Learn how to make ‘Small Adjustments for Big Changes’ at your library on next week’s NCompass Live webinar on Wednesday, May 21 at 10am CT.
Hear about the programs that have influenced one library’s community, including diversifying collections, creating spaces for different age groups, implementing food security programs, getting outside of library walls, implementing 24-hour book pickup, and offering take-home crafts, all on a small budget in a small building. You’ll look at how some of the programs were planned and work together as a team to share successful programs and identify other ways to make big changes with small adjustments.
June 4 – Food for Thought: Addressing Food Waste, Access & Insecurity through Rural Libraries
June 11 – Sparking Community Connections: Rural Public Library Partnerships
June 18 – Outreach at Any Size
June 25 – Pretty Sweet Tech
To register for an NCompass Live show, or to listen to recordings of past shows, go to the NCompass Live webpage.
NCompass Live is broadcast live every Wednesday from 10am – 11am Central Time. Convert to your time zone on the Official U.S. Time website.
The show is presented online using the GoTo Webinar online meeting service. Before you attend a session, please see the NLC Online Sessions webpage for detailed information about GoTo Webinar, including system requirements, firewall permissions, and equipment requirements for computer speakers and microphones.
The Ancillary series had been recommended to me years ago, so when I came across the boxed set, I took a chance, and bought it. And it just as good as the awards make it out to be—the first book, Ancillary Justice won the Hugo, Nebula and Arthur C. Clarke Awards. There is no mid series slump, and the action keeps going. The story is what is considered “hard” science fiction, occurring on planets, stations, ships and space.
The Imperial Radch trilogy by Ann Leckie
Breq is an ancillary, the human form of an artificial intelligence that ran a troop carrier star ship, of the Radch military fleet. She’s alone now, and in the first book comes across a body in the snow on the planet she’s currently on, identifies it as male, and a former lieutenant of hers from the ship Justice of Toren) This is Seirvarden, who had been lost a thousand years ago. His escape capsule had been found and he had been awakened—to find his family, and his world gone, a person out of place. The first book sets up the situations that lead to the rest of the series, in forward motion, and in flashbacks.
The Radch is a human culture that doesn’t have genders—the author uses she to refer to everyone, rather than using zie or he. Clothing, jewelry, positions, are all gender neutral. It does disorient at first. But there are occasional hints. I and at least one reviewer got over the need to gender everyone. The author also based the Radch Empire on the Roman Empire, and a reviewer saw resemblance to the Greeks spreading out and conquering “uncivilized” groups of humans. All human civilizations that aren’t Radch are uncivilized. But conquering civilizations and occupying them is as bloody thousands of years in the future, as it was in the past.
The idea of an imperial culture isn’t new, but an emperor who takes over, clones himself, and spreads clones of himself (herself) throughout the empire, is a new idea. In many ways, the technology is much like what is used for making an ancillary, except that the clone grows up connected. And, of course, is one person. Until there is a split.
Enter the Presger, an alien race that enjoys taking apart ships and space stations (and people), in the most destructive, bloody way possible. Plus they can’t be stopped. Eventually there is a treaty with the Presger and the Radchaai, (with actually the human race, but the Radchaai don’t really understand this…), but there are two incidents that make waves and cause a split in the emperor’s minds. The Presger sell a civilization guns with ammo that travels 1.11 meters. (Spoiler alert–the gun can destroy Radchaai military ships.) In addition, the discovery of humans with another alien race. That’s not exactly the problem, but there’s so much packed in three volumes!
Not only is there politics on the grand scale but also on the personal scale. The characters are well drawn, and often sympathetic. The plotlines tie up neatly, and there are even nods to other authors—Anne McCaffrey’s TheShip Who Sang, Ursula le Guinn’s The Left Hand of Darkness, and C.J. Cherryh’s the Foreigner series. There is even a grumpy medic who reminds me of McCoy.
