Other International and Area Studies Commons^™

Review Of Prairie Peddlers: The Syrian-Lebanese In North Dakota By William C. Sherman, Paul Whitney, And John Guerrero, Philip M. Kayal

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This remarkable ethnographic study of the Syrian-Lebanese in North Dakota is unique. The data and information are original, never mind that the voices heard are nearly those of the early settlers, certainly those of their children. The authors use the records of the late 1930s (early 1940s) Federal Writers Projects and the Works Progress Administration to understand the reasons for Arab migration to North Dakota and the Great Plains, their employment practices, life styles (marriage patterns, culinary habits), and religious traditions, their distribution, settlements, institutions (or lack thereof), and finally their near total assimilation.

If it were homesteading that attracted …

Review Of The Bizarre Careers Of John R. Brinkley By R. Alton Lee, Bob Mccoy

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

R. Alton Lee has produced an engaging book that details the full life of John R. Brinkley. As someone interested in quackery in the US, I already knew Brinkley as an exemplar of this genre, but there is much more to him. He was a complex man who carried many labels, some contradictory: quack, caring healer; devoted family man, liar and con-man; would be Governor, community booster, and radio station entrepreneur, the latter as a way to promote mail-order sales of his medical remedies and also to draw in patients to his hospital.

Lee's biography is an informative and entertaining …

Review Of Native Voices: American Indian Identity And Resistance Edited By Richard A. Grounds, George E. Tinker, And David E. Wilkins, Beth R. Ritter

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

From our current vantage point, the true legacy of Vine Deloria Jr.'s scholarship and activism can neither be fully measured nor overstated. We know with certainty, however, that the landscape of Native American scholarship has been permanently altered-for the best. Native Voices honors Deloria's contributions through the presentation of original Native scholarship inspired by his model. As its editors observe, "Deloria has influenced a whole generation of younger Indian scholars to be self-consciously indigenous thinkers-to reclaim an American Indian intellectual tradition, along with a political activism rooted in the oral traditions of our peoples and the wisdom of our elders …

Review Of Lynching In Colorado, 1859-1919 By Stephen J. Leonard, Jesse T. Moore Jr.

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The term lynching likely conjures up in the minds of most Americans images of robed and hooded white men in the states of the Old Confederacy taking the law into their own hands to punish black males accused of violating white womanhood. Groups known as Regulators "enforced the law" in South Carolina as early as 1790. Lynching remained a form of punishment in Southern states until well into the twentieth century, despite the fact that most residents of the region frowned upon it.

Judge Lynch's powerful ghost prowled Colorado for more than half a century, "in part because he could …

Canada's Campaign For Immigrants And The Images In Canada West Magazine, Laura A. Detre

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

One of the major challenges that Canadian government officials felt they faced at the end of the nineteenth century was the development of the prairie West. By this time there were large urban centers in eastern Canada, but many Canadians worried that they had not truly ensured the future existence of their country. They hoped that filling the middle, the province of Manitoba and the region that would become the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta, with prosperous, white, family farmers would support the industrialized cities of the East. To do this the government engaged in a systematic program to encourage …

"This Strange White World" Race And Place In Era Bell Thompson's American Daughter, Michael K. Johnson

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Aboard a train heading out of Minneapolis toward frontier North Dakota, Era Bell Thompson in her autobiography American Daughter (1946) describes a landscape that grows steadily bleaker with each mile farther west: "Suddenly there was snow-miles and miles of dull, white snow, stretching out to meet the heavy, gray sky; deep banks of snow drifted against wooden snow fences .... All day long we rode through the silent fields of snow, a cold depression spreading over us." Thompson's realistic winter landscape descriptions also allegorically represent the social situation of herself and her family. The phrase "this strange white world," which …

Decisions Tools Manual, Cisr

CISR Studies and Reports

This decision tools manual outlines methods through which nations and organizations with limited resources can accurately prioritize humanitarian mine action projects and clearance efforts. This methods include a cost-benefit analysis of the socio-economic effect of mine clearance with field examples from Thailand and Ethiopia.

