The 150 Best Kansas Books, Part Two [Encore]

what's your favorite book about kansas what about your favorite one hundred fifty cans of the books i'm kate mcintyre today on k pr percent part two of the one hundred fifty best kansas pushes a list compiled by the center for the book at the state library of kansas we heard about some of the selections on last week's keep your prisons if you missed it that shows archived on our website k pr that hey you that the eu we've got more on others and reading gone today so everything from geology two historical fiction to a cookbook always a campus that's my first guest is rex buchanan he's the interim director of the kansas geological survey and a regular commentator on kansas public radio he has two books on the list of the one hundred fifth the best kansas books kansas geology an introduction to landscapes rocks minerals and fossils originally published in nineteen eighty four and we published in two thousand and his second book is

roadside kansas a traveler's guide to it's geology and landmarks originally published in nineteen eighty seven and re published in two thousand ten both books by the university press of kansas welcome rex the story behind roadside kansas have the book come to be and that's both good turgeon the college all just from the survey who has now retired german i did that together and i think that was largely a function of travel throughout the state have been a lot of interest in not just the geology the state but the plants the animals are history a little of everything and in some respects a book was almost written to please ourselves in the sense of as we drove across the state we saw stuff that was interesting to us that that while iceland on shared interest but it was also interesting to find out that information that i sort of viewed as a first audience are be yourself as huge as you work on these things and

so or the things we're trying to do there was deal a little bit with that issue that reputation kansas has has been flat boring because in our minds obviously we thought that wasn't true and so our feeling was a free to tell folks a few things that they might see as they're going through the state anyway i mean we're not dumb enough to think that wouldn't be it would people go see things just for their own sake before driving through the state anyway as a way to go see some things that if they know about mormonism and mike now far more interesting and maybe also tons of crude jumped to get off the major highways goes some places they would go otherwise and some things about the story didn't know that might make an appreciable bit more was speaking at the kansas highways talk about their methodology of this put you basically picked a couple highways again yeah we did all that we we started with all of that the major reform and hungry like i said neither states that concern and then we pick some

representative carolyn rose that we felt desperately coverage across the entire state and so that was sort of how we define what we're going to cover them were destroyed and drove the things typically it was when we were going someplace else were rude that we had joe say out west to do some other odd for a meeting or for some field work we would work our visitors are drawn to the processed and we went and we really did but i think we drove all of these roads every six or eight times and we're still people that were the only people that we know that have on repeat occasions driven from lawrence to the colorado border stopped turned around and from that fact and so we have done at a number of times a week we drove the repeated in that process and information and there is actually a quarter mile post marker which of those green rectangle or size etc along roads and so if people can pinpoint exactly what future visits or talk about it in a point in the book that under the last one so uk and ideally keep this book in your car roadside kansas and be driving

somewhere in kansas and think i wonder where it kind of geological formation dancing here ideally we believe you should carry it with you all toxic or so boys have with you that would be ideal and not just one copy but i believe that would be ideal but you know it's a camp with a really isn't meant to be on the shelf or on your desk or something like that is really meant to be on the field has a field guide and so yeah i does best when it's in the cubbyhole in the backseat so that when you're going someplace at it you can pull it out and refer to it or maybe use it in a whole variety of ways but it's meant to be dog eared and stained about the news did not disappoint trip so rex am taking off down i seventy heading west couple things i might see along a way that i might not think to look at without my copy of roadside kansas and one of things and this is really something we tried to achieve with this book

is sometimes almost seems to tell us and that in the course of working on that book is if roads go out of their way to avoid interesting scenery and in some respects they do because people build roads wanna take the path of least resistance and wanted to go on up and down hills all the time if they can avoid that so they avoid relief up and down hills recover graphic relief and they try to stick to the path of least resistance so a lot of times if you lose control a little ways off of those major religious see some really pretty interesting and almost startling scenery that you have no ideas there and the best example of that and your question is if you got a take i seventy west go around the town of wilson an ego just get off i seventy at the wilson accident northup wilson reservoir you go through a number of steep sided kenyans will see their decoder sandstone that france really pretty dramatic hills and then a little bit further on you'll see a fence post limestone that use for all of the buildings out there and in the fence posts

