American Studies Commons^™

Book Review: The Power Of The Texas Governor: Connally To Bush By Brian Mccall, Sean P. Cunningham

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

According to Brian McCall, a Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives since 1991, the governorship of Texas is an office designed for individuals with the ability to project power in creative ways—beyond the mere execution of expressed authority, and with the complementary skill of a strong vision-casting and agenda-setting leadership style. Put another way, in The Power of the Texas Governor: Connally to Bush, McCall, who equates power to “a social game,” boldly claims that the Texas governorship stands as among the best laboratories for any study of human behavior. McCall attempts to use that laboratory to …

Book Review: Large-Scale Ecosystem Restoration: Five Case Studies From The United States Edited By Mary Doyle And Cynthia A. Drew, Rich Walters

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

This book focuses on how the adaptive management process is driving watershed-wide, science-based collaborative restoration efforts in the Everglades, the Platte River Basin, the California Bay-Delta, the Chesapeake Bay, and the Upper Mississippi River. The adaptive management process, driven by a federal mandates, is used in each restoration project to resolve scientific uncertainties as well as conflicts among diverse local stakeholders. All five case studies deal with the overarching issue of water quality and quantity. Restoring historic hydrologic regimes in areas where human developments have altered hydrology is the ecological goal of each of these projects. This conflict between consumptive …

Book Review: Kiowa Ethnogeography By William C. Meadows, Michael P. Jordan

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

With his latest book Meadows has made a significant contribution to our understanding of Native American ethnogeography. Comprehensive in scope, the work addresses the Kiowa people’s evolving relationship to the land from their initial migration from the headwaters of the Yellowstone River to contemporary life in rural southwestern Oklahoma. Meadows demonstrates that the Kiowa people have maintained a sense of homeland throughout two episodes of migration, confinement to a reservation, and the allotment of tribal lands in 1901. After providing a useful overview of research on Native American ethnogeography, he delves into a discussion of Kiowa interactions with the environment …

News And Notes Great Plains Studies (Spring 2010)

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

CONFERENCES

PROGRAM ANNOUNCEMENT

CHARLES E. BESSEY AWARD

LESLIE HEWES AWARD

THE GREAT PLAINS DISTINGUISHED BOOK PRIZE

Book Review: Health Care In Saskatchewan: An Analytical Profile By Gregory Marchildon And Kevin O’Fee, Kelly Chessie

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Marchildon and O’Fee set out to provide a detailed description of the Saskatchewan health care system, integrating details of how health care is organized, funded, and delivered in this Canadian prairie province. To accomplish their goal of fostering a better understanding of the provincial health system and its inputs and outcomes, they walk their readers through a thicket of details, including standings on health status indicators; macrolevel organizational structures; financing and expenditures; range of services, resources and technologies; and a sample of semirecent health reforms. They then close with a brief assessment of the system’s performance.

What the authors attempt …

Book Review: The Grace Abbott Reader Edited By John Sorensen With Judith Sealander, Sonya Michel

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Those familiar with the Abbott sisters generally regard Grace as the doer, Edith as the thinker. Both were leading Progressive-Era reformers, but while Edith made her mark as a pioneering social work educator and theorist, Grace—a one-time resident of Hull House who fought for women’s suffrage, immigrant rights, and child welfare—went on to become the second chief of the U.S. Children’s Bureau and gained a reputation as a powerful advocate and effective administrator. Along the way, however, Grace Abbott also wrote a number of articles and speeches that reflect deep thought as well as strong beliefs in equality and progress. …

Global Trends In Private Protected Areas And Their Implications For The Northern Great Plains, Jeff Langholz

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Like many parts of the world, the Northern Great Plains faces immense challenges to sustainable land use. Privately owned conservation areas have emerged as a potential solution. This article reviews five global trends in so-called private protected areas and discusses their implications for the Northern Great Plains. The trends point to five recommendations to the Northern Great Plains community: (1) act now to tap rapidly growing policy support; (2) combine many models, including private protected areas that are owned by individuals and groups, formal and informal, large and small, and are dedicated to strict protection as well as sustainable use; …

Conservation And Economic Lessons Learned From Managing The Namibrand Nature Reserve, Nils Odendaal, Danica Shaw

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

The NamibRand Nature Reserve, located in southern Namibia, is a private nature reserve established to protect and conserve the unique ecology and wildlife of the southwest Namib Desert. At 172,200 ha, NamibRand is one of the largest private conservation areas in southern Africa. The reserve consists of 13 former livestock farms rehabilitated into a continuous natural conservation area and shares a 100 km border with the Namib-Naukluft National Park. The reserve is a model for private conservation in southern Africa, as it demonstrates holistic biodiversity conservation balanced with financial sustainability. Innovative approaches to resource management ensure that this critical area …

