Allen, Maury
Roger Maris: A Man for All Seasons. Dutton, 1986.
Prairie Populist: The Life and Times of Usher Burdick. State Historical Society of North Dakota, 2001.
Prairie Rebel: The Public Life of William Lemke. University of Nebraska Press,1963 (out of print).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Edward C. Blackorby was born and educated in North Dakota, earning a B.A. at Mayville State University and the M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of North Dakota. He also did postgraduate work at the University of Minnesota, Iowa State University and the American University in Washington, D.C. He spent fifty-one years teaching, the last twenty years as a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, where he was awarded the Excellence in Teaching Award in 1968. He also taught at Dickinson State University and the University of North Dakota, and was a teacher and administrator in North Dakota public schools for nineteen years. Best known for his book Prairie Rebel: The Public Life of William Lemke, Dr. Blackorby also wrote for many publications, including North Dakota History, Journal of American History, The Dictionary of American Biography, and Essays on Western History. His special interests were in the history of the West and the Agrarian and Progressive movements in America. A professor emeritus of history, Dr. Blackorby retired in 1980 when he and his wife Jewel moved to Bloomington, Minnesota. He died in 2002.
Website Links:
Usher Burdick Papers, Chester Fritz Library, UND
BOOK DESCRIPTION
Prairie Populist: The Life and Times of Usher Burdick
Prairie Populist: The Life and Times of Usher L. Burdick by Dr. Edward C. Blackorby tells of Burdick's frontier upbringing on Graham's Island near Devils Lake, North Dakota, his political career in the North Dakota Legislature, and ten terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. It also details the personal side of Burdick's life, including his involvement with the Indian people of the state, his abiding interest in the history of North Dakota, and his family relationships, particularly with his son, Quentin, who served North Dakota as a U.S. senator for 32 years.
Brands, H. W.
T.R.: The Last Romantic. Basic Books, 1998.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Henry William Brands (1953- ) writes and teaches about American history and is the author of 22 books and coauthor or editor of five more. His books and articles cover topics from the 18th century to the 21st, and include works of narrative history, interpretive history, and biography. He examines politics and foreign policy, business and economics, society and culture in his writing, which has received critical and popular acclaim. His biography of Benjamin Franklin, The First American, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 and the Los Angeles Times Prize, as well as a New York Times bestseller. In 2009, he was again nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for his book, Traitor to His Class. Brands graduated from Stanford University in 1975 with a B.A. in history and received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Texas in 1985. He worked as an oral historian at the UT Law School for a year, then became a visiting professor of history at Vanderbilt. Currently, he is the Dickson Anderson Centennial Professor of History and Government at the University of Texas at Austin, where he has taught since 1987.
University. Website Links:
www.theodoreroosevelt.org/
Theodore Roosevelt National Park
BOOK DESCRIPTION
In his time, there was no more popular national figure than Theodore Roosevelt. It was not just the energy he brought to every political office he held or his unshakable moral convictions that made him so popular, or even his status as a bonafide war hero—the man who led the Rough Riders up San Juan Hill in Cuba during the Spanish-American war. Most important, Theodore Roosevelt was loved by the people because this scion of a privileged New York family loved America and Americans. His highly exaggerated and often uncompromising ways drove many of his business and personal friends crazy. His historical writings, which Brands quotes from extensively, are nothing if not a portrait of a boy’s endless macho fantasies. He was often so full of himself that his speeches and writings were the frequent subject of fierce satire in their time. Even more revealing, according to Brands, was Roosevelt as son, brother, husband, and father. According to Brands, to understand both the public and private life of Roosevelt one must understand the impact of his father’s death while he was still a child, denying him the opportunity to come to terms with his own manhood.
When his first wife Alice died of complications from childbirth, leaving behind a baby daughter Alice, his response was to run away to shoot buffalo in the West, leaving the newborn infant to the care of his unmarried sister Bamie. When his second wife Edith was seriously, perhaps fatally ill, he left her to fight in the Spanish-American War. His only concern when his brother Elliot, who had been his only friend as a child, became an alcoholic, was to hide the news from the public. Determined that his four sons would not dishonor his belief that men, to achieve their manhood, must test themselves in war, he arranged for each to serve, often in the frontlines, during World War I. His youngest son Quentin would die in that cause. Beautifully written, powerfully moved by its subject, TR is a biography appropriate to today’s critical times.
Briggs, Colin
Cordially Yours, Ann Sothern. Bearmanor Media, 2006.
Connell, Evan S.
Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn. North Point Press, 1984; rep., 1997.