In addition, if you are interested in the military view of the book, there is a review by a site called DEFENSE.info, with a take from a current military viewpoint, including ship sizes, crews, and officers in graphics. He also covers some thoughts on AI developing feelings and personalities. (Remember, this book is thousands of years in the future…) My only complaint, it looks like he forgot the medical teams. The Imperial Radch Trilogy | Defense.info
This week’s #BookFace is all about chasing your dreams. “Songs in Ursa Major” is a scintillating debut by Emma Brodie (Knopf, 2021), a love story that’s all about music and the trappings of fame. Filled with the heart and vibes of the early 70’s music scene, the novel has a powerful core that asks how much are you willing to sacrifice for your dreams? You can listen to the audiobook yourself through Nebraska OverDrive Libraries!
“Entrancing… This superbly crafted debut novel immerses readers in a story of family, love, and music from the first page. Brodie makes a point about the destructive force of drug abuse, and bears witness to unsavory business practices in the music industry. This book would make a wonderful movie; readers will long for an album of Jane’s songs to go with it.”
— Library Journal,starred
Libraries participating in the Nebraska OverDrive Libraries Group currently have access to a shared and growing collection of digital downloadable audiobooks and eBooks. 194 libraries across the state share the Nebraska OverDrive collection of 26,898 audiobooks, 36,794 ebooks, and 5,133 magazines. As an added bonus it includes 130 podcasts that are always available with simultaneous use (SU), as well as SU ebooks and audiobook titles that publishers have made available for a limited time. If you’re a part of it, let your users know about this great title, and if you’re not a member yet, find more information about participating in Nebraska Overdrive Libraries!
This 4″x6″ glass plate negative is a portrait photograph of Frances Barbee, from Gresham, Nebraska. She is wearing a long white dress with elbow-length gathered sleeves, v-shaped sheer lace inserts down the gathered sleeves with lace edged cuffs, sheer lace inserts on the bodice with high-stand collar edged with lace ruffle, a bracelet on her arm, ring on her finger, chain necklace with medallion around her neck, sitting in profile in a chair, looking down at several silk roses on a wooden table, her brunette hair pulled up and secured in back with a black ribbon bow.
This image is published as part of the Boston Studio Project collection, and is owned by both them and the Thorpe Opera House Foundation. The Boston Studio Collection consists of over 68,000 negatives that record life in and around David City, Nebraska from 1893 to 1979.
The Nebraska Memories archive is brought to you by the Nebraska Library Commission. If your institution is interested in participating in Nebraska Memories, see http://nlc.nebraska.gov/nebraskamemories/participation.aspx for more information.
“Vigilante Days: Frontier Justice Along the Niobrara” by Harold Hutton is now available on cartridge and for download on BARD, the Braille and Audio Reading Download service. BARD is a service offered by the Nebraska Library Commission Talking Book and Braille Service and the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled at the Library of Congress.
Covering a period of 15 to 20 years during the late 1800s and mostly focusing on the activities of noted horse thief, Kid Wade, Hutton expands his scope to include all vigilante activity in the lower and middle Niobrara region. This volume tries to present an unbiased factual study. Hutton does not depict the vigilance committees as always right or always wrong, nor does he attempt to glamorize or create sympathy for the thieves.
TBBS borrowers can request “Vigilante Days: Frontier Justice Along the Niobrara” DBC02021 or download it from the National Library Service BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) website. If you have high-speed internet access, you can download books to your smartphone or tablet, or onto a flash drive for use with your player. You may also contact your reader’s advisor to have the book mailed to you on cartridge.
Below is a list of free training opportunities coming up this week and some recently recorded webinars! There is also a monthly list of free training resources which is compiled each month by the Maine State Library and WebJunction.
Many webinars are recorded and can be watched later.
Get a head start on ‘The 2025 Public Library Accreditation Process’ on next week’s NCompass Live webinar on Wednesday, May 14 at 10am CT.
The 2025 Nebraska Public Library Accreditation process opens on July 1. If your library is up for re-accreditation this year, join us for a short refresher on the process. Or, if your library is not currently Accredited, attend this session to explore the possibility of becoming an Accredited Public Library.
In this general overview, you will learn why Accreditation is important and how it benefits your library. We’ll also show you the Application Form, and explain how it relates to the required Community Needs Response Plan.
Public Library Directors, Staff, and Library Board Members are encouraged to attend.
Presenter: Christa Porter, Library Development Director, Nebraska Library Commission.
