Book Review

Reviews by Jerry Petr

"Keynes Hayek: The Clash that Defined Modern Economics"
Author: Nicholas Wapshott
Publisher: Norton

"Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius"
Author: Sylvia Nasar
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

"23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism"
Author: Ha-Joon Chang
Publisher: Bloomsbury Press

Review by Woodrow Nelson

“Growing with Nature: Supporting Whole-Child Learning in Outdoor Classrooms”
Publisher: Arbor Day Foundation and Dimensions Educational Research Foundation

Much has been said about the problems of children’s disconnection from nature and its consequences.

New terms have been invented—“nature deficit disorder” and “biophobia,” the fear or aversion of nature.

Children engage in creative play less and less. The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that American children spend roughly six hours per day plugged in electronically. Time outdoors has declined dramatically. “Free-range” time in nature has virtually disappeared.

Review by Jon Lauck

“The Big Empty: The Great Plains in the Twentieth Century”
Author: R. Douglas Hurt
Publisher: University of Arizona Press

On the bright blue afternoon of Sept. 23, 2011, at a hotel along the banks of the Minnesota River in the Blue Earth County, Minn. city of Mankato, historians interested in the prairie and Plains gathered to talk about the history of our region. The occasion was the annual meeting of the Northern Great Plains History Conference, a long-standing institution essential to the dissemination of the latest research and historical thinking about our region.

Review by Tyler Sutton

“Let’s Be Reasonable”
Author: Joel Sartore
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press

Joel Sartore’s latest book, “Let’s Be Reasonable,” is a clever collection of essays he wrote mainly for the television show “CBS Sunday Morning,” is illustrated with his photographs, many of which were taken while on assignment for National Geographic Magazine over a 20-year career.

Review by Patricia H. Scudder

“A Harvest of Words: Contemporary South Dakota Poetry”
Editor: Patrick Hicks
Publisher: The Center for Western Studies

Whoever selected the title for this book of poetry has witnessed staggered lines of combines marching resolutely down fields of South Dakota wheat. Harvest, indeed, is as iconic an image for South Dakota as is Mount Rushmore. Whether there is such a thing as “South Dakota poetry,” though, is as difficult to determine as whether there is such a thing as “New Jersey poetry,” especially if you believe that the poet expresses the human condition. For me, that belief universalizes poetry rather than limiting it to a specific region, for human beings are found everywhere, even in New Jersey.

Review by Michael Forsberg

“Sandhill and Whooping Cranes: Ancient Voices over America's Wetlands”
Author: Paul A. Johnsgard
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press

In 1991 Paul Johnsgard authored Crane Music: A Natural History of American Cranes. The book told the stories of North America’s two crane species—the sandhill crane and the critically endangered whooping crane, and underscored the importance of Nebraska’s Platte River Valley, a critical sliver of habitat these species depend on during their annual migratory journeys. The book became a classic and sits on our bookshelf today at home alongside the other Johnsgard books that have become dog-eared and coffee-stained over the years with repeated use.

Review by John Janovy Jr.

“Rare: Portraits of America's Endangered Species”
Author: Joel Sartore
Publisher: Focal Point/National Geographic

Joel Sartore’s “Rare” is as rare as his subjects: lichens, snail, birds, cats, flowers, fish and assorted other creatures seemingly destined to depart Planet Earth forever, not as individuals but as kinds. Nebraskans, especially, have come to admire Sartore as a combination storyteller, artist, crusader and guide to natural areas the vast majority of us will never see, much less crawl about in up to our eyeballs staring at wild things through a lens. We locals have been amazed at his touch of wonder and humility on stage, his ability to turn images into extended narratives and his constant focus on mission—to make us aware not only of our place in nature but also how we are messing things up to our long-term detriment. With “Rare,” he brings all of these Sartore qualities to us in book form. And what a book it is.

Review by Matt Low

“Consulting the Genius of the Place: An Ecological Approach to a New Agriculture”
Author: Wes Jackson
Publisher: Counterpoint

Even before the publication of his new book “Consulting the Genius of the Place” (Counterpoint, 2010), Wes Jackson had solidified his place among the most prominent and effective advocates of American environmental thought and practice. As director of the Land Institute in Salina, Kan. (since 1976), as a recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship (in 1992) and as the author of such influential books as “New Roots for Agriculture” (1980) and “Becoming Native to This Place” (1994), Jackson’s career exemplifies personal success as the upshot of public service. His most recent book brings details of that career to new light, while furthering the cause to which he has devoted his life: namely, replacing the monocultural practices of modern industrial agriculture with a perennial polyculture that prioritizes sustainability, longevity and the health of both the environment and rural America.

Review by Carolyn Johnsen

“Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization”
Author: Steven Solomon
Publisher: Harper

In this massive book, journalist Steven Solomon both traces the history of Earth’s civilizations through their uses of water and issues warnings about the effects of water scarcity on contemporary societies.