Eriksmoen, Curt
Did You Know That? 47 Fascinating Stories about People Who Have Lived In North Dakota. McClerry and Sons, 2006.
Innis, Ben
Bloody Knife: Custer’s Favorite Scout, ed. by Richard E. Collin. 1973; rep. Smoky Water Press, 1994.
Geelan, Agnes
The North Dakota Maverick: The Political Life of William Langer. Kaye's Printing Company,1975.
Goplen, Arnold O.
The Career of the Marquis de Mores in the Badlands of North Dakota. 1979; rep. State Historical Society of North Dakota, 1994.
Hawkins, Reese, and Meredith Wallin
Remembering Louis L’Amour. McLeery and Sons, 2001.
Jenkinson, Clay S.
The Character of Meriwether Lewis: Completely Metamorphosed in the American West. Marmath Press, 2000.
Larson, Robert W.
Gall: Lakota War Chief. University of Oklahoma Press, 2007.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert W. Larson is retired as professor of history at the University of Northern Colorado, Greeley. He is the author of numerous articles and books, including Red Cloud: Warrior-Statesman of the Lakota Sioux. The Denver Posse of Westerners honored him in 2006 with its Fred A. Rosenstock Award for Lifetime Achievement in Western History. In 2007 Larson received the Spur Award in Nonfiction-Biography for his biography of Gall.
Website Links:
www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/d_h/gall.htm
www.prairiepublic.org/programs/plainsfolk/transcripts/Chiefgall.jsp
BOOK DESCRIPTION
Called the "Fighting Cock of the Sioux" by U.S. soldiers, Hunkpapa warrior Gall (1840-1894) was a great Lakota chief who, along with Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, resisted efforts by the U.S. government to annex the Black Hills. It was Gall, enraged by the slaughter of his family, who led the charge across Medicine Tail Ford to attack Custer's main forces on the other side of the Little Bighorn.
Robert W. Larson sorts through contrasting views of Gall, to determine the real character of this legendary Sioux. This first-ever scholarly biography also focuses on the actions Gall took during his final years on the reservation, unraveling his last fourteen years to better understand his previous forty.
Filling many gaps in our understanding of this warrior and his relationship with Sitting Bull, this engaging biography also offers new interpretations of the Little Bighorn that lay to rest the contention that Gall was "Custer's Conqueror." Gall: Lakota War Chief broadens our understanding of both the man and his people.
Lazenby, Roland
Mindgames: Phil Jackson’s Long Strange Journey. Bison Books, 2007.
Norman, Keith
Great People of the Great Plains: 25 Biographies of People Who Shaped the Dakotas. McCleery and Sons, 2004.
Potter, Tracy
Sheheke: Mandan Indian Diplomat: The Story of White Coyote, Thomas Jefferson, and Lewis and Clark. Farcountry Press and Fort Mandan Press, 2003.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tracy Potter received his B.A. and M.A. in history from the University of North Dakota. He was given the Tourism Industry Leader Award in 2005 and the GNDA Tourism Development Award in 1997. He is the executive director of the Fort Abraham Lincoln Foundation and the Northern Plains Heritage Foundation. He resides in Bismarck with his wife Laura Anhalt. Potter served a term in the North Dakota Senate and was the Democratic candidate for governor in 2010.
Website Links:
Discovering Lewis and Clark
BOOK DESCRIPTION
Potter eloquently tells the story of Sheheke (White Coyote), the Mandan Indian who traveled from North Dakota with Lewis and Clark to meet President Thomas Jefferson in Washington, D.C., in 1806. The story of Sheheke’s life has been too long untold. Sheheke was an ambassador for the Mandan Nation, a consistent friend of the United States, and an important part of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. In sharing his story, his legacy of kindness, friendship, and courage lives on.
Rosenfeld, Harvey
Still a Legend: The Story of Roger Maris. Backinprint, 2002.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Harvey Rosenfeld is an English professor at City University of New York and Pace University and holds a Master of Arts in journalism and a Ph.D. in Elizabethan drama. He is the author of several highly regarded biographies, including Raoul Wallenberg: Angel of Rescue, Iron Man: The Cal Ripken, Jr. Story, and Magnolia Grove, the story of naval hero Rear Admiral Richmond Pearson Hobson. Rosenfeld is the founding editor of Martyrdom and Resistance, a bimonthly publication that focuses on the Holocaust.