The British North Sea: The Importance Of And Factors Affecting Tax Revenue From Oil Production, Mark Hill

Theses and Dissertations

The oil industry is the richest and most influential industry in the world. The industry has moved the fates of nations. Oil is required to fight wars and exert power, and the restriction of this energy source is paramount to the restriction of movement, control, and in the end, power. Management of this resource and the tax revenue it generates are of serious strategic importance, both domestically and internationally. Understanding the results of taxation for this important commodity is important to international relations as well. The tax system affects tax revenue, government actions, oil company actions, and the oil supply …

Nesting Biology Of Three Grassland Passerines In The Northern Tallgrass Prairie, Maiken Winter, Douglas H. Johnson, Jill A. Shaffer, W. Daniel Svedarsky

United States Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center: Publications

Basic nesting information on grassland passerines is needed for improving grassland bird management. Among the information needs are (1) the suitability of nesting habitat, (2) periods during the breeding season in which birds are most vulnerable to disturbances, and (3) how to fit grasslands into a priori- tization scheme for conservation. Comparisons of nesting parameters among grassland species will help identify important management considerations. We describe and compare nest-site characteristics, nesting phenology, clutch size, hatching and fledging success, and brood parasitism by Brown-headed Cowbirds (Molothrus ater) for three grassland passerine species nesting in tallgrass prairie of northwestern Minnesota …

Nutrient Reserves Of Lesser Scaup (Aythya Affinis) During Spring Migration In The Mississippi Flyway: A Test Of The Spring Condition Hypothesis, Michael Anteau, Alan Afton

United States Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center: Publications

The continental scaup population (Lesser [Aythya affinis] and Greater [A. marila ] combined) has declined markedly since 1978. One hypothesis for the population decline states that reproductive success has decreased because female scaup are arriving on breeding areas in poorer body condition than they did historically (i.e. spring condition hypothesis). We tested one aspect of that hypothesis by comparing body mass and nutrient reserves (lipid, protein, and mineral) of Lesser Scaup at four locations (Louisiana, Illinois, Minnesota, and Manitoba) between the 1980s and 2000s. We found that mean body mass and lipid and mineral reserves of females …

Does Presence Of Permanent Fresh Water Affect Recruitment In Prairie-Nesting Dabbling Ducks?, Gary Krapu, Pamela Pietz, David Brandt, Robert Cox Jr.

United States Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center: Publications

In the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) of North Dakota, USA, American mink (Mustela vison) are a major predator of ducklings. Mink populations plummet during severe droughts, but some mink survive where permanent fresh water is available. In 1992–1993, we evaluated whether development of a permanent water body, the 125- km McClusky Canal (MC), had affected survival of gadwall (Anas strepera) and mallard (A. platyrhynchos) broods and ducklings in surrounding wetland complexes. Twelve of 25 radiomarked gadwall and mallard hens experienced total brood loss, and 148 of 199 radiomarked ducklings from 58 broods died by …

Transmission Of Neospora Caninum Between Wild And Domestic Animals, L. F. P. Gondim, M. M. Mcallister, N. E. Mateus-Pinilla, W. C. Pitt, L. D. Mech, M. E. Nelson

United States Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center: Publications

To determine whether deer can transmit Neospora caninum, brains of naturally infected white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) were fed to 4 dogs; 2 of these dogs shed oocysts. Oocysts from 1 of the dogs were tested by polymerase chain reaction and found to be positive for N. caninum and negative for Hammondia heydorni. The internal transcribed spacer 1 sequence of the new strain (designated NC-deer1) was identical to N. caninum from domestic animals, indicating that N. caninum is transmitted between wild and domestic animals, often enough to prevent divergent evolution of isolated populations of the parasite. NC-deer1 …

Analyis Of Predator Movement In Prairie Landscapes With Contrasting Grassland Composition, Michael L. Phillips, William R. Clark, Sarah M. Nusser, Marsha A. Sovada, Raymond J. Greenwood

United States Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center: Publications