Book Review: Transplanting The Great Society: Lyndon Johnson And Food For Peace By Kristin L. Ahlberg, R. Douglas Hurt

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

In 1954 the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act, commonly known as Public Law 480, established a new food aid program designed to eliminate agricultural surpluses and improve farm prices. Although Congress also intended it to expand foreign trade, encourage foreign economic development, and enhance the foreign policy of the United States, Lyndon Johnson used Public Law 480 as a political tool to extend the principles of the Great Society internationally and, most importantly, fight Communist expansion. Rechristened as the Food for Peace program in 1959, Lyndon Johnson later transformed it from a domestic agricultural policy to a foreign policy …

Great Plains Research Spring 2010 Front Matter

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Saving the World’s Grasslands: An Introduction Richard Edwards and Richard P. Reading, Guest Editors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Global Trends in Private Protected Areas and Their Implications for the Northern Great Plains Jeff Langholz. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . …

Book Review: Lipset’S Agrarian Socialism: A Re-Examination Edited By David E. Smith, Jim Mochoruk

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Seymour Martin Lipset, rather famously associated with the concept of “American Exceptionalism” and renowned as one of the leading practitioners of political sociology in the United States, was better known in Canada for works that seemed to make little, if any, impression upon U.S. readers. First and foremost was his landmark study of the social democratic Co-operative Commonwealth Federation’s (CCF) rise to political power in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan—Agrarian Socialism. It is the stuff of legend in Canadian academic circles how a young PhD student—a Jewish leftist from New York no less—came to Saskatchewan in the mid …

Saving The World’S Grasslands: An Introduction, Richard Edwards, Richard Reading

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Grasslands cover a large portion of the world’s land surface but increasingly suffer from numerous threats. Temperate grasslands are the most endangered and least protected biome in the world (Hoekstra et al. 2005; Henwood, this issue). Grasslands suffer from the twin dangers of seeming to lack charismatic features deserving of protection (the Great Plains, one of the world’s great grasslands, has sometimes been dismissed as “the Great Empty” because it lacks mountains or coastal areas) and of being prime land for conversion to crop agriculture. As a result, people converted or destroyed much of the original Great Plains grassland and …

Book Review: North For The Harvest: Mexican Workers, Growers, And The Sugar Beet Industry By Jim Norris, Maria S. Arbelaez

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

From its origins at the end of the 19th century, the American sugar beet industry has been linked to Mexican immigrant labor. Moreover, the painstaking job of thinning, topping, and harvesting the large and heavy beets became an almost entirely Mexican labor specialty by the turn of the 20th century. Betabeleros, as the Mexican and Mexican-American laborers were and are known, sojourned north from the borderlands to Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, South and North Dakota, Michigan, and Minnesota fields. In each of these states, the sugar beet industry willingly pursued immigrant labor to do the work while immigrant networks did …

Book Review: Rewilding The West: Restoration In A Prairie Landscape By Richard Manning, Mace Hack

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Rewilding the West gives a first impression of being the story of an innovative conservation project—creation of a 3.5 million-acre wildlife preserve from both public and private lands, restocked with bison and other traditional Plains wildlife—in the Missouri Breaks of eastcentral Montana. However, Manning only devotes thirteen pages to the project at the end of the book, with a few additional references to it scattered throughout. Instead, he traces the history of the site, from the days of the bison to modern times. In doing so, he provides a fascinating and useful frame of reference for current conservation efforts in …

Book Review Of Weather Matters: An American Cultural History Since 1900 By Bernard Mergen., Donna L. Woudenberg

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Weather Matters is a varied collection of everything sky and weather related, from history, to poetry and art, to the monitoring and impacts of weather-related natural hazards. Mergen states the book is “about the everyday experience of weather and the ways in which those experiences are perceived, marketed, and managed.” The volume is broken into five chapters focused on talking about, managing, seeing, transcribing, and suffering weather. “Talking about Weather” begins with a historical overview of “weather-bureau weather,” starting with the Congressional creation of a meteorological service administered by the U.S. Army Signal Corps in 1870 and ending with a …

Ranching And State School Land In Cimarron County, Oklahoma, Jacqueline Vadjunec, Rebecca Sheehan