and bridges and a variety of other ways it's really i think one more scene a twenty or thirty miles of driving in this entire state but if you're stuck on i seventy you not only won't see it you would even know it's over they're so this that's exactly the kind of experience we were we're looking for this book though that the old side trip up wilson like it would take a half an hour i think is something that everybody ought to do at one point or another in that drive okay so say get off of i seventy and i drive up to wilson or any of the other spots along the road these pointed out in roadside kansas say and this is now much a stretcher that i know nothing about geology how much really hold my hand in this but how come it's background information are you assuming that your readers have you know that's a good question a week we really invested it's not individual audit audience all that geologists use these kind of guards geologist roy's doing field trips wherever they happen to be and is the kind of guidebooks that they use but this one is written with the idea that anybody ought to be able pick it up and use it so you really don't need

any of the kind of technical background a geologist would bring to the table to be able to follow it and affect us part of the reason that we threw in a lot of other information because obviously gemini knew that geology is more important than any other facet of human knowledge that's out there we also understand that i'm not over but it looks like the way we do and so we that's where we included information about history and plants an animals and baseball players from cannes isn't really almost anything that we could think of that would bring along those people who might not be inherently interest in the geology but they might be interested in body or birds are or whatever we would pull out a place name information in there because i think that both keeps people interested in it reveals something about the old the kansas landscape when you can find out why certain counties are named the way they are or cans or pork or rivers or crooks or whatever it's just you guys are richer for knowledge of what the state is all about and that so we really were just focused on the

geology that although that's obviously sore foot the bill look is built away on which you try to accommodate a whole variety of interest than anybody can can handle the book i really had anybody come up and say that that there was something in their lives so technical it can handle if the idea behind roadside kansas's you throw it in your car and take it with you what the idea behind kansas geology of the book is a lot different it really is man almost more as a reference point book that's aimed at talking about the political landscape still fossils rocks and minerals that are in the state and it's more of a book that for somebody who's say gotta serve or casual interest in geology but that one or more about the signs that would be the book that they would turn to it's not really it's not highly technical again almost anybody could handle it but it's more background kind of information as opposed to what you're actually seeing and out on the highways and one thing it probably does cover in more depth than a roadside kansas's fossils which kansas has all along history produce a lot of really spectacular vertebrate fossils

from the dinosaur periods and those are described americans a fair amount of detail very nicely by chapter by get better and so it does bring that kind of it's almost one of those if you want learn more kinds of books if you you've got a taste in her interest and it's a good kind of another beginning touch point to start so maybe start out buying roadside kansas going and seeing some sites realizing that doj really does hold some interest for you and then by year kansas geology but a little more you know i think you should buy multiple copies of both of them at the same time feel you should you should you should always buy as many books as you could possibly by and you never know when you're going that when they're going to come in handy so you don't do it to make extra christmas gifts they're found a better bookstores and you can tell the better bookstores because they will have these books and soulful that's what the cops you know that's why woodward thank you so much for coming and you know that's rex buchanan author of kansas

geology and co author of roadside kansas both published by the university press of kansas as you would expect the list of the one hundred fifty best kansas books include a number of books about kansas history and the people who have shaped our state john brown to bob dole movers and shakers in kansas history is a collection of twenty six essays about twenty seven kansans covering the civil war period through the present virgil dean is the editor of john brown to bob dole welcome back for joe thank you and how did you go about picking these particular kansans it was a guerilla as you can imagine is a pretty pretty tough exercise to come up with only twenty six or twenty seven had to deal with and i approached it and in the number of the number of criteria really that i tried to use first of all that projects started with some discussions with

fred willard at a university press of kansas i was interested in something of a book something lot of this kind and asked me to basically asked me to make a proposal to the press and so i had it began making muscle actions in justifying why selections from the very beginning and out i decided early on that i wanted since we were approaching the at that time to assess with centennial of this territory or period of the kansas nebraska act in eating fifty four that would start with making fifty four and try to go pretty much to the president and cover some important themes or thematic periods in the state's history and so wanted individuals on to take individuals that i felt would allow allow us to explore not only the person's alive but the different things that they were involved in where there was a revolution as i'm or free state movement for

sustainability of agriculture at the end of the book or late nineteenth early twentieth century politics with the case of bob dylan so people would help us cover the range of kansas history and explore a lot of different issues and in addition to the individual's life and also were those people who you know you're there are a few people that you just about have to include john brown and bob dole of the most prominent examples perhaps facile if you named the body as fairs i got his name later or so that's another story another part of a story we can tell her later but there's also a lot of people that i think in twenty some years of studying kansas history are important that people really dont know today so i would also say that it's from the very beginning i didn't want to be a book about famous kansas i don't call it a book about famous kansas at all because of what's fame first of all make things very fleeting a people who are famous in the eighty nine he's nobody's heard of today our best case in point is john jingles

