Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen
by Bob Greene
from Harper Paperbacks
Millions of American soldiers, many of whom had never left their hometowns before, crossed the nation by rail during the years of World War II on their way to training camps and distant theaters of battle. In a little town in Nebraska, countless thousands of them met with extraordinary hospitality--the "miracle" of veteran journalist Bob Greene's title. "The best America there ever was. Or at least, whatever might be left of it." So Greene writes of North Platte, now a quiet town along the interstate, its main street all but dead. It was a quiet town then, too, at the outbreak of the war, but still a hive of activity as its citizens gathered to provide, at their own expense, coffee, sandwiches, books, playing cards, and time to the scared young men who rolled through by the trainload, "telling them that their country cared about them." Greene's pages are full of the voices of those who were there, soldiers and townspeople alike, who took part in what amounted to small acts of heroism, given the shortages and rationing of the time. Greene, generous in his praise if rather disheartened by the modern world, against which he contrasts the past, turns in a remarkable account of the home front. It deserves the widest audience. ---Gregory McNamee
In search of "the best America there ever was," bestselling author and award-winning journalist Bob Greene finds it in a small Nebraska town few people pass through today—a town where Greene discovers the echoes of the most touching love story imaginable: a love story between a country and its sons.
During World War II, American soldiers from every city and walk of life rolled through North Platte, Nebraska, on troop trains en route to their ultimate destinations in Europe and the Pacific. The tiny town, wanting to offer the servicemen warmth and support, transformed its modest railroad depot into the North Platte Canteen.
Every day of the year, every day of the war, the Canteen—staffed and funded entirely by local volunteers—was open from five a.m. until the last troop train of the day pulled away after midnight. Astonishingly, this remote plains community of only 12,000 people provided welcoming words, friendship, and baskets of food and treats to more than six million GIs by the time the war ended.
In this poignant and heartwarming eyewitness history, based on interviews with North Platte residents and the soldiers who once passed through, Bob Greene tells a classic, lost-in-the-mists-of-time American story of a grateful country honoring its brave and dedicated sons.
The Blizzard Voices
by Ted Kooser
from Bison Books
The Expansion of Everyday Life, 1860-1876
by Daniel E. Sutherland
from University of Arkansas Press
Nebraska Quilts and Quiltmakers
by Patricia C. Crews--Crews is first author
from Bison Books
Big Red: The Three-Month Voyage of a Trident Nuclear Submarine
by Douglas C. Waller
from HarperTorch
Taller in length than the Washington Monument, wider at its center than a three-lane highway, the 18,750-ton Trident nuclear submarine is the most complex war machine the United States Navy has ever produced: a $1.8 billion marvel crammed with more modern military technology than any other vessel in the world. Deep beneath the ocean it can sail for months, undetectable to enemies.
Now for the first time, veteran Time magazine correspondent Douglas C. Waller -- granted more access to one of these awesome submarines than any journalist before -- penetrates the silent, secret world of nuclear subs, taking you on a tension-packed, three-month patrol under the Atlantic Ocean inside the U.S.S. Nebraska, fondly nicknamed Big Red. In chilling detail, witnessed through the eyes of the men on board and told in their own words, Big Red reveals the top-secret procedures for starting World War III, including secret codes, elaborate fail-safe mechanisms, and highly classified battle tactics for nuclear combat. It's a ride you'll never forget.Standing Bear Is A Person: The True Story Of A Native American's Quest For Justice
by Stephen Dando-Collins
from Da Capo Press
Nebraska: Under a Big Red Sky (Great Plains Photography)
by Joel Sartore
from Bison Books
Old Jules (Third Edition)
by Mari Sandoz
from Bison Books
Big Red: Three Months On Board a Trident Nuclear Submarine
by Douglas C. Waller
from HarperCollins
Big Red might have been subtitled The Anthropology of a Submarine. On these pages, Time magazine correspondent Douglas C. Waller--granted surprising levels of access by the Pentagon--describes life onboard the USS Nebraska, a Trident nuclear submarine, in compelling detail. Big Red lacks the thrills of Blind Man's Bluff, but it is nonetheless an engrossing book on the routines of the silent service.
The Nebraska is an awesome triumph of military engineering: standing on end, it would be taller than the Washington Monument. And its might is impressive, including missiles that could wipe out Moscow and torpedoes "with three times the explosive power of the 1995 blast that leveled the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City." Readers will gain an intimate understanding of how the Trident works without ever having to set foot on one themselves. Waller has an uncanny sense of what questions to probe, such as why Trident submariners aren't likely to drown in claustrophobic compartments--a staple scene in submarine movies. (Answer: Flooding would cause the sub to sink, and then crushing water pressure would end the ordeal before the air ran out.) And yet movies are more than diversions, writes Waller: "Practically every Trident submariner had seen Crimson Tide and been jarred by it.... Officers still discuss Crimson Tide during private seminars on commanding a ship."
Waller also displays a powerful sense of irony. He describes a Sunday service onboard the Nebraska, and then deadpans, "Their worship over, [the submariners] would now practice how to destroy much of what God created." He also isn't afraid to ask difficult questions, such as whether women and gays should be allowed onboard (currently, neither are), or to note that marital fidelity is a problem for both husbands at port call and the wives they leave back home. It would be wrong to say Big Red reads like a potboiler--there are no Crimson Tide-like moments of near launches or mutiny--but it is exciting in its own way. This is at once an impressive journalistic achievement and an incredibly informative book. --John J. Miller
The Trident nuclear submarine is the most complex war machine the United States Navy has ever produced, a $1.8 billion marvel crammed with more modern military technology than any other vessel in the world. It is an 18,750-ton steel monster, taller in length than the Washington Monument and wider than a three-lane highway at its center. Deep beneath the ocean, it can sail silently for months, prectically impossible to detect by the enemy. And the twenty-four ballistic missiles on board just one of these subs have enough strategic nuclear warheads to unleash twice the explosive energy detonated by all the conventional weapons in World War II.
Now, for the first time, veteran Time magazine correspondent Douglas C. Waller takes you on a tension-packed, three-month patrol deep in the Atlantic Ocean and inside one of these Tridents, the U.S.S. Nebraska. Granted more access to these awesome submarines than any journalist before, Waller penetrates one of the most secretive worlds in the U.S. Military.
The Cold War may be over, but the U.S. Navy still has Tridents lurking the oceans, always ready at a moment's notice to unleash a nuclear holocaust. In chilling detail, Big Red reveals the top-secret procedures for starting World War II -- the secret codes, the elaborate fail-safe mechanisms, the highly classified battle tactics for nuclear combat.
This book takes you into this closed society as a witness to secret rituals and life experience where submarines, underwater for months, hope never to unleash the destructive power they command.
Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps (American Lives)
by Ted Kooser
from University of Nebraska Press
In the end, what makes life meaningful for Kooser are the ways in which his neighbors care for one another and how an afternoon walking with an old dog, or baking a pie, or decorating the house for Christmas can summon memories of his Iowa childhood. This writer is a seer in the truest sense of the word, discovering the extraordinary within the ordinary, the deep beneath the shallow, the abiding wisdom in the pithy Bohemian proverbs that are woven into his essays.
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