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Ranchers in Cimarron County, Oklahoma, have turned to leasing school trust land to sustain and sometimes expand their operations. Changes in the land tenure process have undergone profound transformations in the last 20 years, greatly impacting land use in the region. Coupled with an almost decade-long drought, land managers pursuing seemingly “traditional” agricultural practices call upon increasingly complicated, mixed private and public tenure options in order to make ends meet. Using a political ecology framework, we examine conflicting relationships between school land, the state, and local land managers as well as the sustainability of cattle ranching on school trust land …

The 37th Interdisciplinary Symposium Sponsored By The Center For Great Plains Studies, University Of Nebraska–Lincoln: Diverse Faces, Shared Histories Immigrants On The Great Plains

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

This one-day symposium features national and state scholars and writers speaking on various aspects regarding the history, politics, and personal narratives on immigration. Native, Asian, African American, and Latino perspectives vary yet share overlapping histories. This symposium is designed to broaden our perspectives about immigration on the Great Plains.

Determinants Of Net Migration In Montana, Evelyn D. Ravuri

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

The Great Plains has experienced population loss for most of the 20th century while the Rocky Mountain region has experienced rapid population growth in the past few decades. This paper examines net migration by county for Montana between 1995 and 2000 disaggregated by age and educational level. Montana was chosen because it straddles the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain regions and thus provides an opportunity to compare and contrast net migration and population change in two regions undergoing fundamentally different population processes. Regression analysis was applied to determine the predictor variables responsible for net migration between 1995 and 2000. Dependent …

Great Plains Research 2010: News And Notes

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

CONFERENCES

October 31–November 3, 2010 The 2010 Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America will be in Denver, Colorado. The theme is “Reaching New Peaks in Geoscience.” Website: www.geosociety.org/meetings/.

November 17–21, 2010 The 2010 Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association will be held Sheraton New Orleans and Marriott New Orleans in New Orleans. The theme is “Circulation.” Website: www.aaanet.org/meetings/.

December 12–15, 2010 The 58th Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of America will be held at the Town and Country Hotel and Convention Center in San Diego, California. The theme is “Entodiversity: Disciplinary, Biological, and Geographical.” Website: www.entsoc.org/am/index.htm. …

Book Review Of Just One Vote: From Jim Walding’S Nomination To Constitutional Defeat By Ian Stewart., James A. Mcallister

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

This story is almost Shakespearean in its dramatic proportions. It includes an overly ambitious politician frustrated by his leader’s refusal to make him a cabinet minister, an even more ambitious politician’s wife pushing him beyond his abilities and fostering his bitterness, and a government leader faced with a difficult colleague whose actions brought down the government, led to the leader’s resignation, and almost destroyed a political party. Just One Vote is a welcome addition to the already significant Canadian literature on the New Democratic Party of Manitoba. The attention paid to this subject reflects the party’s democratic socialist ideology and …

Book Review Of Native Peoples And Water Rights: Irrigation, Dams, And The Law In Western Canada By Kenichi Matsui, Oliver W. Maclaren

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Native Peoples and Water Rights constitutes a valuable collection of historical case studies that shed light on a category of rights frequently overlooked. These detailed examinations identify the political, economic, and social factors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that influenced legislative and judicial developments regarding the water rights of North America’s First Peoples. Beginning with the adoption of John Locke’s property theory in the proagrarian policies of the Jefferson administration, Matsui documents the formative period of water rights in western North America. This analysis skillfully contextualizes Chief Justice McKenna’s seminal decision in Winters v. United States 207 …

A Soil Water Climatology For Kansas, Michael J. Keables, Shitij Mehta

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Regional climate models suggest that summers in the Great Plains may become increasingly dry during this century, raising concern about the availability of water resources for irrigation and municipal water supplies. While the models predict drier conditions across the region, the impact of climate change on water availability at the local scale will depend largely upon the soils and their ability to store water during dry periods. This study presents a soil water climatology for Kansas using a climatic water balance approach. Monthly observations of temperature and precipitation for the period 1950–2006 are used to calculate climatologies of actual evapotranspiration, …

Book Review Of A Kansas Year By Mike Blair, Donald W. Kaufman

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Mike Blair, a longterm employee of the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks, has combined wildlife and nature photographs taken in Kansas over many years into a single “synthetic” year of images. Although Kansas by title and locale, this small-format book (6 x 9 inches) will interest a wide audience, its photos and written text relating, with a few exceptions, as much to the entire Great Plains region as to a single geopolitical entity. Individual entries are presented in a chronological sequence, January through December, not unlike an almanac, each consisting of one or two photos and a page or …