to just log who's about to lose his place in the state capital because somebody decided that they didn't know who he was in it that they would remove them but somebody better known in hand that happened to the other one too george click the first democratic governor of the state of kansas was in statuary hall on in the capitol in washington removed a few years ago to make room for eisenhower because some people decided well we have to have somebody that people recognize now you divide your twenties savin kansans into three categories to capture as it enters your motivators and your innovators how do you characterize each of those qualities well i started out actually at the beginning i i suggested that the title newcomer the working title for the book was agitators motivators and innovators and i was going to have something like

kansans who made a difference i kept the theme and change the title basically but the underlying organization end up a structure are really still based around this idea of agitators motivators innovators and i defined or record kind of interpretive ahead to find educators as individuals too excited public opinion and moved their fellow citizens to act into action in response to a real or perceived political social or economic problem somebody like john brown who would be probably everybody would probably agree that they were an agitator they were out chanting in because trying to get people to follow them and do something and they were too concerned about how far they took their there are since you're there in many cases a little bit more extreme oh mary elizabeth police would be in that category during a populist fury has also covered and there are several others who would be in that category

than motivators to me were people who just took a little bit more traditional approach to iraq to causing change a lot more traditional than the agitators perhaps and day out or less you know a significant and often had a more prominent impact i think because just the way that they each day guided tried to lead people the person who i wrote about walter huntsman former governor and federal judge i put in that category bob dole i would put that we put in that can work they're using that people who generally are working with in the political structure i'd they would be very unlikely to go outside the bounds of that political structure or the the norm a what's commonly accepted behavior worry among white would be another one that i would think would be in that category motivator you could argue he was perhaps an innovator in some areas to get and there's a lot of

crossover from this and you could make a case for them being in one or the other but that's that's i looked at somebody that we would be pretty traditional approach that doesn't mean that the things that they had worked for will really conservative or or not liberal radical in some respects but what they were probably working within the system to accomplish change in using produced pretty well accepted methodology to try to make that happen and then what about your innovators innovators i looked at as individuals who effected change through the introduction of new ideas or methods of doing everything from growing and grinding wheat to protecting the public health so public health the center for mind who is without doubt it's an important cans and fourteen figure nationally during the early nineteenth early twentieth century and very innovative in his approach to in his approach to getting these kinds of things introduced an accomplished

our it is coming up with new ideas about pain some cases he was really out front of the ways he figured out ways to promote something that may be an idea that was already around but he was still able to effectively come up with ways to get the public to buy into it as far as the agricultural concerns are concerned bernard work in teams won that i have and he was out part of the mennonite migration meeting seventies to central kansas and in the end the introduction of parliament we end in particular was with burr or contain them milling industry hard winter wheat was only good that could be ground effectively and he came up with crosses sees that that made them more possible and in the process developing industry technologically and in its scope and really turn kansas into something that we don't think about too often and that's kind of i'm the milling state i mean you can you can now

has norman solomon wrote that essay has argued it kansas is a milling state during the late nineteenth and much of the twentieth century or flour milling is really significant and it's a major industry in quite a number of teams throughout the state and oregon team is just is this is important in their development as anyone you can you can cite perhaps the most important person in that area virgil as you mentioned one of the kansas movers and shakers you cover in your book is newspaper editor william allen white the sage of emporia do you have an excerpt from sally griffith essay on william allen white you could share with us yeah just haven't is the short paragraph that i think kind of any way comic encapsulates where he was at and how he moved into it is his views changed i think that's one of the things it's really interesting about white and makes i'm somebody who i've always been fascinated by as is his ability to

grow and change over the years and then in the early part of the book where she's kind of setting this up that says she's she says we know what was it an american market archetype yet as the story suggests he also lived in a particular time employees one spanning a significant transformation in american history and then talks a little bit about the changes that were taking place in not only in whites outlook and his political social home technological the thoughts about technology and all that man because that's what the progressive era is really all about is the change that was going on and how we adapt to that go from from a more traditional time to a very different time and then she says as the culture wars of the late twentieth century showed ideology has continued to play an important role in america over a long and active life in as journalist author

politician pundit white observed and helped shape the period in which ideological and technical approaches first competed for primacy he consistently served as a mediator between the old and the new reflecting the compelling issues of the day while demonstrating a remarkable ability to continue to grow in the breadth of his sympathies and understanding and it's a lot packed in the paragraph i think and it really does sale a lot of the women why not that he didn't have his flaws in india and the interesting thing about why it is that he became famous in at ninety six by writing his best known perhaps to us today at least editorial what's the matter with kansas and it's a theme or at least at a phrase that we've repeated over and over again over the years and daggett it was on