Upcoming NCompass Live shows:
May 21 – Small Adjustments for Big Changes
May 28 – Pretty Sweet Tech
June 4 – Food for Thought: Addressing Food Waste, Access & Insecurity through Rural Libraries
June 11 – Sparking Community Connections: Rural Public Library Partnerships
June 18 – Outreach at Any Size
June 25 – Pretty Sweet Tech
To register for an NCompass Live show, or to listen to recordings of past shows, go to the NCompass Live webpage.
NCompass Live is broadcast live every Wednesday from 10am – 11am Central Time. Convert to your time zone on the Official U.S. Time website.
The show is presented online using the GoTo Webinar online meeting service. Before you attend a session, please see the NLC Online Sessions webpage for detailed information about GoTo Webinar, including system requirements, firewall permissions, and equipment requirements for computer speakers and microphones.
Let #BookFace be your muse and check out what’s being showcased on the Nebraska OverDrive Library home page, you’ll find titles like this week’s #BookFace, “The Lola Quartet” by Emily St. John Mandel (Vintage, 2015) which follows disgraced journalist Gavin Sasaki, as he goes back home to regroup after being fired for plagiarism and finds out he may have a daughter he never knew about. You can check out the ebook yourself through Nebraska OverDrive Libraries!
“Compelling. . . . Perhaps all novelists can be said to wrestle with morality; Mandel seems to wrestle with it at greater length and in greater depth than most. . . . First-rate fiction.”
— Dallas Morning News
This week’s #BookFace model is Ethan Nelson, the new Director of the Western Library System! Ethan is a native Nebraskan who grew up on a farm about forty miles south of Scottsbluff. He loves a good book with his favorite genre being fantasy, and is currently reading Michael Moorcock’s Elric saga. He now lives in Scottsbluff with his adorable cat Tails. If you get a chance send him a note and welcome him to Nebraska’s Regional Library systems!
Libraries participating in the Nebraska OverDrive Libraries Group currently have access to a shared and growing collection of digital downloadable audiobooks and eBooks. 194 libraries across the state share the Nebraska OverDrive collection of 26,898 audiobooks, 36,794 ebooks, and 5,133 magazines. As an added bonus it includes 130 podcasts that are always available with simultaneous use (SU), as well as SU ebooks and audiobook titles that publishers have made available for a limited time. If you’re a part of it, let your users know about this great title, and if you’re not a member yet, find more information about participating in Nebraska Overdrive Libraries!
I went on a ghost tour in Seattle several years ago. We walked down a steep set of stairs and explored the damp underground. Every nook and cranny had a dark story of fire, greed, insanity, and murder most foul. The guide was good enough to make us all jump at shadows.
As our little group walked back into the light I considered how each person’s life could change in an instant. The gift shop was an oddly bright place to sell murder and chaos. The tent city across the street seemed to fit the theme better, so I found myself staring out the window at rows and rows of tents. In my mind, each tent was another dark story.
Over the years, I saw more massive tent cities across the nation. I wondered about the real stories behind all those tents, then I stumbled upon Brian Goldstone’s There is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America in a free book talk webinar through The Aspen Institute. He spoke with passion and conviction, dispelling the myth that homeless people are all mentally unstable or unwilling to work. There’s more to the story.
Turns out, a good number of people are working full time but still can’t afford rent. Some lost their homes due to unexpected fire or natural disaster and weren’t able to find new housing in their budget. Goldstone humanizes the homeless crisis through real stories of people who landed in tents or cars after unexpected events. Each story represents a significant portion of the population.
In many cases, insanity doesn’t lead to homelessness, but homelessness can drive people insane. People are working full-time and striving towards work that pays a living wage, but are caught in a loop of trying to afford the schooling to build new skills while paying for rising childcare costs and trying to find an address to put on forms.
When cities make it illegal to live in your car and homeless shelters run out of beds, you get tents. The real story is that people are just trying to survive in a broken world. Life on the streets is hard, but people don’t want to become just another ghost on a tour of the city. All people should have the opportunity to survive and thrive.
Read this book if you ever walked past a homeless person and wondered about their story, but were too afraid to ask. You’ll never look at a tent the same way again.
