North Dakota

Fargo Rock City : A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota

Empirically proving that -- no matter where you are -- kids wanna rock, this is Chuck Klosterman's hilrious memoir of growing up as a shameless metalhead in Wyndmere, North Dakotoa (population: 498). With a voice like Ace Frehley's guitar, Klosterman hacks his way through hair-band history, beginning with that fateful day in 1983 when his older brother brought home Mötley Crüe's Shout at the Devil. The fifth-grade Chuck wasn't quite ready to rock -- his hair was too short and his farm was too quiet -- but he still found a way to bang his nappy little head. Before the journey was over, he would slow-dance to Poison, sleep innocently beneath satanic pentagrams, lust for Lita Ford, and get ridiculously intellectual about Guns N' Roses. C'mon and feel his noize.

The Horizontal World: Growing Up In the Middle of Nowhere: A Memoir

Debra Marquart grew up on a family farm in rural North Dakota--on land her family had worked for generations. From the earliest age she knew she wanted out; surely life had more to offer than this unyielding daily grind, she thought. But she was never able to abandon it completely.

Sitting Bull

Amazon Significant Seven, April 2008: As a celebrated warrior, shaman, and leader of the Lakota tribe, Sitting Bull was both a fascinating and frightening icon to the expanding United States, a 19th-century cross-cultural superstar who was at once a friend to Buffalo Bill and the emblem of Native American resistance in the face of the westward settlement. In Sitting Bull, Bill Yenne has produced a fascinating and exhaustively researched biography, drawing from contemporary sources as well as the iconic leader's own "Hieroglyphic Autobiography" (a series of pictographs depicting pivotal events in his life) to create an informal and relaxed account that still packs an amazing amount of detail. Recounting the exploits of the budding warrior known as Jumping Badger, his misunderstood role in the Battle of Little Big Horn, and his death on the eve of the massacre at Wounded Knee, Sitting Bull cuts through legend to place the Lakota leader square into his own cultural context, spurning the usual wasichu filters or biases. --Jon Foro

"Sitting Bull, leader of the largest Indian nation on the continent, the strongest, boldest, most stubborn opponent of European influence, was the very heart and soul of the frontier. When the true history of the New World is written, he will receive his chapter. For Sitting Bull was one of the makers of America." --Stanley Vestal

One night, long ago, Tatanka Iyotanka--Sitting Bull--stepped into the faint light of a kerosene lantern. Jerome Stillson of the New York Herald looked into the eyes of the world's most famous American Indian--and living mystery. "Your face is dark," Stillson told him. "My people do not see it." What Stillson said remains true to this day. Sitting Bull's name is still the best known of any American Indian leader, but his life and legacy remain shrouded with misinformation and half-truths. Sitting Bull's life spanned the entire clash of cultures and ultimate destruction of the Plains Indian way of life. He was a powerful leader and a respected shaman, but neither fully captures the enigma of Sitting Bull. He was a good friend of Buffalo Bill and skillful negotiator with the American government, yet erroneously credited with both murdering Custer at the Little Big Horn and with being the chief instigator of the Ghost Dance movement. The reality of his life, as Bill Yenne reveals in his absorbing new portrait, Sitting Bull, is far more intricate and compelling. Tracing Sitting Bull's history from a headstrong youth and his first contact with encroaching settlers, through his ascension as the spiritual and military leader of the Lakota, friendship with a Swiss-American widow from New York, and death at the hands of the Indian police on the eve of the massacre at Wounded Knee, Yenne scoured rare contemporary records and consulted Sitting Bull's own "Hieroglyphic Autobiography" in the course of his research. While Sitting Bull was the leading figure of Plains Indian resistance his message, as Yenne explains, was of self-reliance, not violence. At the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull was not confronting Custer as popular myth would have it, but riding through the Lakota camp making sure the most defenseless of his tribe--the children--were safe. In Sitting Bull we find a man who, in the face of an uncertain future, helped ensure the survival of his people.

The River Where America Began: A Journey Along the James

From the establishment of the first permanent English colony at Jamestown in 1607 to the fall of Richmond in 1865, the James River has been instrumental in the formation of modern America. Over the course of the United States' first century, the James River bore witness to the irreconcilable contradiction of a slave-holding nation dedicated to liberty and equality for all. When that intractable conflict ignited civil war, the James River served as a critical backdrop for the bloodiest conflict in U.S. history. As he guides readers through this exciting historical narrative, Deans gives life to a dynamic cast of characters including the familiar Powhatan, John Smith, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, Benedict Arnold and Robert E. Lee; as well as those who have largely escaped historical notoriety.