a tirade against the populous of the period and in fact the story goes a white who had been an indian or not and publisher of the inquiry gives every year at that time still in his late twenties oh was on the street coming back to his office in downtown korea and he was accosted or you know annoyed by some populists in the street anyone back to his office just before he was going off for vacation in leading hot kansas on august and going out to estes park where they always went for vacation in the summer months and you went back and in there stop the editorial what's the matter with kansas and it hit the press it became so popular the republicans who are in the middle of the mckinlay brian presidential campaign that white almost overnight became celebrity in the republican party and they re printed the essay over and over again during the campaign and later but it's interesting that somebody who would later be remembered for

making it a transition to have to have a strong backer of fear roosevelt and kansas republican or kansas progressive ism republican criticism about would be launched by a very reactionary editorial that was very critical of some of the individuals he actually i'll those i think was very hard for him to admit he executed meyer in later years but he made a very significant transition in gross in his cell his outlook and that's i think some of part of what what sally is is giving him a letter as you might expect william allen white appears several times on the list of the one hundred fifty best kansas books there's his pulitzer prize winning autobiography his nineteen thirty seven book forty years on main street and a biography for children from emporia the story of william allen white bye beverly olson bowler published in two thousand seven by kansas city star books sally

griffith essay on william allen white appears in john brown to bob dole movers and shakers in kansas history edited by virgil dean brazil thanks for coming in today thank you for having me and j mcintyre you're listening to k pr presents on kansas public radio we'll travel back in time to hear about our next book on the list of the one hundred fifty best kansas books oh so johnson of sununu was an explorer aviator and filmmaker who chronicled her life in her book i married adventure published in nineteen forty or so johnson as portrayed here by kansas historian karen ray please call where we had been told panel activity was still practiced so much and i hire a boatman to take as they are landed and as we landed a ragtag

group of natives medicine the beach and told us that their chief would like to do this ok we said sir martin county's camera gear that our bags of trade goods and try to follow these natives up a winding dangerous mountain trail for what seemed like hours in clearing where they were mourning his insights extend their a few moments and then our of the jungle stepped most magnificent man i ever seen he was tall muscular noble looking clearly a chief and this was not a party chief of the of the big numbers tried i heard the noise behind me realize that the work of the camera martin had phil neither party's interest he said to me but the easier for a spouse or open to take lights so i start opening up by reagan handing him beads and outgrow

something that's about the rare not the cartel but for me my army straight to my skin color didn't come on that surprising to a greater piece of raw bark weren't supporting surprise return ping me not just might get a look at the roots of my hear billy graham i hear truly a variety look the back of the neck finally at this time are stopped filling in which to rally and grad parties headed a great big handshake oddly shook his hand and turned to shake my hand and i felt relieved until his other hand close over my big rally in grand report and i thought i was afraid just live in a british frigate sailed into the bay and markets are screaming man oh man or implying that the boat had come to rescue us they disappeared i turned right and martin gradually maybe walk slowly without fear outside of the indians

they have resorted to run crowell reading through the jumble of priors than vives resting at times like my heart was beating eleven and eight drums finally release date on to the beach just as the party's been emerge behind is there is a practice into the boat i just collapsed and he did the bottom of it ah never been so glad to get back to our main ship and even lauren confessed to being afraid of that in fact he wrote in his diary that night now that i've confronted the big adventure it terrified me were going home never looking for cannibals again which is exactly what we did but we got home and thirty the party was far better than ever and green what made a feature film of a consumer either party's scowling face was looming in theaters all over the united states well with all the glory we forgot about our plates never go searching again and

that's the beginning of our nearly twenty years of adventures that's alissa johnson of senate portrayed by historian karen ray of topeka oh so johnson chronicled her life exploring the world in her book i married adventure published in nineteen forty and now another first person portrayal from akp our archives we travel back to civil war era kansas to meet a crime ridden echols quran and nickels crisscross that country in the eighteen hundreds speaking out on property rights for women abolition and temperance her crusade brought her to free say kansas where she and her family farmed in southern douglas county and then move to queen borrow now part of kansas city kansas are inimical speaks here through the voice of diane i cough author of revolutionary heart the life of corona nichols and the pioneering crusade for women's rights anders as my adopted home though i spent my first forty four years in the east yet i have