Book Review Of Unearthing Indian Land: Living With The Legacies Of Allotment By Kristin T. Ruppel. Tucson, Elizabeth James

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

The legacies of allotment on reservations—fractionated heirship and dispossession most notably—have been apparent to numerous observers since the early 20th century. In Unearthing Indian Land: Living with the Legacies of Allotment, Kristin T. Ruppel explores contemporary efforts on the part of several Native individuals to correct more than a century of land tenure questions and outright fraud. Although such efforts have potential impact throughout Indian country, Unearthing Indian Land focuses on the local efforts of activists such as Ernee Werelus at Fort Hall in Idaho and Helen Sanders on the Quinault Reservation in Washington. Ruppel correctly traces the origins …

Evaluating A Hybrid Soil Temperature Model In A Corn-Soybean Agroecosystem And A Tallgrass Prairie In The Great Plains, Song Feng, F. Salvagiotti, M. R. Schmer, A. B. Wingeyer, A. Weiss

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Simulation models of soil-related biological processes usually require soil temperature data. Frequently these soil temperatures are simulated, and the soil temperature algorithms cannot be more complicated than the original process model. This situation has led to the use of semi-empirical-type relationships in these process models. The objective of this study was to evaluate a hybrid soil temperature model, which combines empirical and mechanistic approaches, in an agroecosystem and a tallgrass prairie in the Great Plains. The original hybrid soil temperature model was developed and verified for a temperate forest system. This model simulated soil temperatures on a daily basis from …

Book Review Of Insects Of Texas: A Practical Guide By David H. Kattes., Christopher J. Durden

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

This guidebook is a well-illustrated, well-bound addition to our growing series on Texas insect fauna. Designed for the beginner and nonspecialist (and suitable for use in schools), it provides an identification aid for recognition of the groups to which common insects belong. Other references must be used in most cases to determine the species at hand. Today, BugGuide.Net will be the next step for the average reader. Most of the book is devoted to one-page presentations of a small selection of families, usually those that contain species most likely to be found by the casual observer. Common name, group name, …

Great Plains Research Volume 20, Number 2 (Fall 2010): Cover And Contents

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

SOCIAL SCIENCES

Ranching and State School Land in Cimarron County, Oklahoma Jacqueline Vadjunec and Rebecca Sheehan. 163

Determinants of Net Migration in Montana Evelyn D. Ravuri. 179

A Test of Personal Characteristcs that Influence Farmers’ Pro-Environmental Behaviors Courtney E. Quinn and Mark E. Burbach.193

GIS Spatial Analysis of University of Nebraska at Kearney Alumni Cohorts, 1930–2004 Paul R. Burger and Brett R. Chloupek. 205

The Really Good Buffalo Concept Test for “Values Added” Bison Diane Rickerl, Tim Nichols, and Carol Cumber. 215

NATURAL SCIENCES

Livestock Responses to Complementary Forages in Shortgrass Steppe Justin D. Derner and Richard H. Hart. 223 …

Gis Spatial Analysis Of University Of Nebraska At Kearney Alumni Cohorts, 1930–2004, Paul R. Burger, Brett R. Chloupek

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

The purpose of this study was to utilize Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology and spatial analysis coupled with the University of Nebraska at Kearney (UNK) alumni data from 1930 to 2004 in order to compare and contrast the changing distribution patterns of five-year alumni cohorts. Mean centers, location quotients, and cluster analysis were used to assess the degree to which UNK alumni cohorts have migrated over the 75-year period, the extent to which any regionalization or lack thereof occurs, and the proportion of UNK alumni per county compared to college graduates as a whole. These spatial patterns were then compared …

The Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize 2010

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

The University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Center for Great Plains Studies will present its annual Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize in May 2011 to the most significant book on the Great Plains. Only first edition nonfiction full-length books published in 2010 will be considered for the award. The annual book prize includes a $5,000 cash award.

Book Review Of Native American Language Ideologies: Beliefs, Practices, And Struggles In Indian Country Edited By Paul V. Kroskrity And Margaret C. Field, William F. Weigel

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

As its editors note, this collection is the first work on language ideology especially devoted to Native American languages. Its twelve articles (plus the editors’ introduction) mainly involve languages of the United States (with one each from Canada and Central America) and represent a mix of contributions by Native and non-Native scholars. The offerings generally center on the authors’ own field research, often supplemented by historical and linguistic background from secondary sources. Several themes run through many of these studies. One is a rejection of the notion that a language ideology is the monolithic stance of an entire culture. There …