Selected Bibliography for Great Plains Seminar: Regional Literature and the Big Four

This annotated bibliography (always in progress) is designed for convenient use by participants in "The Great Plains from Texas to Saskatchewan: Place, Memory, Identity," the NEH seminar convened at North Dakota State University. See also the more extensive Bibliography on the History of the North American Plains.

Library locations (books): SU = NDSU, TC = Tri-College, TI = Isern personal library, and ILL means you'll have to resort to inter-library loan. Our online catalog at NDSU is ODIN. Library locations (periodical articles): R = Reserve, FT = full text available via EBSCO at NDSU Libraries.

Author	Title	Publication	Notes	Where
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin	The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures	Routledge: London, 1989	This is a classic and accessible survey of post-colonialism in literature with emphasis on the post-Commonwealth branch. The application of post-colonial theory to Great Plains literature seems to me long overdue.	TC
Blew, Mary Clearman	Bone Deep in Landscape: Writing, Reading, and Place	Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999	This is a memoir with a self-conscious sense of place coming from a locality (Havre, Montna) near that of Stegner.	TI
Boardman, Kathleen A.	"Lowry Charles Wimberly and the Retreat of Regionalism"	Great Plains Quarterly 11 (Summer 1991): 143-56	Wimberly, editor of the Prairie Schooner, was a disillusioned regionalist who came to doubt the capacity of region to resist the metropolis and conformity.	R
Bogue, Allan G.	Frederick Jackson Turner : Strange Roads Going Down	Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998	The indispensable biography of Turner.	SU
Cronon, William	"A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative"	Journal of American History 78 (March 1992): 1347-76	This piece mentions Webb specifically, but is applicable to all our texts, as Cronon seeks to reconcile his narrative bent as a historian with the post-modern times in which he lives and writes. He speaks for a generation of historians attempting to be more self-conscious about the stories they tell—in this case stories about the plains.
Debo, Angie	Prairie City: The Story of an American Community	New York: Knopf, 1944	The book is largely about Debo’s home town of Marshall, Oklahoma, but her mix of remembrance and research is billed as a composite, a typical town.	SU
Dorman, Robert L.	Revolt of the Provinces: The Regionalist Movement in America, 1920-1945	Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993	A key secondary work undergirding the seminar. Dorman defines the regionalist movements that are the context for the works of regional autonomy.	SU
Etulain, Richard W.	Telling Western Stories: From Buffalo Bill to Larry McMurtry	Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999	In particular see Chapter 4, "New Stories," for its correspondence to the delineation of generations of regionalism made in this seminar.	SU
Etulain, Richard W.	Western American Literature: A Bibliography of Interpretive Books and Articles	Vermillion: Dakota Press, 1972	Dated and unannotated, but still useful.	SU
Etulain, Richard W.	"Western Stories for the Next Generation"	Western Historical Quarterly 31 (Spring 2000): 5-23	After confessing his affection for Stegner, Etulain goes on to praise examples of complex story-telling in literature, film, and History, and to call for more "moral" and "hopeful" stories (using those words in senses different from the usual connotations).
Fink, Deborah	Agrarian Women: Wives and Mothers in Rural Nebraska, 1880-1940	Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992	If you're wondering where the women are in Webb, read Fink. If you suspect that Cather romanticized the farm women of Nebraska, read Fink.	SU
Harrison, Dick	Unnamed Country: The Struggle for a Canadian Prairie Fiction	Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1977	An excellent survey written in plain prose—and one that poses the classic issue of cultural interpretation on the plains, that is, should one emphasize the imprint of environment or the importation of culture?	TC
Holman, David Marion	A Certain Slant of Light: Regionalism and the Form of Southern and Midwestern Fiction	Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995	A study of Southern and Midwestern fiction contrasting the Romantic tradition of the former with the Realistic tradition of the latter. Treats Cather as Midwestern—and ponders why she doesn't fit with others of the region (duh).	TC
Isern, Thomas D.	"The Comedy of the Commons, or, My Life on the Post-Colonial Plains"	[get citation]	This essay asserts that an understanding of post-colonialism is useful for anyone trying to understand life and literature on the Great Plains today.
Isern, Thomas D.	"Nowhere Spelled Backwards: The Quest for Region in the Tussock Grasslands of New Zealand"	Western Historical Quarterly 31 (Winter 2000): 477-85	This essay deals with another plains, but it reflects on the role of intellectuals in defining region by building on the vernacular sense of place.