Website Links:
Roger Maris Museum
Baseball Library
BOOK DESCRIPTION
In 1961 Roger Maris (1934-85) made baseball history by beating the great Babe Ruth’s home run record. Yet he’s still on the outside of the Baseball Hall of Fame. This book recounts the slugger's life before, during, and after his headline season of 1961, when the taciturn North Dakota native topped Babe Ruth's all-time record by hitting sixty-one homers. From his youth as a star high school athlete and American Legion baseball player, Maris went on to big-time sports with the Cleveland Indians, Kansas City Athletics, New York Yankees, and St. Louis Cardinals. Author Rosenfeld argues that Maris's treatment by the press was both shabby and tragic and that the ballplayer's midwestern modesty and his strength, his need for privacy, and his straightforward bluntness were often wrongly interpreted as arrogance and sullenness, a factor that led many to downplay his claim on the record books.
Rylance, Dan
Quentin Burdick: The Gentle Warrior. ND Institute for Regional Studies, 2008.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dan Rylance, a Fargo native, is a longtime student of North Dakota history. Rylance headed the Elwyn B. Robinson Department of Special Collections and taught American history at the University of North Dakota from 1967-1989. In 1973, he co-authored The Years of Despair: North Dakota in the Depression, and in 1982, wrote Ever Westward to the Far East: The Story of Chester Fritz. In 1989, he became the editorial page editor for the Grand Forks Herald.
Rylance taught American history at Idaho State University and worked as a landscaper. He returned to education in 2003, first as an ad hoc professor at the New Bulgarian University in Sofia, Bulgaria, and then as special events coordinator at Webster Stanley Elementary School in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where he now resides.
Website Links:
Quentin Burdick Papers, Chester Fritz Library, UND
BOOK DESCRIPTION
Quentin Burdick: The Gentle Warrior is based on interviews with Burdick, his family, Senate colleagues and many North Dakotans. As the son of Congressman Usher Burdick, Quentin Burdick became the first Democrat in North Dakota to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, in 1958. Two years later, he won a surprise victory over Governor John Davis for the U.S. Senate, where he served continually until his death in September 1992. The book reveals many tragedies in Burdick’s life: the pain of his parents’ divorce, the crippling football injuries, the death of his first wife, the mental breakdown of his first son and the tragic loss of his second son in a freak accident in Fargo at age sixteen. Late Democratic Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield of Montana called Burdick “the quiet senator.”
Schultz, Margie
Ann Sothern: A Bio-Biliography. Greenwood Press, 1990.
Shivers, Alfred S.
The Life of Maxwell Anderson. Stein and Day, 1983.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alfred S. Shivers (1929--), a faculty member at Stephen F. Austin State University since 1966, has degrees from the University of Florida and Florida State University. He has published numerous literary articles and reviews as well as a critical study of author Jessamyn West and a study of North Dakota-born Maxwell Anderson's plays. Shivers' biography of Anderson, represented here, has been very well received by critics.
Website Links:
www.maxwellanderson.com
BOOK DESCRIPTION
James Maxwell Anderson (1888-1959) was born December 15, 1888, in Atlantic, Pennsylvania. His first three years were spent growing up on his maternal grandmother's farm in Atlantic. His family moved to Andover, Ohio, where his father worked as a railroad fireman and studied at night to become a minister. The family moved often, before coming to Jamestown, North Dakota, in 1907.
Maxwell Anderson graduated from Jamestown High School in 1908, and began attending the University of North Dakota later that year. While at UND, he was involved with the Dacotah Annual, was an active member of Ad Altiora, a literary society, and served as the assistant director of the Sock and Buskin Dramatic Society. As a way of earning money, Anderson also waited on tables and worked at the night copy desk of the Grand Forks Herald. He graduated from UND with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature on June 14, 1911.
After graduation, Anderson took a position as principal of a high school in Minnewaukan, North Dakota, where he also taught English. His contract was terminated in 1913, following pro-pacifism comments he made to his students. He enrolled at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, in the fall of 1913, earning a master's degree in English literature in 1914. He was a high school English teacher in San Francisco for three years, before becoming chair of the English Department at Whittier College near Los Angeles, in 1917. He was fired at the end of his first year, for public statements he made on behalf of a student seeking conscientious objector status.