This 7-3/4″ x 5-1/2″ black and white photograph shows the interior of the Calumet Cafe, located on the east side of Fairmont Avenue. There are tables with tablecloths in the center of the room, booths along the right wall, and a snack bar with stools near the front. Display cases and shelves with merchandise line the left side of the room, and streamers hang from the ceiling. Several customers sit at the tables and booth. Two male employees stand by the display cases, and a female employee stands by one of the tables. In August 1907, the cafe was purchased by A.B. Tomasek, and it became Mrs. Tony’s Cafe.
This image is published and owned by the Fairmont Public Library. In partnership with the Fillmore County Historical Society, the Fairmont Public Library digitized photographs from their collections depicting the history of Fillmore County. The photos in this collection feature local businesses, schools, churches, as well as the Fairmont Army Airfield, which was used during World War II.
The Nebraska Memories archive is brought to you by the Nebraska Library Commission. If your institution is interested in participating in Nebraska Memories, see http://nlc.nebraska.gov/nebraskamemories/participation.aspx for more information.
‘Public Library Accreditation 2025’ workshops are now open for registration! All workshops will be held online only, via GoTo Webinar. To register for a session, go to the Nebraska Library Commission’s Training & Events Calendar and search for ‘accreditation 2025’.
NOTE: These online workshops are being offered on several days and at varied times, to give attendees multiple opportunities to find a convenient time to attend. The same information will be provided at each workshop, so you only need to register for one session. A recorded version will also be made available after all of the live sessions have been held.
What is Nebraska Public Library Accreditation? What are the benefits of accreditation? How does my library become accredited? What’s a Community Needs Response Plan? Why does my library need one?
The purpose of Nebraska Public Library Accreditation is to encourage excellent library service in Nebraska communities. The guidelines used to evaluate libraries and their services are community-based, so libraries need to know their communities’ needs in order to provide appropriate library services that meet those unique needs. That’s where Community Needs Response Planning comes in!
In this workshop, Christa Porter, NLC’s Library Development Director, will guide you through Community Needs Response Planning and applying for Public Library Accreditation.
Public Library Directors, Staff, and Library Board Members are encouraged to attend.
Dates and times:
June 3 – 1:00-4:00pm Central / 12:00noon-3pm Mountain
June 5 – 9:30am-12:30pm Central / 8:30-11:30am Mountain
June 10– 9:30am-12:30pm Central / 8:30-11:30am Mountain
June 11 – 1:00-4:00pm Central / 12:00noon-3pm Mountain
To register for a session, go to the Nebraska Library Commission’s Training & Events Calendar and search for ‘accreditation 2025’.
Below is a list of free training opportunities coming up this week and some recently recorded webinars! There is also a monthly list of free training resources which is compiled each month by the Maine State Library and WebJunction.
Many webinars are recorded and can be watched later.
May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, and this year, as marked by the Federal Asian Pacific American Council, is for celebrating the “Legacy of Leadership and Resilience” of the wide-reaching diaspora. Today, for our Book Club Spotlight, we celebrate author Ly Tran and her family’s story of resilience, as Chinese-Vietnamese (Tang Dynasty Teochew) refugees to the United States. Her memoir, House of Sticks, was a New York City Book Awards Winner, and one of Vogue and NPR’s Best Book of the Year.
“We arrive in the blizzard of 1993, coming from rice paddies, mango trees, and the sun to February in the Empire State.” At three years old, Ký Lý and her family of 6 are sent to the United States, as part of a humanitarian effort to relocate South Vietnamese prisoners of war. Though she doesn’t quite understand it, Ly’s father was one of those men, confined in the Viet Cong re-education camps of torture and indoctrination. However, America was not the fresh start they were sold. The family struggles in poverty, resorting to endless nights of sewing garments in their cramped and dirty apartment to barely make ends meet. As she grows, Ly recognizes the dour circumstances around her, and her parent’s ceaseless effort to create a life for their children- free from the horrors of the past. In an attempt to protect her family from more hardship, Ly learns to hide the cruelty of others from her parents and to hide herself as well.
“Even the most monstrous of faces that I could conjure always had the same pained look in their eyes. And I imagined that they feared the dark just as much as I did.”