The history stretches from irrigation in the breadbaskets of the Nile and Mesopotamia to commerce on the Grand Canal in China, to the British defeat of the Spanish Armada, to the invention of the water wheel, to steam power’s importance in the Industrial Revolution and to what Solomon calls the “sanitary revolution” of the 19th century.

Review by Jon Lauck

“Hope in a Scattering Time: A Life of Christoper Lasch”
Author: Eric Miller
Publisher: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Christopher Lasch was born in Omaha, Neb., in 1932. By the end of his life, cut short at age 61, he had become one of the most famous intellectuals in the world. A product of and one-time devotee of the American Left, Lasch later became a brutal critic of American liberalism. Throughout his life Lasch embodied a prairie skepticism about the vision and drift of his fellow intellectuals and the reality of modern “progress.” Midwestern progressivism, Lasch said, was “unavoidably part of the political tradition in which I was raised” and was a “reference point to which I was always in one way or another returning.”

Review by Micah Intermill

“Prairie Repubic: The Political Cuture of Dakota Territory, 1879-1889”
Author: Jon K. Lauck
Publisher: Norlights Press, Nasville, Ind.

Perhaps one of the most dangerous contributions brought to us by the information age is the increased adherence to conventional wisdom. Indeed, the overabundance of information on any given subject, and our pure inability to thoughtfully synthesize it all, has created this paradox—but from time to time, something comes along that’s worth slowing down for so that we may reframe our view and break through the conventional wisdom-supporting clutter. Jon Lauck’s new book, “Prairie Republic:

Review by Charles Francis

“The Call of the Land: An Agrarian Primer for the 21st Century”
Author: Steven McFadden
Publisher: Norlights Press, Nasville, Ind.

Journalist Steven McFadden introduces this instructive and current call to action as a “primary book about food, land, and people—both a survey and a synthesis of visions, ethics, practices, systems, and networks that can make it possible for us to eat well and wisely, now and in the future.” Such an ambitious goal becomes an overview for a book that in fact does attempt to do all these things and to some degree succeeds. First we need a summary of the chapters and then a critique of how closely the author meets the stated goals.

Review by Matt Low

“The Ecology and Management of Prairies in the Central United States”
Author: Chris Helzer
Publisher: The University of Iowa Press (Bur Oak Books)

Review by Chuck Francis

“Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity”

Review by Kathleen Rutledge

“The Ginkgo: An Intellectual and Visionary Coming-of-Age”
Author: John Janovy Jr.
Publisher: The Protistan Press

Review by By John Janovy, Jr.

“The Loren Eiseley Reader”
Author: Loren C. Eiseley
Publisher: Abbatia Press/Loren Eiseley Society

The Loren Eiseley Reader,” published by the Loren Eiseley Society (LES) and pushed to fruition by Bing Chen, the society’s unabashedly enthusiastic president, is a labor of love and an act of honor. It’s also an excellent example of what happens when a group of idealistic, insightful and well-educated people decide that their intellectual hero must not sink into the electronic quicksand of our digital age. Starting with his essays in Harper’s and his first book, “The Immense Journey,” Eiseley began telling us about the human condition, drawing upon his anthropological experience and sharing a personal vision that is sometimes disturbing but always enlightening. As much as any other writer, he came close to answering the leading question of our time: What is a human being? The society’s intent was to ensure that Eiseley’s answer does not disappear from our collective memory.

Review by Peter Eberhardt

"Prairie Fire"
Author: Dan Armstrong
Publisher: iUniverse

Despite all that’s gone wrong, we’ve got something big going for us right now,” says National Grange President Forest Mahan to a grange hall full of angry farmers in response to a grain harvest shortfall in Asia that has the wheat they sold cash-advance in January for $4.50 a bushel selling at $12 in June. “The grain reserves are down to almost nothing. Meaning what we have in the field right now in wheat and corn represents a sizeable portion of what’s available worldwide.

Review by M. Shahid Kamal

“A Necessary Engagement”
Author: Emile A. Nakhleh
Publisher: Princeton University Press

A Necessary Engagement” is a very timely and comprehensive book on the subject of examining and analyzing global terrorism and Islamic radicalism, as well as reinventing America’s relations with the Muslim world. The author, Emile A. Nakhleh, is very well versed and qualified on the subject.

Review by By George W. Neubert

“American Quilts in the Modern Age, 1870–1940”
Co-editors: Patricia Cox Crews and Marin F. Hanson
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press

American Quilts in the Modern Age, 1870–1940” is an important recent publication produced by the International Quilt Study Center (IQSC) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln that examines quilt making in the United States from the Civil War to World War II from both an artistic and historic perspective.

Design for Democracy: Ballot and Election Design
Author: Marcia Lausen
Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Review by DiAnna Schimek

The flawed process of the 2000 presidential election triggered the examination of the election process in the United States. As a result, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) was passed by Congress in 2002 to encourage states to revise their voting systems, and financial incentives were made available to states to implement the provisions of the act. Most states have now adopted either the optical scan or the DRE (touch-screen computers) systems and have abandoned the punch card machines with their “hanging chads” and difficult-to-interpret ballots.