He next found work for a short time with several newspapers in San Francisco, before moving to New York to join the editorial staff of the New Republic. While in New York City, he also worked for the New York Globe and the New York World. In 1921, he was a founding member of Measure, a magazine dedicated to verse. Maxwell penned his first play, White Dessert, in 1923. The play lasted only twelve performances, but it won the attention of Laurence Stallings, a reviewer for the New York World. Stallings and Maxwell collaborated on What Price Glory? in 1924. This play was a giant success, earning both critical praise and box office success. What Price Glory? had a run of more than 430 performances, and enabled Anderson to retire from journalism and devote all of his energies to playwriting. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1933 for Both Your Houses. He won the First Annual New York Critics Circle Award for Winterset in 1935, and for High Tor in 1936. In 1946, Columbia University awarded him an honorary Doctor of Literature degree. In 1954, he was honored with the Gold Medal in Drama from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1958, on the occasion of the 75th Anniversary of the founding of the University of North Dakota, Anderson was conferred a Doctor of Humanities degree. Too ill to attend the ceremony, the degree was granted in absentia.
He married Margaret Haskett, a fellow classmate, on August 1, 1911, on the Haskett family farm in Bottineau, North Dakota. They had three sons, Quentin, Alan, and Terence. Margaret died on February 26, 1931. He married for a second time to Gertrude “Mab” Higger in October 1933. A daughter, Hesper, was born August 2, 1934. Gertrude died on March 21, 1953. A year later, he married Gilda Hazard.
Maxwell Anderson died in Stanford, Connecticut, on February 28, 1959, two days after suffering a stroke.
Shoptaugh, Terry
You Have Been Kind Enough to Assist Me: Herman Stern and the Jewish Refugee Crisis. ND Institute for Regional Studies, 2008.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Terry Shoptaugh is a professor of history and the University Archivist at Minnesota State University Moorhead. He is the author of two previous books on Minnesota and North Dakota history: Roots of Success: History of the Red River Valley Sugarbeet Growers (NDIRS, 1997) and Moorhead (Arcadia, 2004). His latest book, They Were Ready: The 164th Infantry in the Pacific War, 1942-1945 (164th Infantry, 2010) tells of the role of North Dakota National Guard units in World War II, especially on Guadacanal. It received the Military Writers Society of America Bronze Medal in 2010. You Have Been Kind Enough to Assist Me was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award in 2008. Shoptaugh has also twice received the Editor's Award for best article published in North Dakota History, the quarterly journal of the State Historical Society of North Dakota. [see also entries for Terry Shoptaugh on Nonfiction Page.
BOOK DESCRIPTION
You Have Been Kind Enough to Assist Me: Herman Stern and the Jewish Refugee Crisis
The compelling story of a North Dakota clothier who rescued more than 100 German Jews from the impending Holocaust in Europe, and of how this effort burgeoned into a plan to rescue many more, only to be derailed by the sudden onset of World War II. Herman Stern, himself a Jewish immigrant to the United States, began by sponsoring the immigration of relatives, and expanded his efforts during the thirties until he had developed a plan to settle hundreds of Jewish refugees in North Dakota, and had begun raising money for that purpose. While the onset of the war in 1939 stalled the larger effort, Stern continued to sponsor refugees and was ultimately responsible for more than 140 people coming to America and safety.
You Have Been Kind Enough to Assist Me provides a rare glimpse of how some Americans reacted to the Holocaust as it was developing in Europe.
Smemo, Kenneth
Against the Tide: The Life and Times of Federal Judge Charles F. Amidon, Garland, 1986.
Smith, Ron, and Billy Crystal
61: The Story of Roger Maris, Mickey Mantle, and One Magical Summer. McGraw-Hill, 2001.
Sorley, Lewis
Honorable Warrior: General Harold K. Johnson and the Ethics of Command. University Press of Kansas, 1999.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lewis Sorley (1934- ) is a third-generation West Point graduate, receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in 1956. He remained at the U.S. Military Academy as an instructor and assistant professor of English and then attained a Master of Arts degree froom the University of Pennsylvania. He was served as an executive officer in Vietnam until 1966 and later ran a tank battalion in West Germany. Sorley also earned a Masters of Public Administration from Pennsylvania State University, and in 1979 was awarded a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. Since his retirement from the military as a lieutenant cololonel, he has served with the CIA, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the National Defense Intelligence College, and the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Sorley is the author of several books, includingThunderbolt: General Creighton Abrams and the Army of His Times and Vietnam Chronicles: The Abrams Tapes (2004) which won the Army Historical Foundation's Trefy Award for providing "a unique perspective on the art of command."
BOOK DESCRIPTION
A man of extraordinary inner strength and patriotic devotion, General Harold K. Johnson (1912-1983) was a soldier's officer, loved by his men and admired by his peers for his leadership, courage, and moral convictions. Lewis Sorley's biography provides a fitting testament to this remarkable man, who rose from obscurity to become LBJ's Army Chief of Staff during the Vietnam War.