Ly Tran
For Adult Book Club Groups who are fans of moving family memoirs like Educatedand The Glass Castle, House of Sticks is a story of filial piety, and how the trauma of our parents move within us and propel our lives. How pressures of helping support a family, and neglect can weigh on a child into their adult years. Though Tran spends much of her memoir away from her family, they are a part of her and influence every step she takes. She was especially her traumatized father, but her ability for compassion and understanding helped bridge the long-worn gaps between them. Reading stories like House of Sticks can open us up to new perspectives and peoples. When we celebrate the melting pot of the United States, like with AAPI month, it’s important to take the time and learn about our history together. Even before we were a country, Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Native Hawaiians have been a part of our legacy.
If you’re interested in requesting House of Sticks for your book club, you can find the Request Form here. There are 8 copies and an Audio CD. (A librarian must request items)
Central Community College announces classes for the Library Information Services program for Spring 2025.
Enrollment is open as of April 14, 2025 for classes beginning August 18, 2025. The Library & Information Services Certificate is a 15-credit hour program. All credits can be applied to a Central Community College associate degree.
Pick up some practical, affordable, and successful advocacy strategies for your small library on next week’s NCompass Live webinar on Wednesday, May 7 at 10am CT.
Everyday advocacy is a way of connecting continuously with your community – with your funders, patrons, business community, schools, and with your local, state, regional, and national governments, as well as with your library colleagues and organizations. This presentation offers practical advice on successful strategies for library advocacy with an emphasis on low-cost activities that are manageable for smaller libraries with limited staff and resources, focusing on educating your community on what a library really is, what a librarian does, and the value of the library to its community.
May 14 – The 2025 Public Library Accreditation Process
May 21 – Small Adjustments for Big Changes
May 28 – Pretty Sweet Tech
June 4 – Food for Thought: Addressing Food Waste, Access & Insecurity through Rural Libraries
June 11 – Sparking Community Connections: Rural Public Library Partnerships
June 18 – Outreach at Any Size
June 25 – Pretty Sweet Tech
To register for an NCompass Live show, or to listen to recordings of past shows, go to the NCompass Live webpage.
NCompass Live is broadcast live every Wednesday from 10am – 11am Central Time. Convert to your time zone on the Official U.S. Time website.
The show is presented online using the GoTo Webinar online meeting service. Before you attend a session, please see the NLC Online Sessions webpage for detailed information about GoTo Webinar, including system requirements, firewall permissions, and equipment requirements for computer speakers and microphones.
May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month (AAPI), and we want to help you celebrate by highlighting just one of the many Asian authors in our collections. “The Last Story of Mina Lee” by Nancy Jooyoun Kim (Park Row, 2021) is a fictional novel recounting the fraught mother daughter relationship between first and second generation Korean immigrants. It’s available as an Audiobook through Nebraska OverDrive Libraries and is also available as a book club kit through the Nebraska Library Commission. You can find more AAPI stories to explore in our book club collection or Asian/Pacific authors here.
“Haunting and heartbreaking, troubled threads between a mother and daughter blend together in a delicate and rich weave… With both sadness and beauty, [Kim] describes grief, regret, loss, and the feeling of being left behind. Fans of Amy Tan and Kristin Hannah will love Kim’s brilliant debut.”
— Booklist, STARRED review
Libraries participating in the Nebraska OverDrive Libraries Group currently have access to a shared and growing collection of digital downloadable audiobooks and eBooks. 194 libraries across the state share the Nebraska OverDrive collection of 26,898 audiobooks, 36,794 ebooks, and 5,133 magazines. As an added bonus it includes 130 podcasts that are always available with simultaneous use (SU), as well as SU ebooks and audiobook titles that publishers have made available for a limited time. If you’re a part of it, let your users know about this great title, and if you’re not a member yet, find more information about participating in Nebraska Overdrive Libraries!
Book Club Kits Rules for Use
These kits can be checked out by the librarians of Nebraska libraries and media centers.
Circulation times are flexible and will be based upon availability. There is no standard check-out time for book club kits.
Please search the collection to select items you wish to borrow and use the REQUEST THIS KIT icon to borrow items.
