Sod-House Days; Letters from a Kansas Homesteader 1877-78
Howard Ruede; John Ise, Editor
Language: English
Published by University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, 1983
- First Edition
- Softcover
- Used
Seller: Books by White/Walnut Valley Books, Winfield, KS, U.S.A.Books by White/Walnut Valley Books
AbeBooks seller since February 1, 2011
Condition: Used - Near fine
£ 11.67
Quantity: 1 available
Add to basketItem description from seller
University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, KS. 1983. Softcover/Trade Wraps. First Edition. Book is tight, square, and unmarked. Reprint of the Columbia University original. Book Condition: Near Fine. No DJ. Pictorial Wraps. Wraps are not bent or folded; spine is not creased or split. 248 pp. The homesteader Ruede possessed the ability of expressing himself clearly in writing with his word pictures giving vivid accounts of experiences gained in carving a farm from the Kansas plains. This is the story an ordinary person with heroic dimensions who is faced with drought, grasshoppers, prairie fires, and other disasters but kept trying again and again in a struggle against the environment. A clean and very presentable copy.
Seller Inventory # 003298
- Title
- Sod-House Days; Letters from a Kansas Homesteader 1877-78
- Author
- Howard Ruede; John Ise, Editor
- Publisher
- University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, KS
- Publication year
- 1983
- Condition
- Near Fine
- Dust jacket
- No Jacket
- Binding
- Soft cover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 0700602348
- ISBN 13
- 9780700602346
- Edition
- 1st Edition
- Dimensions
- 8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" tall
- Seller catalogs
- Autobiography, Horticulture/Agriculture/Animal Science, Indian Wars/American Indian Matters
Brought together by economist John Ise and first published in 1937, Sod-House Days is a collection of the letters Ruede wrote to his family in Pennsylvania chronicling his first year in Kansas. In minute detail these letters show the hard, wearying work faced by homesteaders in the 1870s, their almost unbelievable poverty, the hardships of poor food, inadequate clothing, crowding, unsanitary conditions, the lack of decent drinking water, the bedbugs and fleas, flies and mosquitoes. We see Ruede struggling to stay out of debt, walking miles to pick up the mail or to visit a neighbor, working until his bare feet are rubbed raw by the wheat stubble of the fields, going without meat because he hasn't been able to kill a jackrabbit, cooking biscuits in a kettle over his sod fireplace. Taken together, his observations constitute a careful and graphic picture of the pioneer community in which he lived, one that joins recent studies such as Sandra Myres's Westering Women and the Frontier Experience in presenting an accurate, if brutal, picture of life on the western frontier.
In a perceptive new foreword, sociologist Scott G. McNall considers the context within which the story of Howard Ruede unfolded. He delineates the forces and factors that contributed to the rapid settlement of the Great Plains. He reads the dominant themes that run through Ruede's letters: an almost religious faith in progress and hard work, and a tremendous concern for the idea of community. He also addresses a central question: What made these people stay? McNall writes, ""The value of these materials has been not at all reduced by the passage of time. . . . [This] is the story of an ordinary person with heroic dimensions. Reading these letters, we see what values people had which allowed them to try, and then try again, after they had seen their efforts destroyed by drought, grasshoppers, prairie fires, and other disasters. . . . It is a story of struggle with the environment, of creative adaption to circumstance, of people as active participants in creating the society around them.
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
John Ise was professor of economics at the University of Kansas from 1916 to 1955.
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Books by White/Walnut Valley Books
Winfield, KS, U.S.A.
AbeBooks seller since February 1, 2011
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Books by White/Walnut Valley Books
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