The Tallgrass Prairie Reader
John T. Price
(Editor)
Description
The tallgrass prairie of the early 1800s, a beautiful and seemingly endless landscape of wildflowers and grasses, is now a tiny remnant of its former expanse. As a literary landscape, with much of the American environmental imagination focused on a mainstream notion of more spectacular examples of wild beauty, tallgrass is even more neglected. Prairie author and advocate John T. Price wondered what it would take to restore tallgrass prairie to its rightful place at the center of our collective identity. The answer to that question is his Tallgrass Prairie Reader, a first-of-its-kind collection of literature from and about the tallgrass bioregion. Focusing on autobiographical nonfiction in a wide variety of forms, voices, and approaches--including adventure narrative, spiritual reflection, childhood memoir, Native American perspectives, literary natural history, humor, travel writing and reportage--he honors the ecological diversity of tallgrass itself and provides a range of models for nature writers and students. The chronological arrangement allows readers to experience tallgrass through the eyes and imaginations of forty-two authors from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Writings by very early explorers are followed by works of nineteenth-century authors that reflect the fear, awe, reverence, and thrill of adventure rampant at the time. After 1900, following the destruction of the majority of tallgrass, much of the writing became nostalgic, elegiac, and mythic. A new environmental consciousness asserted itself midcentury, as personal responses to tallgrass were increasingly influenced by larger ecological perspectives. Preservation and restoration--informed by hard science--emerged as major themes. Early twenty-first-century writings demonstrate an awareness of tallgrass environmental history and the need for citizens, including writers, to remember and to help save our once magnificent prairies.
Product Details
Price
$25.00
$23.25
Publisher
University of Iowa Press
Publish Date
June 01, 2014
Pages
334
Dimensions
6.14 X 0.91 X 8.97 inches | 1.17 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9781609382469
BISAC Categories:
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John Price is the award-winning author of the memoirs Man Killed by Pheasant and Other Kinships (Iowa paperback, 2012), Not Just Any Land: A Personal and Literary Journey into the American Grasslands, and Daddy Long Legs: The Natural Education of a Father. He is a professor of English and director of the Creative Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He lives in the Loess Hills of western Iowa.