A native of Grafton, North Dakota, Johnson survived more than three grueling years as a POW under the Japanese during World War II before serving brilliantly as a field commander in the Korean War, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for "extraordinary heroism." These experiences led to a series of high-level positions culminating in his appointment as army chief in 1964 and were the subject of a cover story in Time magazine.
What followed should have been the most rewarding period of Johnson's military career. Instead, it proved to be a nightmare, as he quickly became mired in the politics and ordeal of a very misguided war. Johnson fundamentally disagreed with the three men running our war in Vietnam: President Lyndon Baines Johnson, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and General William Westmoreland. He was sharply critical of LBJ's piecemeal policy of gradual escalation and failure to mobilize the national will or call up the reserves. He was equally despondent over Westmoreland's now infamous search-and-destroy tactics and reliance on body counts to measure success in Vietnam.
By contrast, Johnson advocated greater emphasis on cutting the North's supply lines, helping the South Vietnamese provide for their own internal defenses, and sustaining a legitimate government in the South. Unheeded, he nevertheless continued to work behind the scenes to correct the flawed approach of the United States to the war.
Sorley's study adds immeasurably to our understanding of the Vietnam War. It also provides an inspiring account of principled leadership at a time when the American military is seeking to recover the kind of moral values exemplified by Harold K. Johnson. As such, it presents a profound morality tale for our own era.
Tharaldson, Ardell
Patronage: Histories and Biographies of North Dakota's Federal Judges. The Northern Lights ND Press. 2002.
Tweton, D. Jerome
The Marquis de Mores: Dakota Capitalist, French Nationalist. ND Institute for Regional Studies, 1972. [See also entries for D. Jerome Tweton on Nonfiction Page.]
Utley, Robert M.
The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull. New York: Henry Holt, 1993.
Cavalier in Buckskin: George Armstrong Custer and the Western Military Frontier. University of Oklahoma Press, 1988.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert M. Utley (1929- ) is a former chief historian of the National Park Service and the author of eighteen books and hundreds of articles on western history, including biographies of General Custer and Sitting Bull. Following college and military service, he joined and quickly moved up the ranks of the National Park Service, where he became chief historian. His work in Washington helped shape the goals of the organization in ways that still resonate. Since his retirement from the NPS in 1980 he has devoted himself to research, writing, consulting and speaking. Utley has a wide variety of interests in western history, from the military to the fur trade, Sitting Bull to Billy the Kid, Texas Rangers to his forthcoming biography of Geronimo. He has served as president of the Western History Association and many scholarly boards, including the Editor's Advisory Board for North Dakota History. [See also entry on Robert Utley on the Nonfiction Page.]
BOOK DESCRIPTION
Reviled by the United States government as a troublemaker and a coward, revered by his people as a great war chief, Sitting Bull has long been one of the most fascinating and misunderstood figures in American history. Now, distinguished historian Robert M. Utley has forged a compelling new portrait of Sitting Bull, viewing the man from the Lakota perspective for the very first time to render the most unbiased and historically accurate biography of Sitting Bull to date.
Tatanka Iyotaka (1831-1890)
Sitting Bull was the principal chief of the Dakota Sioux, who were driven from their reservation in the Black Hills by gold miners in 1876, and took up arms against the whites and friendly Indians, refusing to be transported to the Indian territory. In June 1876, they defeated and massacred Gen. George A. Custer's advance party of Gen. Alfred H. Terry's column, which was sent against them, on Little Big Horn River. They were pursued northward by General Terry.
Sitting Bull, with a part of his band, made his escape into British Territory, and, through the mediation of Dominion officials, surrendered on a promise of pardon in 1880. In July and August1888, in a conference at Standing Rock, Dakota Territory, he influenced his tribe to refuse to relinquish Indian lands. He died in 1890 when followers tried to rescue him from the reservation police.
VanDevelder, Paul
Coyote Warrior: One Man, Three Tribes, and the Trial That Forged a Nation. Little, Brown, 2004. [See also entries for Paul VanDevelder on Nonfiction Page.]
Vestal, Stanley (William Stanley Campbell)
Sitting Bull, Champion of the Sioux. 1932; rep., University of Oklahoma Press, 1989.
Vogel, Robert
Unequal Contest: Bill Langer and His Political Enemies. Crain Grosinger Publishing, 2004.
Welch, Matthew
Body of Clay, Soul of Fire: Richard Bresnahan and the Saint John's Pottery. Afton Historical Society Press, 2001.
Woiwode, Larry
Aristocrat of the West: The Story of Harold Schafer. ND Institute for Regional Studies, 2000. [See also entries for Larry Woiwode on Fiction and Memoirs Pages.]
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