There were no bats or balls on the campus of Wichita State University in the spring of 1977. Five years later, the resurrected varsity baseball program was in the final game of the College World Series, fulfilling the seemingly impossible promise made by Gene Stephenson when he began recruiting players to a place that didn't even have a practice field. Stephenson would lead the Shockers for over three decades, but those first five years with the team set him on the course that put him amon...

The Flint Hills stretch across eighty-two thousand square miles of American history in a long, rocked-up, grassed-up finger pointing from the Oklahoma border all the way to Nebraska. This history winds though the mythos of the cowboy, climbing among families built on fierce independence, respect for the land and the water, and stubborn refusal to sacrifice a way of life to enforced economic change. These stories tell the hard truths of hard people whose traditional values have carried them...

John E. Brown (April 2, 1879 February 12, 1957) was a prominent Methodist evangelist, publisher, radio pioneer, and educator in the first half of the twentieth century. In 1919, he established John Brown University, one of Arkansas’ leading private universities to provide an interdenominational, Christian education for needy students. He was also the leading figure in securing passage of a law prohibiting the sale of alcohol in Benton County, a ban that continued into the twenty-first cent...

These true stories of people who work and live in the spectacular mountain wilderness of Alberta and British Columbia are filled with humour, keen observations about man and nature, and memorable human and animal characters. Old-time cowboys Johnny and Cal offer their no-nonsense brand of homespun wisdom. Wasp, the talented saddle horse, teaches his rider more than just horsemanship. From life-and-death drama to peaceful meditations, these tales capture the danger and beauty of the mountai...

Before Canyonlands was a national park, before tourists discovered the wildness and wonder of the Maze and the Land of Standing Rocks, before the San Rafael Desert became a hive of the mineral exploration, the lands west of the Colorado and Green Rivers to the San Rafael Swell and from the Book Cliffs and San Rafael River south to the dirty Devil River and the Henry Mountains were pastures for the stock of hardscrabble cowboys and sheep ranchers.Often based in the nearby villages o...

"[A] charming memoir of renowned western novelist Kelton's early years in the saddle, at the desk and in the trench . . . a pleasure through and through." — Kirkus ReviewsVoted the "Best Western writer of all time" by his peers, Elmer Kelton wrote fifty novels that form a testament and tribute to the American West.But who is that Texas gentleman with the white Stetson and rimless eyeglasses whose friendly face appears on so many book jackets?

In his square-sterned canoe, Alaskan author Dan O'Neill set off down the majestic Yukon River, beginning at Dawson, Yukon Territory, site of the Klondike gold rush. The journey he makes to Circle City, Alaska, is more than a voyage into northern wilderness, it is an expedition into the history of the river and a record of the inimitable inhabitants of the region, historic and contemporary. A literary kin of John Muir's Travels in Alaska and John McPhee's Coming into the Countr...

For more than forty years the prairies of South Dakota have been Dan O’Brien’s home. Working as a writer and an endangered species biologist, he became convinced that returning free-roaming buffalo to the grasslands would return natural balance to the region and reestablish the undulating prairie lost through poor land management and overzealous farming. In 1998 he bought his first buffalo and began the task of converting a cattle ranch into an ethically run buffalo ranch.Wild ...

Big deer and big diamonds both harvested on the same weekend. This is the true story of how the author shot the two, largest bucks of his fifteen-year deer hunting adventure. And he got these 8-point and 10-point bucks within 24 hours of each other! On that same weekend two of his diamond mining buddies found two large diamonds less than a mile away at southwest Arkansas' Crater of Diamonds State Park. Read this exciting adventure of discovery.

Everything's bigger in Texas. Do people laugh louder in Texas? You bet they do. And, you'll be laughing really loud at the jokes and riddles in 101 Hilarious Texas Jokes - Lone Star Jokes & Riddles. These funny jokes and riddles will tickle your Texas-sized funny bone and have you laughing out loud and asking for more.

See the wild horses run! The Pryor Mountain Mustangs have roamed the high desert and mountains of the American West for centuries. Descended from steeds brought over by the Spanish conquistadores, their untamable nature and enduring courage inspire awe in all who have the chance to see them. Photographer Lynne Pomeranz spent two years with these magnificent creatures along the Montana-Wyoming state line, and her startlingly intimate photographs capture the resilience and free spirit that d...

Living in timeworn farmhouses her father never owned, Mary Ellen (Minnehan) Bailey describes a childhood on the Nebraska prairie that few children would comprehend in todays digital world. She is excited to live in a house with electricity but without indoor plumbing, recounts tornado alerts and the great blizzard of 1949. She milks cows, rides Smokey her favorite horse, drives a tractor, and loves dogs, school and the little town of Hay Springs. She becomes a school teacher, marries a wil...