North Dakota Books

I am a Cree pipe carrier who has chosen to do a doctorate degree. I would like to weave my cultural path in with the demands of scholarly writings. I would like to write to the author about my dissertation and the truth of the Christian-Cree Path. Could you please forward my request to the author. My name is Grizzly Who Packs Good Medicine and I would be honoured to speak with the author.

"Portrait of America" was a popular video documentary series in the mid-eighties, a product of collaboration between Superstation/Turner Broadcasting Corporation and Ambrose Home Video. Well-researched, each video is divided into 5 segments covering most unique historical, social, and cultural aspects of each state. Watching such an interesting documentary, each being roughly about 50 minutes long, without advertisements and other interruptions seems to be a privilege in these days!

This book brings the story of the prairie woman settler to life in vivid detail. The pictures are great, and even humorous at times. My favorite - the woman sewing her child's ripped shorts as he rests on her knees.
The text catches the readers imagination and pulls them into the North Dakota frontier era with excerpts from historical diaries and documents. Wonderful book if you love the history of settling America, or are just looking for an interesting read.

This anthology of fiction and poetry by authors with North Dakota connections is essential to anyone with an interest in North Dakota. It's also a wonderful excursion for anyone; the stories and poems express the diversity of life in one of our more interesting--and least understood--states. There is history, geography, love, grief, anger, passion, and faith in these pages--a mix of strong voices exploring issues of home, land, kin, and "the other," as well as a host of other themes.

Authors include Roland Flint, Louise Erdrich, Jon Hassler, Louis L'Amour, Thomas McGrath, Kathleen Norris, Antony Oldknow, Mark Vinz, Larry Watson, and Larry Woiwode, as well as many other other fine, less famous writers.

The beautiful introduction by Martha Meek (who edited this collection with her husband, poet/editor Jay Meek) is alone worth the price of the book. It's a moving introduction to a collection that truly captures the North Dakota environment.

Very good book. I enjoyed very much to work according to the clear instructions and beautiful designs. I recommand this book.

With _Reflections on the Academic Life in North Dakota_, Walter Ellis has written a book that all men will want to read and that all women should read. Written from Ellis' own male perspective, _Reflections_ traces the decline and fall of a romantic relationship between two people in the academic profession that seemed to hold great promise, but which really never had a chance. At times hilarious, but ultimately tragic, Reflections is a skillful blend of humor and heartache, written in an engrossing style that is easy to read and sprinkled with clever, yet realistic, dialogue and the wry musings of a very intelligent author.

The story is about David London, a forty-nine year old university history professor, and Tracey Gillespie, his much younger girlfriend, a beautiful graduate student who studies archaeology at another university. From the opening chapters it is clear that the two have a volatile relationship, one which alternates between passionate love-making and trivial disagreements that have a way of simmering until they boil over into curse-laden tirades. David thinks he goes the extra mile to accommodate Tracey's every wish and need. But Tracey thinks that David can do nothing right, is insensitive to her feelings and, worse still, can't even feed her cats properly! Yet some thing or things keeps them together-the fulfillment of his fantasies of a young and dazzlingly beautiful student, her emotionally scarred need for the wisdom, stability, and security of the older professor (or father) type?

Something's got to give and the two decide to take a trip together in a tour group to the Middle East to see and experience the wonders of ancient Israel and Jordan. Surely this will solve all their problems-of course not-but it is always the two people in the relationship who need to see this the most who do not see this. The tour might just as well have been on a rollercoaster track as on the dirt roads of Petra as the trip makes things only worse for the ill-suited lovers. Further complicating matters are the other members of the tour group, a motley crew who range from the saintly Alexandra, an older woman to whom David increasingly finds himself drawn for comfort and wisdom, to the down to earth Joel and his wife, Julie, a thirty-something couple who quickly become David's drinking buddies, to the wretched Berta, a loud, bossy, bloated epitome of the ugly American tourist, to the competent, if somewhat tacky, Yuri, the Israeli tour guide who must cater to the varied and often unreasonable demands of the members of the tour group. These supporting characters are not just window dressing or, worse still, "types," but fully developed human beings who are also skillfully weaved into the plot as essential players in this tragic-comedy.

Ellis doesn't tell us what should be in a relationship, just what all too often is (for many of us, at any rate). David and Tracey are two people, intellectually and emotionally incompatible, yet drawn to each other by physical passion and their own fantasies of what they think they want out of a relationship and out of life, fantasies that end up smashed by the steel hammer of reality. But as the song says, "you can't always get what you want, but if you try some time, you just might find, you'll get what you need." For if there is any lesson in Ellis' tale, it comes from the character of Alexandra, who had a long, stable relationship with a husband who was compatible with her in a real way, and not just some figment of her fantasies. One can only hope that the same readers who mutter to themselves, "how true, how true," or, "been there, done that," when reading Ellis' book (and I'm sure there will be many, for this reviewer is among them) also take the lesson to heart and break the cycle of their own failed relationships. Even if they do not, though, at least readers of Walter Ellis' _Reflections on the Academic Life in North Dakota_ will have had a few laughs, a little truth in art, and a darned good read.

The Roadside History of South Dakota is an entertaining, well-written book. At first I read this book as an armchair traveler and enjoyed anecdotes that gave the flavor and essence of South Dakota. Then I drove through the state. The book brought to life the places we passed on the way, and I was able to entertain my children with stories of the people who lived there. Driving roads like I90 became a historical and cultural experience. I am looking forward to reading other books in the Roadside History series.

This book is somewhat more sophisticated than the reading level ages 4-8.There is some very detailed information that I've never seen anywhere else.My son wasn't interested in this book, but after we read it, he agreed-it was excellent.

Sarah Wakefield, being an educated doctor's wife in 1862, had a lot more than many of the people who lived through the 1862 Uprising/Conflict, she was able to relate in a logical way what happened to her, without anger. She tells of the way she and her children were taken care of by Chaska and his family. How their lives were spared because of the Dakota family. Her words show another side of the story, how whites were saved by the Dakota. When many were saying they had been abused, Sarah told of care. When Chaska was hanged on 26th December she was understandably distressed, here was her saviour, who she had promised would be spared as she was, dead, through a quirk of fate. In 1997, I and another woman working on a Native American Committee to honor the dead of the conflict in Minnesota wrote to President Clinton asking for a pardon for Chaska, on Sarah Wakefield's behalf. Chaska's name should be cleared. It has been 136 years and he is still known as a man who abused women and children during a six week war. Read this story and if you feel the same way, please write to the President as well. Chaska saved Sarah's life, his name should at least be cleared of wrongdoing.Thank you.

The story of a young Plains Indian who traveled to Europe in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Rodeo, this book is extraordinary and moving. The story is fun, but it is the illustrations that bring this book to the level of genuine art: the pictures are completely magical. This book transformed my day after reading it: I felt renewed by it's beauty and innocence.