Prairie Visions
Author: Pam Conrad
Publisher: Harpercollins
Published: 1991
Total Pages: 85
ISBN-13: 9780060213756
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A collection of photos and stories about photographer Solomon Butcher and turn-of-the-century Nebraska.
Lanterna Rally
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Visions of the Tallgrass
Author: James P. Ronda
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Published: 2018-09-13
Total Pages: 181
ISBN-13: 0806164573
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In centuries long past, a vast swath of grassland swept down the center of North America, from Canada’s Prairie Provinces to central Texas. This once-plentiful prairie has now all but disappeared. Humans have grazed, mowed, and plowed the plains, dammed the rivers, and imposed their will on the land and its creatures. Fortunately, some remnants have survived, including the Joseph H. Williams Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in northeastern Oklahoma. In this visually stunning volume, wildlife photographer Harvey Payne and historian James P. Ronda offer an intimate look at and into one of America’s Last Great Places. Spanning nearly 40,000 acres in Oklahoma’s Osage County, the Preserve is a living witness to a world that once existed. But the Osage prairie is not a museum or theme park—and it is not frozen in time. Under the stewardship of The Nature Conservancy, which has overseen its restoration, the Preserve lives on as a fully functioning ecosystem. And for twenty-five years, Payne and Ronda have explored these lands, together and in solitude. Rendered here in brilliant color and paired with Ronda’s informative yet deeply personal commentary, Payne’s photographs open our eyes to the ever-changing world of the Tallgrass Preserve. In chapters focused on grass, sky, birds, bison, and fire, Ronda and Payne reveal that the “Big Empty” is, in fact, teeming with life. Through interwoven images and words, Visions of the Tallgrass shows that our nation’s grasslands are sacred ground, a priceless piece of our American past—and future.
Picturing the Prairie
Author: Philip Juras
Publisher:
Published: 2021-05
Total Pages: 108
ISBN-13: 9780578864587
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The fifty-four paintings in this volume celebrate the natural beauty of the rare tallgrass prairie environments of Illinois and the remarkable legacy of conservation that sustains them. Artist and author Philip Juras's evocative canvases are based on extensive research, travel, and time in the field with prairie conservation experts. As a result, his luminous paintings, and his descriptions of them, are rich in ecological and historical detail. An accompanying essay by acclaimed conservationist Stephen Packard tells the story of how the tallgrass prairie ecosystem was, and is, being saved from extinction in Illinois by a series of remarkable individuals and initiatives-efforts that have inspired conservation practices well beyond the state's borders.Picturing the Prairie invites us to get to know these restored landscapes, both within these pages and in the corresponding 2021 exhibition at the Chicago Botanic Garden. In them we can experience the magnificence of this archetypal American grassland, both in its present nature, and as it was in the past.
Prairie Fires
Author: Caroline Fraser
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
Published: 2017-11-21
Total Pages: 368
ISBN-13: 1627792775
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR The first comprehensive historical biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the beloved author of the Little House on the Prairie books Millions of readers of Little House on the Prairie believe they know Laura Ingalls—the pioneer girl who survived blizzards and near-starvation on the Great Plains, and the woman who wrote the famous autobiographical books. But the true saga of her life has never been fully told. Now, drawing on unpublished manuscripts, letters, diaries, and land and financial records, Caroline Fraser—the editor of the Library of America edition of the Little House series—masterfully fills in the gaps in Wilder’s biography. Revealing the grown-up story behind the most influential childhood epic of pioneer life, she also chronicles Wilder's tumultuous relationship with her journalist daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, setting the record straight regarding charges of ghostwriting that have swirled around the books. The Little House books, for all the hardships they describe, are paeans to the pioneer spirit, portraying it as triumphant against all odds. But Wilder’s real life was harder and grittier than that, a story of relentless struggle, rootlessness, and poverty. It was only in her sixties, after losing nearly everything in the Great Depression, that she turned to children’s books, recasting her hardscrabble childhood as a celebratory vision of homesteading—and achieving fame and fortune in the process, in one of the most astonishing rags-to-riches episodes in American letters. Spanning nearly a century of epochal change, from the Indian Wars to the Dust Bowl, Wilder’s dramatic life provides a unique perspective on American history and our national mythology of self-reliance. With fresh insights and new discoveries, Prairie Fires reveals the complex woman whose classic stories grip us to this day.