Contact the Information Desk at the Library Commission if you have any questions: by phone: 800/307-2665, or by email: Information Services Team
The Kamogawa Food Detectives is a quick read. The print edition is around 200 pages and the audiobook, which I listened to, runs just shy of five hours. For this reason it’s a great palate cleanser of a book, especially if you like detective stories, food, and foreign settings.
The food detective protagonists of the title are father-daughter duo Nagare and Koishi Kamogawa, proprietors of the hard to find but undeniably special Kamogawa Diner, in Kyoto, Japan. Nagare, a retired police detective, is head chef, while Koishi waits tables and assists in the kitchen as needed. Koishi is also head of the detective agency, which they run out of a back room and promote only via a one-line advertisement in a specialty gourmet magazine: “Kamogawa Diner – Kamogawa Detective Agency – We Find Your Food.”
It’s Koishi’s job to interview clients and glean as much information as possible from them about a remembered dish they wish to taste again. This is never an easy task. The emotions associated with the clients’ food memories are typically strong, but details about ingredients, preparation, and sometimes even where the dish was eaten, are sparse. That’s where Nagare, with his unique combination of detective and culinary skills, comes in.
Structurally, this book reminds me of a TV detective series. Each of the six chapters feels like an episode, featuring a different client looking for a unique dish; and each case is satisfactorily solved by the end of its chapter. Chapters also follow a predictable format: the client arrives at the restaurant and sits for an interview with Koishi; after the client leaves, Koishi shares her often scant notes with Nagare; two weeks later the client returns and is served the dish they asked to have recreated; and after they finish eating, Nagara not only explains the investigative process he followed in order to recreate the dish, he also shares his insight into why the dish holds emotional significance for the client.
If you wind up consuming this book and it whets your appetite for more, you’ll be pleased to learn that The Kamogawa Food Detectives is the first installment in a series. Originally published in Japan in 2013, it was translated into English and released in the United States in February 2024. An English-language edition of The Restaurant of Lost Recipes, book two in the series, followed in October 2024, and book three, Menu of Happiness is scheduled for release in October 2025. Bon Appétit!
Kashiwai, Hisashi. The Kamogawa Food Detectives. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2024.
This 6″ x 4″ color photograph is a close-up of the center of a quilt made out of neckties. The ties are arranged in several concentric circles. “This is the Holen Boys Necktie Quilt” is embroidered on the center of the quilt. This tie quilt was made by members of the Holen family and was part of a traveling display arranged by the Smithsonian Institution.
This image is published by the Holdrege Area Public Library and owned by the Phelps County Historical Society who partnered together to digitize a collection of images portraying the history of Phelps County since the mid 1880’s.
The Nebraska Memories archive is brought to you by the Nebraska Library Commission. If your institution is interested in participating in Nebraska Memories, see http://nlc.nebraska.gov/nebraskamemories/participation.aspx for more information.
New state agency publications have been received at the Nebraska Library Commission for March and April, 2025. Included are reports from the Nebraska Auditor of Public Accounts, the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources, the Nebraska State Electrical Board, various Nebraska Legislative Committees, and titles from University of Nebraska Press, to name a few.
With a few exceptions, such as the University of Nebraska Press titles, items are available for immediate viewing and printing by clicking directly in the PDF below. The University of Nebraska Press titles can be checked out by librarians for their patrons here: Online Catalog.
The Nebraska Legislature created the Nebraska Publications Clearinghouse in 1972 as a service of the Nebraska Library Commission. Its purpose is to collect, preserve, and provide access to all public information published by Nebraska state agencies. By law (State Statutes 51-411 to 51-413) all Nebraska state agencies are required to submit their published documents to the Clearinghouse. For more information, visit the Nebraska Publications Clearinghouse page, contact Aimee Owen, Government Information Services Librarian; or contact Bonnie Henzel, State Documents Staff Assistant.
Here are the UNP books the Clearinghouse received in March and April, 2025:
The Bears of Grand Teton: a Natural and Cultural History, by Sue Consolo-Murphy. Series: America’s Public Lands
The Bears of Grand Teton is the first comprehensive history of bears, black and grizzly, and their interactions with people in Grand Teton National Park and the surrounding area of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It is also a personal account by Sue Consolo-Murphy, who spent thirty years as a wildlife manager for the National Park Service.