cast my lot with kansas tom wheeler hello there is a tie to her they saw that i could not i do i want to my husband came to kansas for a milder climate if you could believe that my sons came to seek their fortunes in the west but i came to kansas to work for our government of the quality liberty fraternity my friends told me you are going to carry yourself in kansas just at the point where you could have done much good in vermont perhaps perhaps but i was tired of this slow progress in conservative old vermont every time we took one step forward we were dragging steps that but in kansas

in the new state tv i thought things might be different i saw a chance for success in my heart to go i remember my first day in kansas it was the fall of a team fifty four one of those splendid autumn days like no place else except new england with attorneys already in golden boy and oranges we're riding along and the coach from kansas city where we pulled into the mr grant aid office in lawrence there was a coup began hiring and i thought to myself what a popular and the colonel mosby to get such a reception but then dr robinson now governor robinson came out of an immigrant aid office laughing he said the cheering was for me well i've seen some of the boys had been arguing about women's rights once said he wished the others could hear susan b anthony on the subject of the second city which they could hear the

reverend antoinette brown said he thought the best economists such a wordsmith says nichols of vermont just when the announcement came that my stagecoach have arrived in lawrence and no two ways about it those boys pestered me to lecture that very evening i was of course exhausted from my long journey but the following evening at the ready and the town dinner bell everyone gathered at the new main house it was quite now seeing the man who lounged on bundles of hay strewn about the floor lewis said more properly and mr restaurants that line the side in the house the meeting house roof was starkly pitch from its top all the way to the ground and patched with prairie hey so if anyone got too close to the walls the haywood tickle their noses they had star couple of lanterns from the ceiling i remember the the software

though they cast it faces of those those hopeful immigrants that pleased me very much i stepped up to my podium a couple of tool boxes piled on top of each other and deliver the first lecture i daresay and women's rights in kansas territory oh there there was an openness to women's rights in kansas at that time that i never saw any place else except perhaps wisconsin where i have lectured the previous year but in my home state of vermont where i had been the editor of the progressive political newspaper for over ten years now the door was open to me an account of my orchestra rock only is especially on suffrage the right to vote so i i suppose my my views and temperance were too extreme for song the run sellers brought shops hotels and taverns were ardent spirits were

sold illegally an on air we're glad to see me you know one of them told my mother that i'm not never very worked up on the subject and they were all happy to see me vermont mice in the days my sympathies have always been with their wives and the children of drunkards no my first husband was not a drunkard he did not support our family i had done it from the fur so i i knew what it was like to be an american without support woman is indeed the greatest suffer and analyze the most states married women are powerless to do anything but into her a wife's property her wages even every article of her clothing always be among the lake to her husband and there's nothing that you can do to protect herself and her babies the wife has no legal protection against a

drunken irresponsible or even an abusive husband that's why i'm for temperance alcohol is the root cause of so many those in our society you're listening to the rain and nickels portrayed here by diana i cough author of revolutionary heart the life of corona nichols and the pioneering crusade for women's rights just the other day my neighbor feeling jackson came to me had asked when a woman asked her to be free you must hide caroline caroline i hashed out of the bushes that the young woman her face was not at her clothing was torn her one arm hung lead today at her side but it was her eyes that riveted me they were filled with the consternation and anxiety

common to the fugitive running from the tyrant who hasn't slave her but there was something more i soon learned about it was a notion of grief that very morning paralyzed little daughter and this all the way from her to a slave master running south into texas this brave woman put up a tremendous fight and they had to break her arm to wrench the little girl from her later in the day she manage her own landscape and here she was forty has laid hundreds are circling that are looking for caroline we must act hastily as you just said but where i thought for a moment then it came to me my underground cistern it was clean and dry likely we how caroline climb

down a ladder into the cistern i handed down a charitable comforter we replace the lid mr johnson went home caroline and i were left alone for the long night she had terrible pain both physical and mental all night long i tiptoed back and forth and slippered feet between my house in caroline's hiding place keeping a sharp lookout and whispering words of comfort to caroline in herself toward fresh hot coffee cup down to her i drank my own coffee seated on the floor near the door from whence i could see on the approaches to my house apparently cheerful but ray image from our of indignation and fear a nation and a government that protects leo presser and now