Isern, Thomas D.	"Thorfinnson Rides Again: A Sense of Place on the Northern Plains"	North Dakota History 67 (2000): 2-9	An essay setting out three eras of Euro-American history on the plains (settlement, consolidation, renewal) and exploring the importance of History to the sense of place.
Isern, Thomas D.	My So-Called Life on the Plains: Confessions of the Last Picture Show Generation	CD, West Fargo: Kindred House, 2005	The Tri-College History of 2004, in which Isern assesses the state of the Great Plains in the late 20^th century, alluding in passing to several authors read in this seminar.	SU
Jensen, Merrill, Ed.	Regionalism in America	Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1951.	Here is a grand diversity of views as to what constitutes the definition and potential of regionalism. The chapter on literary regionalism is spot on, and recommended, but the book is worth sampling throughout. Particular attention might also be given to the final part, which comprises essays on the limits and promise of regionalism.	SU
Luebke, Frederick C.	"Regionalism and the Great Plains: Problems of Concept and Method"	Western Historical Quarterly 15 (January 1984): 19-38	Luebke first sketches the origins and aspects of regionalist thought, then goes on to argue for a culturalist approach to the history of the Great Plains in lieu of Webb's environmentalist approach. An authoritative historical treatment of Great Plains regionalism.
Odum, Howard W., and Harry Estill Moore	American Regionalism: A Cultural-Historical Approach to National Integration	New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1938	An invaluable explanation of the rationale and variety of approaches to regionalism. Odum's generation of regionalists, as social scientists, sought to solve problems and use regions as elements of healthy nation-building.	SU
Quantic, Diane Dufva	The Nature of the Place: A Study of Great Plains Fiction	Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995	A descriptive survey of regional lit organized according to mythic themes.	SU
Riley, Glenda	The Female Frontier: A Comparative View of Women on the Prairie and the Plains	Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1989	Riley finds the Great Plains not so regionally distinctive in women's lives as in male histories.	SU
Said, Edward W.	Culture and Imperialism	New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994	A classic of post-colonial theory with a particularly interesting section (for application to the plains experience) on "Resistance and Opposition."	SU
Schwieder, Dorothy	Growing Up with the Town: Family and Community on the Great Plains	Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2002	A mix of memoir and research, Schwieder reconstructs the town of her girlhood in western South Dakota.	SU
Smith, Henry Nash	Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth	Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950	No discussion of the literature of the West can proceed without dealing with Virgin Land. Here are clusters of ideas applicable to discussion of Webb, Cather, and Stegner.	SU
Thacker, Robert	The Great Prairie Fact and Literary Imagination	Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989	"On the prairie, the great fact is the land itself," writes Thacker in this, the best look-length survey of prairie writing. All four texts of the seminar are discussed here. A unique strength of Thacker's analysis is that he treats the entirety of the plains, Canadian and American.	SU
Turner, Frederick Jackson	The Frontier in American History	New York: H. Holt, 1920	Turner is basic to understanding the historical thought of both Webb and Stegner.	SU
Cather
Acocella, Joan	"Cather and the Academy”	In Geoffrey C. Ward., Ed., The Best American Essays 1996 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996)	An excellent introduction to the massive scholarly literature on Cather, showing the uses and abuses to which her works have been subjected by scholars with agendae.	ILL
Arnold, Marilyn	"The Other Side of Willa Cather"	Nebraska History 68 (Summer 1987): 74-82	A nice gossipy profile exploring Cather's irascible yet gracious personality.
