Hayseeds, Moralizers, and Methodists

Hayseeds, Moralizers, and Methodists PDF Author: Robert Smith Bader
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
The tattered image of modern-day Kansas and how it got that way is the subject of this pioneering and wonderfully entertaining book. Robert Smith Bader traces the rise and fall of the state's reputation from the turn of the century--when it was a national leader in the two most prominent sociopolitical movements of the era, Progressivism and prohibition--through the Jazz Age--when Kansas came to epitomize strait-laced, fundamentalist values (H.L. Mencken proclaimed it the quintessential "cow state," chock-full of hayseeds, moralizers, and Methodists)--to today's consensus view of Kansas as drab and boring. The book concludes with a marvelous survey of recent popular culture and with a call for a reexamination of the state's historic strengths.

Hayseeds, Moralizers, and Methodists

Hayseeds, Moralizers, and Methodists PDF Author: Robert Smith Bader
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Get Book

Book Description
The tattered image of modern-day Kansas and how it got that way is the subject of this pioneering and wonderfully entertaining book. Robert Smith Bader traces the rise and fall of the state's reputation from the turn of the century--when it was a national leader in the two most prominent sociopolitical movements of the era, Progressivism and prohibition--through the Jazz Age--when Kansas came to epitomize strait-laced, fundamentalist values (H.L. Mencken proclaimed it the quintessential "cow state," chock-full of hayseeds, moralizers, and Methodists)--to today's consensus view of Kansas as drab and boring. The book concludes with a marvelous survey of recent popular culture and with a call for a reexamination of the state's historic strengths.

Carry A. Nation

Carry A. Nation PDF Author: Fran Grace
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253108333
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
Carry A. NationRetelling the Life Fran Grace The story of one of America's most notorious and misunderstood women. Carry Nation was 54 when she "smashed" her first saloon, but her life before she started her infamous hatchet crusade has been little known until now. In this first scholarly biography of Nation, Fran Grace unfolds a story that often contrasts with the image of Nation as "Crazy Carry," a bellicose, blue-nosed, man-hating killjoy. Using newly available archival materials and placing Nation in her various historical and cultural contexts, Grace "retells" the crusader's tumultuous life. Brought up in antebellum Kentucky, Nation lived through the devastation of the Civil War and endured a failed marriage to an alcoholic physician. In her early 20s, a single mother and a destitute widow, she experienced a spiritual crisis. Her second marriage, to a much-older David Nation, grew strained under the failure of their Texas farm, her exploration into Holiness religion, and her attempts to work outside the home. When the couple moved to Kansas, Nation's disappointments translated into an agenda for social reform. Frustrated by the rampant violations of the state's prohibition law and empowered by a sense of divine mission, Nation responded with rocks, crowbars, and hatchets. Though much of her last two decades was spent on stage or in jail and in battles with other family members over the future of her unstable adult daughter, she edited two newspapers and founded several homes for abused and needy women. This complexly woven and delightfully written biography adds depth to the popular image of Carry Nation, situating her at the center of major cultural currents in her time. Fran Grace is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Redlands. Religion in North AmericaCatherine L. Albanese and Stephen J. Stein, editors May 2001400 pages, 57 b&w photos, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, bibl., index, append.cloth 0-253-33846-8 $35.00 s / £26.50

Red State Religion

Red State Religion PDF Author: Robert Wuthnow
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691160899
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 500

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Book Description
What Kansas really tells us about red state America No state has voted Republican more consistently or widely or for longer than Kansas. To understand red state politics, Kansas is the place. It is also the place to understand red state religion. The Kansas Board of Education has repeatedly challenged the teaching of evolution, Kansas voters overwhelmingly passed a constitutional ban on gay marriage, the state is a hotbed of antiabortion protest—and churches have been involved in all of these efforts. Yet in 1867 suffragist Lucy Stone could plausibly proclaim that, in the cause of universal suffrage, "Kansas leads the world!" How did Kansas go from being a progressive state to one of the most conservative? In Red State Religion, Robert Wuthnow tells the story of religiously motivated political activism in Kansas from territorial days to the present. He examines how faith mixed with politics as both ordinary Kansans and leaders such as John Brown, Carrie Nation, William Allen White, and Dwight Eisenhower struggled over the pivotal issues of their times, from slavery and Prohibition to populism and anti-communism. Beyond providing surprising new explanations of why Kansas became a conservative stronghold, the book sheds new light on the role of religion in red states across the Midwest and the United States. Contrary to recent influential accounts, Wuthnow argues that Kansas conservatism is largely pragmatic, not ideological, and that religion in the state has less to do with politics and contentious moral activism than with relationships between neighbors, friends, and fellow churchgoers. This is an important book for anyone who wants to understand the role of religion in American political conservatism.