isn't the extent of oppression and fear of a prolonged incarceration for caroline but ford dodd the slave hunters rode out of town for two rs and by the next evening carolina and another young woman had hidden themselves in the back of a wagon and were heading north to leavenworth the next stop on their bittersweet journey to freedom these are difficult times my friends but let us have faith are constant ally in the struggle and if we lose faith there's a hard times never last for ever and the causes for which we gladly dedicate our lives will triumph in the end god has no

failure that was dying and i can't arthur a revolutionary heart portraying the book's subject crusader corona nichols this portrayal was recorded at the two thousand a river city reading festival in lawrence you can hear an expanded version archived on our website k pr that hey you that edu civil war era kansas is the setting for our next two books sissy and all parts together both books are by either tarmac of lawrence tom thanks for coming in today where different us reportedly sissy and all parts together are the first two installments in that jessica radford trilogy tom who is jessica radford will gesture authorities are shia an archetype of veiled woman living in a nineteenth century who has a a strong interest in their own woman either being a sissy the first line of the book a tight with her characters because she comes in a stagecoach rise of the foot in front of the out of his hotel

answer yes state goes from cairo was a square off and she says she's on helplessness you can get off the stage with yourself and it shows you where she's coming from and the baker takes him there says he actually takes you from i thought the end of summer of sixty two to the yard or dissipate as if it's free which is the culmination of the cooperate of lawrence and so they're serving cabinet picks about thomas you're to have twelve time span in just the rapper's life i should've thought about it because people will probably ask about sissy as a title is a strange title i've been told that was sissy is a black ten year old angel ohio who aren't nasa comfort no i know isn't a lead girl who actually was as the state so we have in la as they as a girl who escaped an we have citizen angel moya she could see the angel so at the beginning of the book starts with the fact

it just escaped from the slave or c cross the missouri river her mother and four she has been captured by the slivers and she is so discovered by an underground railroad conductor they model how are envious quarter to a farmhouse that is owned by dj all right write for family and representatives are in a dancer so that's our sets up the beginning of the book tom i'd like you to read me an excerpt from says the justice added up at this point a couple of years have passed and jessica radford is now working as a nanny for on a howler he's away it one evening and while he's away she had to go to study diseases of the paper and i was born on his book jus cuz eyes widened in shock she kind of the names on a list thirty one maybe these were thirty one slaves i'll help escape as a conductor for the underground railroad lazarus was named year so was no way out i never talked about the slaves he helped set free but here was a

written record perhaps he would be upset if he knew she had seen this there was another notation a margin was as he was starting to three that have something to do with those lazy upset free of course as a listener he was starting to three or so says do not forget the shah's lawyer strangers for doing so some people have so hostile of angels without knowing it that's an excerpt from fifth the book one in the jessica radford trilogy by lawrence author tarmac the second book in a trilogy all parts together also made the one hundred fifty best kansas books last time how these two books fit together the question what i like to do to address that is to first tell you how i came up with that title for all parts together and that power comes up from a walt whitman quote and i called his insurer is light poles all parts together death tolls while parts together and i was just as they record and see that understand a zipper services was at me and as a civil war progressed and did not kill them their lives for lawson

and how our hearts are broken and families got destroyed then she thinks she knows what answers the polls all parts together so the president make a good title because awesome and cynicism about just as well about calling for yourself against in spite of all the stress and now in hardship at that and think about her and people that you love all parts together and sissy our parts one and two of that jessica radford trilogy by lawrence author tarmac tom congratulations on being named to be one hundred fifty best kansas books list and thanks for coming in today the one hundred fifty best kansas books list includes a number of children's books as well as you'd expect little house on the prairie by laura ingalls wilder is on the list as are several books illustrated by artist brad snead children's book authors devon scaly end and korey stana sex gilliam have to picture books for children on the lest one kansas farmer kansas number book and as is for sunflower you can listen to an entire kbr

prisons on the book passes for sunflower it's archived on our website k pr that hey you got edu i had the chance to visit with the scallions when their book one kansas farmer was named a kansas notable book they jointly by telephone from their home in detroit howe if you decide to do that number but based on campus well at the other publishers with amber prayer for the only golf of the books one for each day corinna wrote essays for sunflower which is the camp's alphabet book and the hunger for those think it worked so well in august bell of a country that when they started getting an accounting a number of books and i have done the national number book which is called one nation and so well we really obvious choice for the king of this book you know we don't write in now as i mentioned your husband and wife team how did you divide up who did what a poet a rhymer and i like looking up and i get a report