Rainbow Tribe: Ordinary People Journeying on the Red Road

The practical sequel to Mother Earth Spirituality that applies Native American teachings and ritual to comtemporary living.

The Plains Sioux and U.S. Colonialism from Lewis and Clark to Wounded Knee (Studies in North American Indian History)

Through the interpretive lens of colonial theory, Jeffrey Ostler presents an original analysis of the tumultuous relationship between the Plains Sioux and the United States in the 1800s. He provides novel insights on well-known aspects of the Sioux story, such as the Oregon Trail, the deaths of "Crazy Horse" and "Sitting Bull", and the Ghost Dance, and offers an in-depth look at many lesser-known facets of Sioux history and culture. Paying close attention to Sioux perspectives of their history, the book demonstrates how the Sioux creatively responded to the challenges of U.S. expansion and domination, revealing simultaneously how U.S. power increasingly limited the autonomy of their communities as the century came to a close. Ostler's innovative analysis of the Plains Sioux culminates in a compelling reinterpretation of the events that led to the Wounded Knee massacre of December 29, 1890. History Department Head at the University of Oregon, Associate Professor Jeffrey Ostler has held honors such as the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship and has published articles in Western Historical Quarterly, Great Plains Quarterly, and Pacific Historical Review.

The book provides an overview of the relations between the Plains Sioux Indians and the United States from 1804 (the Lewis and Clark expedition) to 1890 (the Wounded Knee massacre). The main purpose of the book is to show how various Sioux communities and leaders responded to the growing power of the United States. The book differs from other books on the Sioux in that it uses the concept of colonialism to shed new light on the history of the Plains Sioux in the 1800s.

Nothing to Do But Stay

Carrine Gafkjen was, as her daughter remembers, at once the most liberated and unliberated of women. If she had considered the subject at all she would have thought it a waste of time. She firmly believed in destiny; what fate planned for her she dealt with head-on.

In the early 1900s the twenty-five-year-old Gafkjen boarded a train from Minneapolis to claim a homestead for herself on the western North Dakota prairies. She lived alone in her claim shack, barred her door at night against the coyotes, existed on potatoes and salt, and walked five miles to the nearest creek to wash her clothes. A decade later she had, by her own ingenuity, doubled her landholdings and became a secure women of property. Then, at an age when most other women would have been declared spinsters, Carrine Gafkjen married Sever Berg and had six children.

Nothing to Do but Stay tells the story of this uncommon woman with warmth and good humor. It gives testimony to the lasting spirit of our pioneer heritage and, in these uncertain times, to the staying power of family and tradition. This book will appeal to all those with an interest in the settlement of the West, the history of the Great Plains, women's studies, and the perseverance of the early-twentieth-century farmers.

Rachel Calof's Story: Jewish Homesteader on the Northern Plains

The Journals of Lewis and Clark

In 1804 two men were sent on a mission by President Jefferson. The president had just completed the Louisiana Purchase which included the unexplored American west. Jefferson wrote. “An intelligent officer, with ten or twelve chosen men ... might explore the whole line, even to the Western Ocean ... The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri river, and such principal stream of it as by its course and communication with the waters of the Pacific Ocean whether the Columbia, Oregon, Colorado. The two men chosen for this mission were Lewis and Clark.

Feels Like Far: A Rancher's Life on the Great Plains

In Feels Like Far, award-winning author Linda Hasselstrom paints an intimate portrait of family, love, work, nature, and survival against the backdrop of the far-flung South Dakota prairie. Sixteen linked stories tell of the joy of training a first horse, the heartbreak of finding a fatally injured cow, the beauty of cavorting nighthawks, the stubbornness of her father, a rigid old rancher who bucks at old age, the deep, almost spiritual bond she shares with a friend who is diagnosed with AIDS. "In deliciously direct and unsentimental style" (Kathleen Norris), Hasselstrom maps the landscape of her life, demarcating the same beauties and brutalities that intermingle on the Great Plains she calls home.