Bust to Boom

Bust to Boom PDF Author: Donald Worster
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
In this captivating collection, some of America's best-known documentary photographers provide a valuable glimpse into a tumultuous time. These photographs -- most never before published -- show the faces and emotions of FSA-aided farmers, dust bowl debris and tumbleweeds, failed banks and thriving stockyards, locomotives and Mexican-American railroad workers, oil derricks, wheat country, black cavalry troops, and 4-H Club fairs. Environmental historian Donald Worster provides historical context for these moving pictures.

What Kansas Means to Me

What Kansas Means to Me PDF Author: Thomas Fox Averill
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Essays and poems by Kansas writers past and present, illustrated with 25 woodcuts from the Prairie Printmakers. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The Big Empty

The Big Empty PDF Author: R. Douglas Hurt
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 081654462X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
The Great Plains, known for grasslands that stretch to the horizon, is a difficult region to define. Some classify it as the region beginning in the east at the ninety-eighth or one-hundredth meridian. Others identify the eastern boundary with annual precipitation lines, soil composition, or length of the grass. In The Big Empty, leading historian R. Douglas Hurt defines this region using the towns and cities—Denver, Lincoln, and Fort Worth—that made a difference in the history of the environment, politics, and agriculture of the Great Plains. Using the voices of women homesteaders, agrarian socialists, Jewish farmers, Mexican meatpackers, New Dealers, and Native Americans, this book creates a sweeping survey of contested race relations, radical politics, and agricultural prosperity and decline during the twentieth century. This narrative shows that even though Great Plains history is fraught with personal and group tensions, violence, and distress, the twentieth century also brought about compelling social, economic, and political change. The only book of its kind, this account will be of interest to historians studying the region and to anyone inspired by the story of the men and women who found an opportunity for a better life in the Great Plains.

Banned in Kansas

Banned in Kansas PDF Author: Gerald R. Butters
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826266037
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
"This first book-length study of state film censorship examines the unique political, social, and economic factors that led to its implementation in Kansas, taking a look at why censorship legislation was enacted, what the attitudes of Kansans were toward censorship, and why it lasted for half a century"--Provided by publisher.

Kansas

Kansas PDF Author: H. Craig Miner
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 560

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Book Description
Chronicles the history of Kansas from 1854 to 2000, discussing how specific people and events shaped the culture of the state.

Doris Fleeson

Doris Fleeson PDF Author: Carolyn Sayler
Publisher: Sunstone Press
ISBN: 1611390370
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
"She was my idol," said columnist Mary McGrory. McGrory, in writing of women, referred to Doris Fleeson as "incomparably the first political journalist of her time." Fleeson was, in fact, the first woman in the United States to become a nationally syndicated political columnist. In 1945, with the encouragement of Henry Mencken, she launched her column. In her career she would write some 5,500 columns during the next twenty-two years. Fleeson's appearance could be disarming. Once at a party Lady Bird Johnson exclaimed, "What a gorgeous dress, Doris. It makes you look just like a sweet, old-fashioned girl." The wife of Senator Stuart Symington interjected, "Yes, just a sweet old-fashioned girl with a shiv in her hand." CAROLYN SAYLER lives in Lyons, Kansas, ten miles from the town of Sterling where Doris Fleeson was born in 1901. Knowing members of the Fleeson family, she began researching the life of the columnist whose straightforward take on Washington became a daily fix for newspaper readers across the nation. Sayler has a background in journalism as a member of a Kansas newspaper family. She is the author of a history of Manhattan, Kansas, which tells of the town's founding during the Free State struggle, its strong connections with New England, and its abolitionist college, now Kansas State University.

Encyclopedia of Kansas

Encyclopedia of Kansas PDF Author: Nancy Capace
Publisher: Somerset Publishers, Inc.
ISBN: 0403093120
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 502

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Book Description
The Encyclopedia of Kansas contains detailed information on States: Symbols and Designations, Geography, Archaeology, State History, Local History on individual cities, towns and counties, Chronology of Historic Events in the State, Profiles of Governors, Political Directory, State Constitution, Bibliography of books about the state and an Index.