that really well the way it should open up the book one kansas farmer and set i'm sure you could add number book a million different ways but i loved being able to have numbers that are specific to something instead of just sort of random numbers from growing up in kansas korean leverage with an ira bailey remembers the fines on the highway one kansas farmer in a field of amber grain looking after cattle we checked the sky for rain you have a piece of bread you have a flight to meet one kansas farmer grows a lot of what you need and of course refers to the fight but they're one kansas farmer feed more than a hundred and twenty eight people plus you find the course of the full one and but updating that would've been through a perfect record a complaint that very next page that we'll find something specific for to use all right a little bitty poke sang at pratt about dodge city a prairie walt became more songs from to this very day thing about our kansas home with a deer and antelope play a great story about the how the american

town the people originally claimed her royalties and rights for the fall when it first came out it turned out it was to house from kansas who weren't the preacher higley and then kelly there's no federal full court your favorite charity and of the book in the prairie chicken for sure and the elevator down with a kind of cue that upon opinion that are home now an absolutely love it and that because we you know you try to integrate all the things that came to camp with each state had its identity i don't like if patriot feat burdett faith in our flower all the things that one of the things is very strongly recognized with can't have that prairie chicken and i think they're wonderful creatures have never actually seen one in the wild which i would've loved to have that i haven't that wanted to include them anyway and they ended up at number twelve and the counter to catch a glance at a little bar to think big and round they go to get the chicken account the twelfth

prairie chickens do what we're going through here and then lastly miller but i think at the core and i both really really one of those pieces of kansas and kansas were grip the students all over the place for the what we use the number thirty you need to build a fence but haven't got a tree nothing the prairie grass as far as you can see we use thirty post rocks just like the pioneers and for horses are dairy cows and skiers and of course for the finest first governor a treeless landscape that works around the world they were going to build fences with lumber so far away but the family feud though just a little bit of the birth of the limestone it was soft enough to cut it cut the post poll about him in the air they would dr hartman from a neighbor still standing there especially if you have a cell phone and that explanation and other explanations of the numbers are on the side of each page so it's not just a number but it's also a lot of kansas history yeah that was a lot of fun and you know i had grown up there in the marley family had taken my

campaign history back in fourth grade but so much of it i'd like just didn't remember and so when we had the opportunity to do the number of rockets world the alphabet book the characters began to think that i you may remember the little better and largely forgotten i'd never known to learn more about that they say have never going to do that with us really sad and it was really bright stroke or a publisher that has kind of a format that they came up with with the very first alphabet book that they fear that we follow that with mrs for sunflowers well if there's a book i works on two levels there's a rhyme that works for a much younger readers cause rhymes work really well especially when you're trying to learn things and then the sidebars earn us a chance to kind of maybe you're going alone for older age group american elite and the second of flush things out loud and i have to tell you i learned a thing or two on your side bars again i've been talking to devon and korey civilian they're the authors of one kansas farmer kansas notable book congratulations for making the kansas notables lowest

that's devon scaly end and korey stana six kelly and i talked to them by telephone in two thousand ten when their book one kansas farmer was named a kansas notable book one kansas farmer along with their book as it's for sunflower were named among the one hundred fifty best kansas books my last guest today is the author of a very different type of book jeannie kerry is the co author of a kansas cookbook published in nineteen eighty nine by the university press of kansas welcome jamie pie tastes nice to be here and how much longer the list of their one hundred fifty best kansas berkes i could be wrong about this but i think yours may be the only cookbook what's the idea behind writing at kansas themed cook book well my husband frank who i co wrote the book with and i were interested in cooking and we were interested in what people were cooking in kansas and matt we had written a

little self published book along the way and some people at the university press of kansas saw that book and they call us and ask us if we'd be interested in writing a book about kansas cooking this was in may of nineteen eighty eight the university press of kansas state really stirred up a hornet's nest when they sent out a press release to newspapers across the state soliciting recipes for the kansas cookbook and in very least they quoted dateline america article in which charles crawl parent travelers advisory to those heading west from kansas city any he warned people that you better stock up on peanut butter because there's going to be anything to eat until you get to denver and then he went on to call cannes is the gastronomical wasteland of america so you can imagine that that really stirred people up and they're people began senate sending us the recipes and not all of the recipes but their family histories their stories their positive comments saying you know we're so glad some is gonna write a book about kansas