Consolo-Murphy focuses on the natural, cultural, and administrative histories of bears in and around Grand Teton National Park and the nearby John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway, paying particular attention to bears’ interactions with livestock. Entertaining and educational, The Bears of Grand Teton also explores the phenomenon of social media celebrity bears—such as Grizzly 399, the world’s most famous bear—and the challenges of listing and removing grizzly bears from Endangered Species Act protection.
A Grammar of Nakoda (Assiniboine) is the first complete grammar of the Native American language Assiniboine, also known by the endonym Nakoda, a member of the Siouan language family. It addresses all major grammatical categories, including phonology, nouns, verbs, adverbs, enclitics, determiners, syntax, and kinship terminology. It also includes groundbreaking analysis of motion verbs of coming and going, demonstrating that such verbs compose a closed system that is consistent in varying degrees across all Siouan languages.
Over the past century and a half, the classification of the Assiniboine language has suffered due to a complicated history regarding the Dakotan branch of the Siouan language family. Once spoken over a vast contiguous area of the northern plains, Assiniboine/Nakoda is used today among the Assiniboine people in and around Fort Belknap and Fort Peck in Montana and in five reserves in Saskatchewan. A Grammar of Nakoda (Assiniboine) establishes the singular basis of the language while also relating its unique features to other Great Plains American Indian languages.
With wit and vulnerability, Brandel France de Bravo explores resilience in the face of climate change and a global pandemic, race, and the concept of a self, all while celebrating the power of breath as “baptism on repeat.” Whether her inspiration is twelfth-century Buddhist mind-training slogans or the one-footed crow who visits her daily, France de Bravo mines the tension between the human desire for permanence and control, and life’s fluid, ungraspable nature. Poem by poem, essay by essay, she builds a temple to the perpetual motion of transformation, the wondrous churn of change and exchange that defines companionship, marriage, and ceding our place on Earth: “not dying, but molting.”
Written with the help of Courtney Ryley Cooper, Memories of Buffalo Bill offers an idealized account of William F. Cody’s life from the perspective of his wife, Louisa. True to its origins, this account offers many more details about Cody’s domestic life, including his children, than any other preceding work. Although William and Louisa’s real-life marriage was marred by some high-profile scandals, it endured until her husband’s death in 1917.
Memories of Buffalo Bill, the first biography of William F. Cody to appear after his death, strikes a celebratory tone in narrating highlights of his life and enterprises. Through its introduction, notes, and appendixes, this edition offers a broader context for the Codys’ marriage, evidencing its private realities and the collaboration required to preserve the Buffalo Bill image in the public eye. Out of print since its first publication, Louisa Cody’s memoir highlights the processes involved in crafting and preserving a national myth. Both for what it does and does not say, it was the first step in laying a foundation for the enduring legacy of Buffalo Bill as an American icon.
Nebraska Government and Politics offers an in-depth examination of the connection between the political culture, traditions, and heritage of Nebraska and its governmental institutions. This new edition discusses federalism, constitutionalism, and the continuing American frontier, paying special attention to the effects and frameworks of Nebraska’s political culture. The contributors emphasize enduring trends and issues through Nebraska’s history as they examine the cultural foundations of the state’s political institutions, the major governmental structures in the state, and the political and administrative relationships at play. The chapters cover periodic populism, the state constitution, nonpartisanship and direct democracy, budgeting and financial policies, the unicameral, the executive branch, local government, political culture, and capital punishment.
Robert Blair, Christian L. Janousek, and Jerome Deichert provide a long view of Nebraska, a state whose unique political culture is reflected in its institutions.
Old Rags and Iron is a collection of narrative poems about the life experiences of working-class people with whom the author, R. F. McEwen, is not only acquainted but whose lives he has shared. McEwen supplemented his income as a teacher while working as a professional logger and tree trimmer, and he writes with great love and respect for blue-collar families.