Arnold, Marilyn	Willa Cather: A Reference Guide	Boston: G.K. Hall, 1986	An exhaustive list of references, arranged chronologically and indexed topically.	SU
Aronson, Marilyn A.	"Plains Goddesses: Heroines in Willa Cather's Prairie Novels"	Heritage of the Great Plains 28 (Fall/Winter 1995): 5-16
Bennett, Mildred R.	The World of Willa Cather	New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1951 2^nd Ed., Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1962	A wonderful, exasperating book by a resident of Red Cloud "living in the 'world of Willa Cather.'" Because Bennett drew on informants not available to later writers, subsequent biographers continue to make good use of her material.	SU
Bloom, Harold, Ed.	Antonia	New York: Chelsea House, 1991	A volume in the Major Literary Characters series, gathering together a collection of critical extracts (including the well-known remarks of H.L Mencken) along with a set of critical essays focusing on Antonia. These are a mixed bag, each with its own agenda. Major commentators such as Rosowski summarize their views. Lesser-known writers offer occasional gems—such as Mary Kemper Sternshein's almost offhand closing remarks about young Leo.	TC
Bloom, Harold, Ed.	Willa Cather's My Antonia	New York: Chelsea House, 1987	A volume in the Modern Critical Interpretations series, gathering a group of essays on the work. Of particular interest here is Stegner's essay on Cather. Of the other contributions I think Terence Martin's on memory has special use to us, and Blanche H. Gelfant's on sex is just generally notable.	TC
Boucher, Sandy	Heartwomen: An Urban Feminist's Odyssey Home	San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1982	Generally I find this book rather naive, but its reporting of an interview with Mildred Bennett in Red Cloud (see the "Catherland" chapter) is choice.	ILL
Cather, Willa Sibert	"Nebraska: The End of the First Cycle"	Nation 117 (5 September 1923): 236-38	A much-cited piece that illuminates Cather's understanding of regional history.	R
Cather, Willa	O Pioneers!	Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1913 Willa Cather Scholarly Edition, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992 Bison Book Edition, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997	For context, contrast, and comparison, read Antonia in juxtaposition with Pioneers. Moorhead State holds an original edition.	SU
Cather, Willa	Obscure Destinies	New York: Knopf, 1932	First of the three stories here published is "Neighbor Rosicky," which you must read as a companion to Antonia.	SU
Cather, Willa	On Writing: Critical Studies on Writing as an Art	New York: Knopf, 1949	Two essays here are important to Cather's style in Pioneers and Antonia: "The Novel Demeuble" and "My First Novels [There Were Two]."	SU
Cherny, Robert W.	"Willa Cather and the Populists"	Great Plains Quarterly 3 (Fall 1983): 206-18	Cather disaproved of Populism and Bryanism. This article includes an interesting discussion of the handling of Populist issues (or characters) in Antonia.	R
Danker, Kathleen	"The Influence of Willa Cather's French-Canadian Neighbors in Nebraska in Death Comes for the Archbishop and Shadows on the Rock"	Great Plains Quarterly 20 (Winter 2000): 35-54	This doesn't touch directly on Antonia, but it is additional discussion of Cather's fascination with her immigrant neighbors.
Faulkner, Virginia, with Frederick C. Luebke, Eds.	Vision and Refuge: Essays on the Literature of the Great Plains	Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982	See the essay on pp. 93-105 (Bernice Slote, "Willa Cather and Plains Culture") for a casual survey of regional and cultural details incorporated in Cather's work.	SU
Gustafson, Neil	"Getting Back to Cather's Text: The Shared Dream in O Pioneers!"	Western American Literature 30 (August 1995): 151-162
Howarth, William	"The Country of Willa Cather"	National Geographic 162 (July 1982): 70-93	Many are the personal narratives of visitors to Cather country, among which this stands as one of the most professional, although not the most insightful.
Murphy, David	"Jejich Antonie: Czechs, the Land, Cather, and the Pavelka Farmstead"	Great Plains Quarterly 14 (Spring 1994): 85-106	This is a rich, rich piece on the interaction of ethnic culture and plains landscape that is essential to Antonia, focusing on the material culture of the farmstead.
Murphy, John J.	"Nebraska Naturalism in Jamesian Frames"	Great Plains Quarterly 4 (Fall 1984): 231-37	Antonia has always been a problem for critics intent on categorization (regional, Realistic, Romantic). This article helps to explain some of the ambivalence.	R
	My Antonia	VHS, Gideon Productions, 1995	You think this might be pretty good because it has Jason Robards in it, but the screenplay is lame, the ending abrupt. It's a tough novel to adapt to film, no doubt. 92 minutes.
Newstrom, Scott	Willa Cather	http://www.gustavus.edu/oncampus/academics/english/cather/	This site, hosted on a Gustavus Adolphus University server, offers a good collection of links and documents, including, for instance, Cather's high school graduation address.
O'Brien, Sharon	Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice	New York: Oxford University Press, 1987	This work treats Cather's life and writing through publication of O Pioneers! Although a generally fascinating account, O'Brien's work is best known for its frank treatment of Cather's lesbianism, which O'Brien adroitly places in the context of the times.	SU
Olson, Paul A.	"The Epic and Great Plains Literature: Rolvaag, Cather, and Neihardt"	Prairie Schooner 55 (Spring/Summer 1981): 263-85	Olson considers Antonia the most clearly epic of the works treated and develops the analogy to Virgil's Aeneid.
Rosowski, Susan J.	The Voyage Perilous: Willa Cather's Romanticism	Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986	For this seminar, Rosowski's work is key. Her development of Cather's Romanticism is persuasive and methodical; her prose is wonderfully accessible. The chapter devoted to Antonia begins, "It was as if everything Cather had written until now had been in preparation for My Antonia." I recommend this as the first thing to read about Antonia.	TC
Rosowski, Susan J., Ed.	Approaches to Teaching Cather's My Antonia	New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1989	For the understanding of Cather's conception of region and sense of place, see the essays by Sally Allen McNall, Robert W. Cherny, Paul A. Olson, and Robert Thacker.	TC
Schach, Paul	"Russian Wolves in Folktales and Literature of the Plains: A Question of Origins"	Great Plains Quarterly 3 (Spring 1983): 67-78	This is essential background for the notable, chilling set piece in Antonia.	R
Slote, Bernice	"Willa Cather as a Regional Writer"	Kansas Quarterly 2 (1970): 7-15	A useful piece for explicating Cather's regional roots, but one tinged by the apparent discomfort of the author with consigning Cather to the realm of "regional." Unknowingly, Slote's hedging on this question places Cather as a regionalist exactly as J. Frank Dobie would define one.
Welsch, Roger L., and Linda K. Welsch	Cather's Kitchens: Foodways in Literature and Life	Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987	Thankfully, Cather is not one of those Great Plains authors who celebrates asceticism; she (and perhaps more so, Roger) takes delight in food and foodways.	TC
Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial		http://www.willacather.org/	Information about Catherland, the state designation of the western half of Webster County, Nebraska—local sites with reference to Cather's works.
Woodress, James	Willa Cather: A Literary Life	Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987	A thoroughgoing and laudable biography that methodically treats key Cather works, using and emphasizing their capacity to reveal elements of Cather's life.	SU
Zitter, Emmy Stark	"Making Herself Born: Ghost Writing and Willa Cather's Developing Autobiography"	Biography 19 (1996): 283-301	This article takes on what has become an interesting debate among scholars, having to do with the shift in Cather's authorial voice in the years after her Nebraska novels. This is commonly interpreted as moving from a male-emulative voice to a woman's voice. (Personally, I think this has more to do with region than with gender, but of course, to me, everything is about region!)
Momaday
Academy of Achievement	N. Scott Momaday	http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/mom0pro-1	Biographical sketch and interview.
Anderson, Edward F.	Peyote: The Divine Cactus	Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988 2nd Ed., 1996	A broad survey of peyote origins and practices useful as an introduction to the subject.	TC
Boyd, Maurice	Kiowa Voices: Ceremonial Dance, Ritual and Song	Vol. 1, Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1981	A substantial piece of ethnography notable for its native authority, that is, the Kiowas (through the Kiowa Historical and Research Society) appear to have governed content. Among the customs and artifacts treated is the Tai-may, which is so central to Rainy Mountain.	SU
Crawford, Isabel	Kiowa: The History of a Blanket Indian Mission	New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1915	A book of sketches and journal entries of the author's ten years' experience (closing in 1906) at Saddle Mountain Baptist Mission, and at the Elm Creek and Rainy Mountain stations. An interesting female (not to say feminist) account of the acculturation process spurred by missions.	ILL
Ellis, Clyde	To Change Them Forever: Indian Education at the Rainy Mountain Boarding School, 1893-1920	Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996	The boarding school campus was at the foot of Rainy Mountain, to its southeast. Especially consider the final chapter, which posits that Kiowa identity has been preserved through synthesis, and that the boarding school was pivotal in this.	TI
Ewers, John C.	Murals in the Round: Painted Tipis of the Kiowa and Kiowa-Apache Indians	Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1978	Color-illustrated catalog of an exhibition of the model painted tipis painted for Mooney by Kiowa artists. Included is the "Kiowa Underwater-Monster Tipi."	TC
Isernhagen, Hartwig	Momaday, Vizenor, Armstrong: Conversations on American Indian Writing	Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999	Although the extended interview with Momaday is dragged down by intrusive interviewing, this work contains some illuminating primary material.	TC
McAllister, Mick	“N. Scott Momaday: Mandarin Tribal Voice,” in Dancing Badger	http://www.dancingbadger.com/scott_momaday.htm	Critical commentary on Momaday’s works.
Mayhall, Mildred P.	The Kiowas	Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962 2^nd Ed., 1971	A competent tribal history given its year of publication. As was common then, however, the narrative substantially ends with confinement on the reservation.	SU
Momaday, N. Scott	The Ancient Child	New York: Doubleday, 1989	This later Momaday novel works with a familiar Momaday triangulation (Kiowa, Navajo, California); places mythic Kiowa material at center; and is the venue for Momaday's strange excursion into the life of Billy the Kid.	TC
Momaday, N. Scott	The Names: A Memoir	New York: Harper & Row, 1976	An excellent companion to read with Rainy Mountain. Rainy Mountain is a hymn with a lyric lack of specificity. Names gives specifics—names, places—by which the reader can reconstruct the family and community background to Momaday's writings.	SU
Momaday, N. Scott	House Made of Dawn	New York: Harper & Row, 1968	Momaday's Pulitzer Prize-winning first book. The theme of personal identity is pervasive through his works, and it starts here. The novel also deals with historical themes of relocation and urban flight by American Indians. House poses the problem of identity to which Rainy Mountain is the response.	SU
	Momaday: Voice of the West	VHS, Alexandria: PBS Video, 1996	A good general introduction (30 minutes) to Momaday, giving a sense of his presence, but light on Kiowa and plains roots.
Mooney, James	Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians	In 17th Annual Report, U.S. Bureau of Ethnology Reprint, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979	The core of this work by the pioneering ethnographer, Mooney, is the Kiowa calendars, which govern the chronological narrative presented. Mooney is a major source for Momaday's reconstruction of his Kiowa identity, in Rainy Mountain and elsewhere. The 1979 edition of Calendar History has an introduction by John Ewers providing background on Mooney.	SU
Mooney, James	"In Kiowa Camps"	Proceedings of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association 3 (1911): 43-57
Moses, L.G.	The Indian Man: A Biography of James Mooney	Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984	Moses devotes a meaty chapter to Mooney's work among the Kiowas. More generally, the book informs us about how white ethnology shaped our images of Plains Indians.	SU
Schubnell, Matthias	N. Scott Momaday: The Cultural and Literary Background	Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985	This is a key work for understanding Rainy Mountain in the context of the whole body of work by Momaday. Identity, personal journey—these themes weave throughout.	TC
Trimble, Martha Scott	N. Scott Momaday	Boise: Boise State College, 1973	A brief, competent, useful sketch of Momaday through publication of Rainy Mountain.	SU
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of English	“N. Scott Momaday,”in Modern American Poetry	http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/momaday/momaday.htm	Poems, artwork, and an online interview.
Vestal, Paul A., and Richard Evans Schultes	The Economic Botany of the Kiowa Indians as It Relates to the History of the Tribe	Cambridge: Botanical Museum, 1939	Little here seems directly applicable to Rainy Mountain, but that impression is misleading; the place of plants in the hunting culture Momaday eulogizes is pertinent to understanding its place in the environment.	SU
Woodard, Charles L.	Ancestral Voice: Conversations with N. Scott Momaday	Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991	This is an outstanding piece of interviewing, particularly illuminating for our discussions, inasmuch as the first subject treated at length is Momaday's Kiowa identity.	SU
Stegner
Benson, Jackson J.	Wallace Stegner: His Life and Work	New York: Viking, 1996	The only full-length biography of Stegner, and a competent one, although not particularly searching. It does not appear, for instance, that Benson ever went to Eastend.	TC
Leckie, Shirley A.	Angie Debo: Pioneering Historian	Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000
DeVoto, Bernard	Across the Wide Missouri	Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947	Since Stegner was DeVoto's biographer, and DeVoto his mentor, it's interesting to compare the two. They have grand themes and certain literary structures in common, but I find them quite different as to voice.	SU
Etulain, Richard	Conversations with Wallace Stegner on History and Literature	Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1983		SU
Fradkin, Philip L.	Wallace Stegner and the American West	New York: Knopf, 2008	Billed As the first “critical biography” of Stegner, Fradkin’s work does take on some of the more knotty issues of Stegner’s personal and literary life. It complements Jackson Benson’s authorized, literary biography nicely.	SU
Howard, Joseph Kinsey	Strange Empire: A Narrative of the Northwest	New York: William Morrow, 1952 Reprint, Minneapolis: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1994	The work is of interest to the seminar for two reasons. First, Stegner relied on it heavily for his chapter on the Metis. Second, Howard is part of the Western literary clique along with Stegner and DeVoto (who did the final editing of Strange Empire after Howard's death).	SU
Isern, Thomas D.	"The Sensuous Savage in All of Us: Wallace Stegner in Review"	North Dakota History 66 (Winter 1999): 16-20	My own review of recent biography and criticism on Stegner, along with images and description from Eastend.
Isle, Walter	"History and Nature: Representations of the Great Plains in the Work of Sharon Butala and Wallace Stegner"	Great Plains Quarterly 19 (Spring 1999): 89-95	Isle finds basic differences between the nature experiences of these two authors from Eastend—"detachment" for Stegner, "immersion" for Butala.
Lojek, Helen	"Wallace Stegner, Herodotus of the Cypress Hills"	Prairie Forum 24 (Spring 1999): 41-50	A handy introduction to Stegner's intent and method in Wolf Willow.	R
Merrill, Lewis, and Lorene Lewis	Wallace Stegner	Boise: Boise State College, 1972		SU
Proust, Marcel	Remembrance of Things Past	New York: Random House, 1941	Stegner specifically invokes Proust at the beginning of Wolf Willow. A number of plains writers seem to agree with Proust that remembrance is key to identity, and that place is key to remembrance. Some, like Stegner, also adopt Proust's device of a sensory trigger.	SU
Solomon, Robert H.	"The Prairie Mermaid: Love-Tests of Pioneer Women"	Great Plains Quarterly 4 (Summer 1984): 143-51	The resolution of the "Carrion Spring" chapter of Wolf Willow is unsettling to many; this article will make it more so.	R
Stegner, Wallace	The Big Rock Candy Mountain	New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1943	Stegner’s first novel, which treats (as overt fiction) some of the same material as Wolf Willow.	SU
Stegner, Wallace	The Uneasy Chair: A Biography of Bernard DeVoto	Garden City: Doubleday, 1974	There are times when Stegner, ostensibly describing DeVoto, seems to be writing autobiography instead of biography. The work is particularly useful for an understanding of the literary community from which Stegner wrote.	SU
Stegner, Wallace, Ed.	The Letters of Bernard De Voto	Garden City: Doubleday, 1975	Following up on his biography of DeVoto, Stegner edited this selection of letters.	SU
Stegner, Wallace, Ed. by Page Stegner	Marking the Sparrow's Fall: Wallace Stegner's American West	New York: Henry Holt, 1998	This is a handy collection of Stegner's writings dealing with his sentiments for and commitments to the American West—including several of his more droll pieces. The Wilderness Letter is here, for handy reference. "The Great Falls Year" fills in a biographical interlude particularly pertinent to the plains. My favorite is "Why I Like the West" ("I have always tried to look like Gary Cooper and talk like the Virginian.").	TC
	Wallace Stegner: A Writer's Life	Video, Los Angeles: Stephen Fisher Productions and KCET Television, 1997	Appr. 60 min. A competent video biography that touches on all of Stegner's major works and themes. Robert Redford needs to learn how to pronounce "Saskatchewan," though, and there needs to be a law against any further use of those old clips from The Plow That Broke the Plains.
Wallace Stegner Environmental Center	Wallace Stegner	http://206.14.7.53/gic/stegner/wallace.html	Biography, critical notes, and other miscellaneous materials on Stegner.
Webb
Baker, T. Lindsay	A Field Guide to American Windmills	Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985	A major work on one of Webb's key case studies.	SU
Barbour, Erwin Hinckley	The Homemade Windmills of Nebraska	Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin 59	A fascinating trove of material folk culture that ties into Webb's thesis.	SU
Carson, Gerald	"The Great Plains Revisited"	Timeline 8 (December 1991-January 1992): 46-63	An appreciative and competent introduction to Webb's work—a good first piece to read in order to capture the main ideas of Great Plains.
Dick, Everett	The Sod-House Frontier, 1854-1890: A Social History of the Northern Plains from the Creation of Kansas & Nebraska to the Admission of the Dakotas	New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1937	A classic history of plains settlement centered on one of Webb's great symbols of adaptation.	SU
Dobie, J. Frank	Out of the Old Rock	Boston: Little, Brown, 1972	In this book of sketches Dobie treats Webb in a rambling, but illuminating, profile.	TC
Dugger, Ronnie	Three Men in Texas: Bedichek, Webb, and Dobie: Essays by Their Friends in the Texas Observer	Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967	Is this a great exercise in masculine myth-making, or what? The middle section on Webb, however, contains a few gems of reminiscence such as John Fischer's sketch of Webb's "three heresies."	ILL
Flores, Dan L.	The Natural West: Environmental History in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains	Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001	This work represents the reflective edge of historians' current thinking about the Great Plains environment.	ILL
Franz, Joe B., et al.	Essays on Walter Prescott Webb	Walter Prescott Webb Memorial Lectures, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976	There are a few jewels (such as Webb in his BVDs) in the essay here by Eugene Hollon, but the most illuminating piece is the one by Walter Rundell, Jr., "Webb the Schoolteacher."	ILL
Furman, Necah Stewart	Walter Prescott Webb	Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1976	The standard biography, and a competent one. Furman makes good use of Webb's personal correspondence, thus illuminating aspects of his personal life treated by no other writer. She is frank about some of his shortcomings, but not notably critical.	SU
Furman, Necah Stewart	"Webb, Walter Prescott"	In The Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association, http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/WW/fwe6.html	Handy summary biography by the author of a book-length bio of Webb.
Hart, Stephen S.	"Critique: Geological Errors in Walter Prescott Webb's The Great Plains"	Great Plains Research 9 (Spring 1999): 137-43	This critic, a geological engineer, bats about .600 in correcting Webb's errors (sometimes misreading what Webb said). Any knowledgeable reader from the region could produce a similar catalog of corrections.
Hollon, W. Eugene	"Walter Prescott Webb: The Classroom Teacher"	East Texas Historical Journal 25 (1987): 3-11	A tribute to Webb's intellect, with frank treatment of his classroom manner.
Hoy, James F.	The Cattle Guard: Its History and Lore	Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1982	An adaptation to the plains not treated by Webb, but it fits right in with his scheme of material adaptations.	SU
Isern, Thomas D.	Bull Threshers and Bindlestiffs: Harvesting and Threshing on the North American Plains	Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991	Webb must not have known anything about wheat farming, because if he had, he would have dealt with this subject in Great Plains.	SU
Isern, Thomas D.	Custom Combining on the Great Plains: A History	Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1981	An adaptation to life on the plains that came after Webb's writing of The Great Plains.	SU
Jacobs, Wilbur R., Jown W. Caughey, and Joe B. Frantz	Turner, Bolton, and Webb: Three Historians of the American Frontier	Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1965	These were indeed the big three in the estimation of the practitioners of Western Americana in the 1960s. This work provides sound, introductory surveys of the contributions (and to some extent, the personalities) of all three.	TC
Jordan, Terry G.	Trails to Texas: Southern Roots of Western Cattle Ranching	Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981	Jordan, who holds the Webb chair at the University of Texas, disagrees sharply with Webb over the origins of the range cattle industry.	SU
Kraenzel, Carl Frederick	The Great Plains in Transition	Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1955	By a sociologist, the greatest of the refiners of Webb's thesis.	SU
Osgood, Ernest S.	The Day of the Cattleman	Minneapolis: Univesity of Minnesota Press, 1929	Fellow Turnerian and contemporary of Webb, Osgood wrote the classic treatise on the range cattle industry as a frontier phenomenon.	SU
Owens, William A.	Three Friends: Roy Bedichek, J. Frank Dobie, and Walter Prescott Webb	Garden City: Doubleday, 1969	This is an invaluable work for recreating the social and intellectual (notice I did not say academic) context from which Webb's work emerged. Male friendships, intellectual kinships, letter-writing habits, hopes and dreams—this is the author's world.	TC
Rundell, Walter, Jr.	"Walter Prescott Webb: Product of Environment"	Arizona and the West 5 (1963): 4-28	This sketch has been largely superceded by later biographers, but it uses some review material not featured by later writers.