so as you can imagine our for franken i it was a unique experience that we had and we were just so energized by the positive support as we start to write the book so it was a very exciting time for us so what is it about these recipes that make them particularly kansan well a lot of things that i we have recipes that are family favorites that have been passed down in families for a long time for many many years and people tell us the stories about their families and about when their families came to kansas and many of them are ethnic recipes from the immigrants that are sold here in the states we also have recipes from cattle ranchers and from from people who grew we don't have the big you know wheat harvest donors and also we'd we did some contemporary recipes to really showcase all of the wonderful ingredients that we have here in kansas to work with or speaking of where its books crack open the cookbook and let's pick out a recipe and tell me a

little bit about it and what makes it can't win ok well i there are so many it's hard to know where to began i was thinking one of them is a recipe that franken i just let it we make it all the time it's called the bill's best ever meatloaf and it was submitted by lou bill meyer from seoul the grove kansas and her family is in the cattle business and they as far as i know are still on the family still on the original homestead it's over a hundred years old they or proud of the cattle and that the fees that they raise and this is one of their family favorite recipes so just on like that another example as the recipe for beer rocks by esther reilly from florence and of course i was i'm a recipe came to kansas with of all the germans he emigrated from russia and it is a very very popular recipe down in south central and western kansas and it's a yeast pastry filled with ground beef and in their cabbage and you'll find it at festivals down there and people make them in their homes and in earlier times he might stick and iraq or two in your pocket

pocket and carried out to the field so he'll have something be during the days but i have to tell you that you know in all the recipes that we did what kansas seem to like very again by the recipes that were sent to us in there were so many is desserts and among them apple pie seem to be a favorite so we have seven different kinds of apple pies and unspoken are all very different very interesting but my personal favorite and frank's to do is sound the bird sugar pie from a lady named quiet while rowan and aspirin kansas and she said that in nineteen twenty eight her father brought this recipe home to his wife because the neighbors have served it when he was on a thrashing created became their family favorite that they passed on to your family over the years they're just so many recipes like that in the book that people are still making today some of them have been will modernize that this family connections are very important here to people in our state and then it keeps their heritage alive speaking in

deserts tell me the story behind mary kelly's home front chocolate cake oh yes thats a good one well nina during world war two when people were conserving making a cake was a luxury and that most cakes call for butter but it was really i'm just too expensive to be using your rationing stamps to purchase better and so you could make a cake by using clarified chicken fat and that means you know you're most everybody in a chicken in the pot so you boil your chicken and then you straighten out the broth and let theirs fat congeal on top and then you could take that fat often you can use it for cooking all kinds of things and it's really quite delicious to use that kind of phantom making biscuits and brands and things like that but it was really delicious yeah delicious flavor so is great for things like that that you can use it to make a cake and i made this cake and it was a perfectly delicious cake because in a way the flavors very rich like murder and so you could use russia stands for something more important and to save your chicken fat

for the cake safely down on another lull now i've tasted find a firefight made for eu wouldn't probably know that it was chiquita happens to that butter me a richness to the cages the same way better word jeannie there are over four hundred recipes in this book did you and frank at the mall well we tried to most of them we did it because we have to test things that sometimes recipes were very well written or even they were something was let doubts we really had to test everything to make sure everything was right i well i'm in and i am minute and to do this freely and so's frank says the beginning and that is that we did not test the recipe for two recipes one was the buffalo barbecue and that was a recipe from author david dairy and the reason is because the calls for one hundred pounds of buffalo me and i'm digging a pit in your backyard to cook again yeah you know a buffalo calf the other one was for is the their barbeque

beaver now there is because for boiling out one thirty to sixty pound fully dressed beaver images district have all the fat off of it because it would be very queasy if you down and then you after you boil and then you finish it with a barbeque sauce and you know i thought what is take the guys working for him on that one i'd been visiting with jane enough carey she and her husband frank kerry are coauthors of the kansas cookbook published by university press of kansas jimmy thanks for stopping by today thank you for having me the kansas cookbook i married adventure revolutionary heart one kansas farmer says see all parts together john brown to bob dole's kansas geology roadside kansas these are just nine of the selections on the one hundred fifty best kansas books list compiled by the center for the book at the state library of kansas you can find the entire list on the

state library's website or by entering one hundred fifty best kansas books in your favorite search engine i'm kate mcintyre i hope you've enjoyed this look at some of the best books about kansas you can hear about eight other books that made the list on last week's k pr presents its archives at our website k pr that hey you got the eu university press of kansas has generously given kansas public radio a copy of today's first book to give away if you'd like a chance to win the roadside kansas by rex buchanan and james mccauley drop me a line at tate mcentire actress hey you that edu that's k n c i n t y r e k u that ed you keep your prisons as a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas