

And interesting plot that is filled with double-cross and crazy characters. Logan comes up with many gruesome ways to kill off the men making up Godley's party as Beckett attempts to stop them finding Crazy Horse's grave.

For a series of books that are sold as adult westerns there is very little sex in the story, that which it does contain is over in a couple of paragraphs.

There are a couple of plot-lines that made me raise an eyebrow such as the timeline in regard to Slocum's age and also the fact that they supposedly find Crazy Horse's grave as I thought this has never happened, but remembering this is fiction rather than fact this can be forgotten and the story enjoyed for what it is.

One of the better Slocum books I've read.

This is an interesting enough book. If you are interested in Anabaptist (Amish, Mennonite, Hutterite, and the like) this is an interesting read. I did have a little difficulty with parts of the work, wondering if the history as painted by the author was fact or individual assessment tainted by preconceived ideas or ideals. Just the same, it is a helpful book.

The Sacred Vision is a personal venture into Native American Religion by the author. It is useful for anyone inquiring to where spirituality may lead them; specifically into Native American culture from an outsider's perspective. And it is also a useful gauge of the culture as of the 1980's, in the pre-casino era.