Mammalian predation influences waterfowl breeding success in the U.S. northern Great Plains, yet little is known about the influence of the landscape on the ability of predators to find waterfowl nests. We used radiotelemetry to record nightly movements of red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) and striped skunks (Mephitis mephitis) in two 41.4-km² study areas in North Dakota. Study areas contained either 15–20% grassland (low grassland composition) or 45–55% grassland (high grassland composition). Grasslands included planted cover, pastureland, and hayland. We predicted that the type and composition of cover types in the landscape would influence both predator …

Book Review: Woman Walking Ahead: In Search Of Catherine Weldon And Sitting Bull, Glenda Riley

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

There are many ways of presenting historical events and persons, including narrative and analysis, or the use of a variety of approaches. In this ingenious and personal book, Eileen Pollack fleshes out historical evidence with informed speculation and with details of her quest for data. Such methodology makes possible the recreation of bits of history that otherwise go unremarked.

Book Review: Galvanized Yankees On The Upper Missouri: The Face Of Loyalty, Vance E. Nelson

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Visitors to Fort Rice State Historic Site have little idea of the drama that took place there during the first few years after its construction in 1864. The site's historical marker contains no mention of the important task rendered by former Confederate soldiers who became known as "the Galvanized Yankees."

Book Review: Wyoming Trucks, True Love, And The Weather Channel: A Woman's Adventure, Laura E. Casari

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Kennedy's subtitle is apt, for her book narrates the education of a biologist who becomes a second-generation environmentalist, or at least what she calls a second-generation environmentalist. As a consultant, she often works in the Plains states assessing the compliance of public drinking water programs with EPA regulations. Some of these regulations are based on research done in graduate school by field experts one college generation before hers-now often field experts on teams with her. One such site she describes in the Painted Creek, near Phoenix, which she visits once yearly, and where she shows us with an artist's eye …

A Dakota Boomtown: Sioux Falls, 1877-1880, Gary D. Olsen

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The "Dakota boom" is a label historians have almost universally adopted to describe the period of settlement in Dakota Territory be, tween the years 1878 and 1887. The term "boom" has been applied to this period largely because of the volume of land claimed and the rapid increase in Dakota Territory's population that occurred during those years. Most accounts of this time period have treated the Dakota boom as a rural phenomenon, and certainly its main manifestation was the rapid claiming of land by immigrant and American would, be farm owners in the plains of Dakota Territory and adjacent areas. …

Book Review: Marriage, Violence, And The Nation In The American Literary West, Christine Bold

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

"If the West tells us anything," says William Handley, "it is that stories have powerful consequences." This book reads western stories anew, not as familiar tales of individualism but as family dramas with newly thought-provoking consequences for the "nation's racial future." Handley argues that twentieth-century western literature is more preoccupied with marriage than with the frontier. Marriage serves as an analogy for US national unity while also exposing the uncontainable violence at the heart of nation-building. These stories demonstrate that, having destroyed the racial and ethnic "others" against whom the nation defined itself, "imperialism brings its guns home."

Book Review: Reading "The Virginian" In The New West, Forrest G. Robinson

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The Virginian is here to stay. For most of the first century of its life, critics gave their attention to what they found on the novel's face: the rugged hero, conquest, a reinvigorated national identity, the triumph of patriarchal law and of good over evil. It was a tale out of Turner. This timely new volume confirms and elaborates recent, revisionist moves to overturn the consensus reading and replace it with interrogations of the novel's competing, even contradictory perspectives in matters of race, class, and gender. Once the embodiment of a faith in the American character and mission, The Virginian …

Book Review: The Real Rosebud: The Triumph Of A Lakota Woman, Norma C. Wilson

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Weinberg's narrative shows how quickly life changed for Lakota people during the course of a century. Yellow Robe lived as a traditional Brule. Though his son, Chauncey, grew up in that world, Chauncey's adult life in Rapid City was very different from his youth. Rosebud, Chauncey's daughter, left the land of her ancestors in 1927 to spend most of her life in New York City. Yet each valued being Lakota.

Book Review: Around The Sacred Fire: Native Religious Activism In The Red Power Era, Francis Guth

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This important book details the continent-wide, including Great Plains, efforts of Native Americans in the 1970s and 1980s to revive and unify Native spirituality and bring it to terms with Christianity. The subtitle alerts us that these efforts were largely overshadowed by more militant "Red Power" movements.