Set primarily in the back-of-the-yard neighborhood of South Side Chicago, where McEwen grew up, as well as Pine Ridge, South Dakota, western Nebraska, Ireland, and elsewhere, the poems celebrate many voices and stories. Utilizing tree-trimming as a central metaphor, these poems of blank verse fictions reverberate like truth.
Old Rags and Iron is a collection of narrative poems about the life experiences of working-class people with whom the author, R. F. McEwen, is not only acquainted but whose lives he has shared. McEwen supplemented his income as a teacher while working as a professional logger and tree trimmer, and he writes with great love and respect for blue-collar families.
Set primarily in the back-of-the-yard neighborhood of South Side Chicago, where McEwen grew up, as well as Pine Ridge, South Dakota, western Nebraska, Ireland, and elsewhere, the poems celebrate many voices and stories. Utilizing tree-trimming as a central metaphor, these poems of blank verse fictions reverberate like truth.
Tell Me About Your Bad Guys: Fathering In Anxious Times, by Michael Dowdy. Series: American Lives
Michael Dowdy perceives the world as a poet, one with an anxiety disorder. As a result he has rarely experienced fathering or his relationship with his daughter, A, as a linear narrative. Rather, his impressions of fathering coalesce in encounters with the conditions of our time, producing intense flashes of awareness and emotion. Critiquing his own fathering practices, Dowdy’s essays move between simplicity—being present for his daughter—and complexity—considering the harrowing present of entrenched misogyny, school shootings, climate change, and other threats to childing and fathering with love, optimism, and joy.
The essays in Tell Me about Your Bad Guys do not provide easy answers. They follow instead an interrogative mode, guided by A’s unruly questions and Dowdy’s desire to avoid fatherhood literature’s traps: false modesty, antic ineptitude, and defensive clowning. This means understanding fathering not as an ironclad identity or a cohesive story but as a process of trial and error, self-reflection, and radical openness. With measures of dark humor, the essays take seriously the literary, material, and political stakes of fathering and in doing so challenge patriarchal norms and one-dimensional accounts of fatherhood.
Thank You for Staying with Me: Essays, by Bailey Gaylin Moore. Series: American Lives
Urgent, meditative, and searching, Thank You for Staying with Me is a collection of essays that navigates the complexities of home, the vulnerability of being a woman, mother-daughter relationships, and young motherhood in the conservative and religious landscape of the Ozarks. Using cosmology as a foil to discuss human issues, Bailey Gaylin Moore describes praying to the sky during moments of despondency, observing a solar eclipse while reflecting on what it means to be in the penumbra of society, and using galaxy identification to understand herself. During a collision of women’s rights, gun policy, and racial tension, Thank You for Staying with Me is a frank and intimate rumination on how national policy and social attitudes affect both the individual and the public sphere, especially in such a conservative part of the United States.
Turning the Power: Indian Boarding Schools, Native American Anthropologists, and the Race to Preserve Indigenous Cultures, by Nathan Sowry. Series: Critical Studies in the History of Anthropology
In Turning the Power Nathan Sowry examines how some Native American students from the boarding school system, with its forced assimilationist education, became key cultural informants for anthropologists conducting fieldwork during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Salvage anthropologists of this era relied on Native informants to accomplish their mission of “saving” Native American cultures and ultimately turned many informants into anthropologists after years of fieldwork experience.
Sowry investigates ten relatively unknown Native American anthropologists and collaborators who, from 1878 to 1930, attended a religiously affiliated mission school, a federal Indian boarding school, or both. He tells the stories of Native anthropologists Tichkematse, William Jones, and James R. Murie, who were alumni of the Hampton Institute in Virginia. Richard Davis and Cleaver Warden were among the first and second classes to attend the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. Amos Oneroad graduated from the Haskell Indian Industrial Training School in Lawrence, Kansas, after attending mission and boarding schools in South Dakota. D. C. Duvall, John V. Satterlee, and Florence and Louis Shotridge attended smaller boarding and mission schools in Montana, Wisconsin, and Alaska Territory, respectively.
Turning the Power follows the forced indoctrination of Native American students and then details how each of them “turned the power,” using their English knowledge and work experience in the anthropological field to embrace, document, and preserve their Native cultures rather than abandoning their heritage.