Shannon, Fred A., et al	An Appraisal of Walter Prescott Webb's The Great Plains: A Study in Institutions and Environment	New York: Social Science Research Council, Bulletin 46, 1946.	This is the famous hatchet job by Shannon, the invited critique that served only to bolster the stature of Webb's work. It includes the proceedings of a symposium devoted to the questions raised. The line-up was all-star—Hicks, Dale, Osgood, Wissler. Read the critique, the rejoinder, and the testy discussion—the blood was really up. A key statement from Webb was his appeal not to the scholarly fraternity but to the regional public for validation: "If the Plainsman finds here the biography of his own people, a fair story of their heroic and ofttimes tragic struggle with a naked land, he will speak convincingly to the court."	TC
Sharp, Paul F.	Whoop-Up Country: The Canadian-American West, 1865-1885	Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1955	Sharp applies the Webb thesis to the Canadian-American border.	SU
Tobin, Gregory M.	The Making of a History: Walter Prescott Webb and The Great Plains	Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976	This work by an Australian scholar is the best authority as to the formation of Webb's major work. Tobin surveys all the major social and intellectual influences on Webb, deals critically with his thought and method, and now and then offers wonderful flashes of insight—as on pp. 32-33, when he states the dilemma of the Humanities in a "raw community."	SU
Utley, Robert M.	"The Texas Ranger Tradition Established: Jack Hays and Walker Creek"	Montana 52 (Spring 2002): 2-11	Utley revisits the mythic origins of the Rangers, which so fascinated Webb.	R
Webb, Walter P.	"The American Revolver and the West"	Scribner's Magazine 81 (February 1927): 171-78	Find here the genesis of ideas that would grow into Great Plains. In the latter part of the essay Webb reaches north up the plains from Texas—the cattle kingdom being the vehicle.	R
Webb, Walter P.	"The American West: Perpetual Mirage"	Harper's Magazine 214 (May 1957): 25-31	Late in life Webb, as shown by this article, still recognized environment as a shaping influence. This piece was a controversial one—prompting public reaction across the West—but its premise remains central to definition of the American West as a field of study.	R
Webb, Walter Prescott	Divided We Stand: The Crisis of a Frontierless Democracy		This work, a curious hybrid of old-time sectionalism and twentieth-century liberalism, bolsters Dorman's argument that Webb and his generation of intellectuals invented regionalism as a check against the tyranny of the metropolis.	SU
Webb, Walter Prescott	The Great Frontier	Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1952 Reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986	Webb considered this his second, and greater, master work. Here he turns the Turner thesis around to consider the effects of the frontier on global development. The research is thin, the analysis speculative, but it's full of interesting ideas.	SU
Webb, Walter Prescott	History as High Adventure	Austin: Jenkins Garrett Foundation, 1969	This anthology of Webb's speeches includes not only the well-known title essay, and his essay on the historical seminar, but also some interesting semi-precious gems. Here Webb explains how he came to regard geography so highly and how the power of great hypotheses drove his work. Several pieces also take up the relationship between History as practiced in universities and History as taught in the public schools.	ILL
Webb, Walter Prescott.	An Honest Preface and Other Essays	Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959	An excellent single source for getting to know the author of The Great Plains. Following a friendly introduction by Joe Frantz, this collection serves up Webb's puckish introduction of the critical Fred Shannon, his discussion of why historians can't write, his philosophy of the historical seminar, his account of reactions to his Harper's "Perpetual Mirage" piece, and best of all, his intellectual travel narrative, "History as High Adventure."	SU
Webb, Walter P.	"The Search for William E. Hinds"	Harper's Magazine 223 (July 1961): 62-67	Here is Webb's own view of where he came from. You know from The Great Plains that he believes in passion for his subject. Here is his truly sentimental side.	R
Webb, Walter Prescott	The Texas Rangers: A Century of Frontier Defense	Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1935	This work by Webb is the target of much later criticism for its racist stereotypes and its fixation on frontier violence. Leaving aside such easy shots, it is more illuminating to observe that this work is the only conventional monograph among Webb's books—it is a construction that he used once and then discarded—and to read it in conjunction with his comments on 19th-century German historians in his address to the AHA on the historical seminar.	SU
West, Elliott	The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado	Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998	Among the finest recent works treating the historical environment of the Great Plains.	SU
Wolfskill, George	"In Retrospect: Walter Prescott Webb and The Great Plains: Then and Now"	Reviews in American History 12 (June 1984): 296-307	A judicious assessment of Webb's work, including its fall from favor in the heyday of the New Social History.

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