Haunted Visions
Author: Charles Colbert
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2011-05-10
Total Pages: 332
ISBN-13: 0812204999
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Spiritualism emerged in western New York in 1848 and soon achieved a wide following due to its claim that the living could commune with the dead. In Haunted Visions: Spiritualism and American Art, Charles Colbert focuses on the ways Spiritualism imbued the making and viewing of art with religious meaning and, in doing so, draws fascinating connections between art and faith in the Victorian age. Examining the work of such well-known American artists as James Abbott McNeill Whistler, William Sydney Mount, and Robert Henri, Colbert demonstrates that Spiritualism played a critical role in the evolution of modern attitudes toward creativity. He argues that Spiritualism made a singular contribution to the sanctification of art that occurred in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The faith maintained that spiritual energies could reside in objects, and thus works of art could be appreciated not only for what they illustrated but also as vessels of the psychic vibrations their creators impressed into them. Such beliefs sanctified both the making and collecting of art in an era when Darwinism and Positivism were increasingly disenchanting the world and the efforts to represent it. In this context, Spiritualism endowed the artist's profession with the prestige of a religious calling; in doing so, it sought not to replace religion with art, but to make art a site where religion happened.
Prairiescapes
Author: Larry Kanfer
Publisher: Visions of Illinois
Published: 1987
Total Pages: 101
ISBN-13: 9780252014826
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A former student of architecture at the University of Illinois, Kanfer has developed a kinship with the rural regions of the Prairie State. He draws upon a rich background in art, design, and travel to focus on the unique qualities of the midwesten landscape, exhibiting an unusual sensitivity to composition, color, texture, and light. Kanfer isolates singular images--a solitary barn, a rural mailbox atop a roadside post, a red stop sign caught in the nighttime glare of a car's headlight, cornflower blossoms springing from a ditch--as well as broader prairie scenes.
Visions of Lincoln
Author: James L. McKee
Publisher:
Published: 2007-11-01
Total Pages: 272
ISBN-13: 9780979879401
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Natural Visions
Author: Finis Dunaway
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2016-12-20
Total Pages: 280
ISBN-13: 022645424X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Walden Pond. The Grand Canyon.Yosemite National Park. Throughout the twentieth century, photographers and filmmakers created unforgettable images of these and other American natural treasures. Many of these images, including the work of Ansel Adams, continue to occupy a prominent place in the American imagination. Making these representations, though, was more than a purely aesthetic project. In fact, portraying majestic scenes and threatened places galvanized concern for the environment and its protection. Natural Visions documents through images the history of environmental reform from the Progressive era to the first Earth Day celebration in 1970, showing the crucial role the camera played in the development of the conservation movement. In Natural Visions, Finis Dunaway tells the story of how visual imagery—such as wilderness photographs, New Deal documentary films, and Sierra Club coffee-table books—shaped modern perceptions of the natural world. By examining the relationship between the camera and environmental politics through detailed studies of key artists and activists, Dunaway captures the emotional and spiritual meaning that became associated with the American landscape. Throughout the book, he reveals how photographers and filmmakers adapted longstanding traditions in American culture—the Puritan jeremiad, the romantic sublime, and the frontier myth—to literally picture nature as a place of grace for the individual and the nation. Beautifully illustrated with photographs by Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter, and a host of other artists, Natural Visions will appeal to a wide range of readers interested in American cultural history, the visual arts, and environmentalism.
Prairie Visions
Author: Pam Conrad
Publisher: Turtleback
Published: 1993-01
Total Pages:
ISBN-13: 9780785723066
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A collection of photos and stories about photographer Solomon Butcher and turn-of-the-century Nebraska.
The Personal History of Rachel DuPree
Author: Ann Weisgarber
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2010-08-12
Total Pages: 336
ISBN-13: 1101190361
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →An award-winning novel with incredible heart, about life on the prairie as it's rarely been seen When Rachel, hired help in a Chicago boardinghouse, falls in love with Isaac, the boardinghouse owner's son, he makes her a bargain: he'll marry her, but only if she gives up her 160 acres from the Homestead Act so he can double his share. She agrees, and together they stake their claim in the forebodingly beautiful South Dakota Badlands. Fourteen years later, in the summer of 1917, the cattle are bellowing with thirst. It hasn't rained in months, and supplies have dwindled. Pregnant, and struggling to feed her family, Rachel is isolated by more than just geography. She is determined to give her surviving children the life they deserve, but she knows that her husband, a fiercely proud former Buffalo Soldier, will never leave his ranch: black families are rare in the West, and land means a measure of equality with the white man. Somehow Rachel must find the strength to do what is right-for herself, and for her children. Reminiscent of The Color Purple as well as the frontier novels of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Willa Cather, The Personal History of Rachel DuPree opens a window on the little-known history of African American homesteaders and gives voice to an extraordinary heroine who embodies the spirit that built America.