Book Review: The Road To Lame Deer, Alan Boye

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In 1922 a white physician working on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation began taking photographs of the Cheyenne people. Before his death in 1935, Thomas Marquis had amassed over five hundred photographs and published a number of significant books and articles about the Cheyenne.

Book Review: Icelanders In North America: The First Settlers, Gudren Björk Gudsteins

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Jonas Thor's study offers an excellent view into the background and development of Icelandic migration to the West, briefly outlining immigration to Utah in the 1850s and Brazil in the 1860-70s, but primarily focusing on mass migration from 1870 to 1914 to and within the North American prairies, and gravitating to the west coast.

Book Review: Black Masculinity And The Frontier Myth In American Literature, Riché Richardson

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Over the past decade or so, masculinity has become a subject of continuing critical and theoretical fascination in the academy, and there is now a burgeoning subfield of work on the subject of black masculinity alone. This growing body of scholarship on black masculinity has developed in part in recent years because critics have increasingly understood the status of race in masculine formation and the importance of looking beyond white men as a normative category. Michael K. Johnson offers a revealing and admirable study of black masculinity in relation to a topic that has ordinarily been presumed to be incompatible …

Book Review: Place: Lethbridge, A City On The Prairie, Don Gill

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In 1998 Joan Stebbins, curator at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, invited Toronto-based photographer Geoffrey James to photograph the city of Lethbridge, Alberta. James is known for his large format black-and-white photographs of specific sites: formal French gardens; the city of Paris; the running fence on the border separating the US and Mexico; asbestos mines in Quebec. In late 1999 his photographs were exhibited as "The Lethbridge Project." Subsequently novelist Rudy Wiebe was invited to write a parallel text to accompany James's photographs for Place.

Book Review: Interpreters With Lewis And Clark: The Story Of Sacagawea And Toussaint Charbonneau, Lisa E. Emmerich

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The release of the Sacagawea dollar coin in 2000 met with decidedly mixed reviews. Critics complained that it was too much in size like the quarter and could not be accommodated in retail sales drawers. Despite the intrinsic beauty - the golden coin features Sacagawea and her infant son on the face and a soaring bald eagle on the reverse - the dollar has earned little popularity since its introduction.

Book Review: Vanished Act: The Life And Art Of Weldon Kees, Raymond Nelson

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

When poet Weldon Kees walked away into the fogs of the Golden Gate Bridge he made his life and ironic style into the stuff of myth. In the years since his disappearance he has commonly been remembered less for his remarkable verses than as an emblematic suicide or runaway or victim of his times.

Book Review: Encyclopedia Of Indian Wars: Western Battles And Skirmishes, 1850-1890, Lance Janda

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Despite steady interest in the wars on the American frontier during the last half of the nineteenth century, few historians have examined those conflicts as a coherent whole. The multitude of Native American tribes involved, the small scale of most battles, and the myriad details of each war have made them better suited for tightly focused monographs, while the hundreds of brief and inconsequential skirmishes that represented the bulk of the fighting have been ignored or scarcely mentioned. Happily, this gap in the historiography has finally been filled by Gregory F. Michno's Encyclopedia of Indian Wars: Western Battles and Skirmishes, …

Book Review: The American West In 2000: Essays In Honor Of Gerald D. Nash, John R. Wunder

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The American West in 2000 is a literary labor of love edited by two former colleagues of the late Gerald D. Nash, a longtime professor of history at the University of New Mexico, and composed of essay contributions from former students, colleagues, and friends. Originally conceived as a retirement festschrift, including a ten-page autobiography by Nash himself, the book became instead a memorial tribute to Nash upon his death in 2000.

Book Review: Children's Voices From The Trail: Narratives Of The Platte River Road, Emmy E. Werner

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Between 1850 and 1869, some 350,000 pioneers crossed the Great Plains, following the Platte River Road from the Missouri River to South Pass, Wyoming, and on to California and Oregon. Others made the trek to Utah, Colorado, or Montana. This book tells the story of the crossing of the Plains from the viewpoint of children - one fifth of the participants in the great overland journeys. Palmer lets their voices be heard.