Reading Fundamentals (EG 060)

Ma Barker and Pretty Boy Floyd once shot their way across the state, and Bonnie and Clyde were known to travel within its borders. From bank robbers to cattle rustlers to serial killers, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation has played a key role in the pursuit of some Kansas' most infamous criminals.

Blackbear Bosin was the self-taught Kiowa-Comanche artist best known for his majestic sculpture in Wichita, Keeper of the Plains. This book, written by his stepson, explores his life as well as his award winning paintings and murals.

A captivating novel about the woman who chaperoned irreverent Louise Brooks to New York City in 1922. Only a few years before becoming a famous actress and icon of her generation, fifteen-year-old Louise and her thirty-six year old chaperone, Cora, spend five weeks together that will change their lives forever.

In this riveting chronicle, which accompanies the documentary, the authors capture the profound drama of the American Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Terrifying photographs, along with firsthand accounts, bring to life this heart-wrenching catastrophe of the Great Plains.

Drawing on a wealth of untapped primary resources, author Jean Edward Smith begins in Abilene with Eisenhower as a young man and proceeds to his appointment to West Point, World War II, and provides the inside story of the 1952 Republican convention, ending with Ike's years in the Whitehouse.

When six New Englanders arrived at the junction of the Kansas and Big Blue rivers in March of 1855, they pitched a tent and launched a town. Kevin Olson's lively history of Manhattan's founding draws on town records and personal papers to illuminate the challenges settlers faced and the drama of building a town from scratch on the Great Plains Frontier.

Arnold Bauer grew up on his family's farm in Clay County. This coming-of-age memoir set in the 1930s and '50s, blends local history with personal reflection to paint a realistic picture of farm life from a now-lost world. He shares the trials of the Depression and drought, experiences the coming of electricity, and finds wonder in the commonplace of going to town on a Saturday night for a walnut ice cream cone.

Based on actual events, Wide Open is a novel of family and coming of age set in 1871 Abilene, a place where good and evil are so evenly matched that no one knows which will triumph. Will Merritt finds himself torn between the Texas cowboys he and his friends idolize and the migrant settlers whose farms threaten to crowd out the cattle. Recently hired marshal, Wild Bill Hickok, struggles to control the streets of Abilene.

Victorian London is a cesspool of crime and Scotland Yard has only twelve detectives, known as the Murder Squad, to investigate countless murders every month. No one can anticipate the brutal murder of one of their own ... one of the twelve. With masterful storytelling and meticulous attention to period detail, Grecian weaves multiple narratives that converge in a heart stopping climax.