Category Archives: Talking Book & Braille Service (TBBS)

Nebraska Adult Fiction Book Available on BARD!

Secrets on the Wind: Pine Ridge Portraits, #1” by Nebraska author Stephanie Grace Whitson 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.

Two cavalry soldiers discover a burned-down settler’s dugout and find a woman hiding under a trapdoor. They bring her to For Robinson, where a gentle, elderly woman helps nurse her back to health. Traumatized and distrustful of men, she remains indifferent to those trying to help her. Gradually, however, she beings to embark on a path toward faith.

TBBS borrowers can request “Secrets on the Wind: Pine Ridge Portraits, #1” DBC02057 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.

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Nebraska Nonfiction Book Available on BARD!

Song of the North Wind : A Story of the Snow Goose” by Nebraska author Paul A. Johnsgard 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.

A chronological account of one year in the lives of a pair of snow geese. Includes a considerable amount of accurate scientific observation and information in a novel-like manner.

TBBS borrowers can request “Song of the North Wind: A Story of the Snow Goose” DBC02029 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.

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Friday Reads: A Court of Thorns and Roses, by Sarah J. Maas

Recently I was with one of my daughters, and asked her what she was currently reading. The conversation that followed was all about the book genre that both my daughters have fallen completely in love with: Fantasy Romance. In general this is not a genre I’ve been drawn to, but they are so enthusiastic about it I thought I would give one a try. A Court of Thorns and Roses was the one recommended I read first, so I jumped out of my comfort zone and read something different. I will admit that it was a fun read, with faeries, demons, magic, and adventure galore. I both read and listened to it, and enjoyed both. Sarah J. Maas is an excellent writer, and it was easy to imagine the settings, characters, and story.

“When nineteen-year-old huntress Feyre kills a wolf in the woods, a terrifying creature arrives at her house to demand retribution. She is dragged away from her family to a treacherous magical land she knows about only from legends. There, Feyre discovers that her captor is not truly a beast, but one of the lethal, immortal faeries who once ruled her world. At least, he’s not a beast all the time. As she adapts to her new home, her feelings for the faerie, Tamlin, transform from icy hostility into a fiery passion that burns through every lie she’s been told about the beautiful, dangerous world of the Fae. But something is not right in the faerie lands. An ancient, wicked shadow is growing, and Feyre must find a way to stop it or doom Tamlin—and his world—forever. “

A Court of Thorns and Roses is the first in a series of five books. Ms. Maas has written four series in the Fantasy Romance genre, and there are other authors to choose from as well: Rebecca Yarros, Raven Kennedy, and Callie Hart just to name a few. There are also titles in this genre available to our Talking Book and Braille patrons–just search in BARD, or call your reader advisor. Enjoy! **Synopsis courtesy of Amazon and Audible.

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Nebraska Book Available on BARD!

Prayer and Peanut Butter” by Nebraska author Shirley Lueth 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.

A collection of short, humorous essays about home life with a family of seven children, appearing originally in the author’s column in the Grand Island Daily Independent.

TBBS borrowers can request “Prayer and Peanut Butter” DBC02040 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.

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Great Plains Recipe Book Available on BARD!

Wild Seasons: Gathering and Cooking Wild Plants of the Great Plains” by Kay Young 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.

For nature lovers as well as cooks, there’s plenty to whet the appetite in this unique field guide-cum-cookbook. Starting with the first plants ready for eating in the early spring (watercress and nettles) and following the sequence of harvest through the late fall (persim-mons and Jerusalem artichokes), Kay Young offers full, easy-to-follow directions for identifying, gathering, and preparing some four dozen edible wild plants of the Great Plains. And since most of the plants occur elsewhere as well, residents of other regions will find much of interest here.

‘This is not a survival book,” writes the author; “only those plants whose flavor and availability warrant the time and effort to collect or grow them are included.” The nearly 250 recipes range from old-time favorites (poke sallet; catnip tea; horehound lozenges; hickory nut cake; a cupboardful of jams, jellies, and pies) to enticing new creations (wild violet salad, milkweed sandwiches, cattail pollen pancakes, day-lily hors d’oeuvres, prickly-pear cactus relish).
Synopses courtesy of University of Nebraska Press

“Kay Young knows more than anyone else I know about wild plants and their uses. . . . If you are interested in wild plants, the Plains, and good eating, you will want a copy of Wild Seasons in your library.” — Roger Welsch, Roger, Over and Out

TBBS borrowers can request “Wild Seasons: Gathering and Cooking Wild Plants of the Great Plains” DBC02011 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.

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Nebraska Football Book Available on BARD!

Big Red Confidential: Inside Nebraska Football” by Armen Keteyian 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.

This book brings to life the raw intensity and richly colorful experience of Husker Power. Yet it also shows that beneath this mighty exterior lies a turbulent, troubled team of players and coaches. It exposes the big-time money and pressures that come with being the winningest team in college football.

TBBS borrowers can request “Big Red Confidential: Inside Nebraska Football” DBC02024 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.

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#BookFaceFriday “Five Stories” by Willa Cather

We’re among the wild flowers with this #BookFaceFriday!

Is there anything more iconically Midwestern than Willa Cather? We love highlighting Nebraska authors in our NLC collections; this week’s #BookFace selection, “Five Stories” by Willa Cather (Random House, 1956), is available on cartridge and for download on BARD, the Braille and Audio Reading Download service, from our Talking Book & Braille (TBBS) collection. It’s a part of our collection of Nebraska books and publications made available to Nebraska TBBS customers. Originally recorded on cassette by NLC in 1982, and narrated by Peggy Johnson, it was digitized and added to the National Library Service collection in 2023. For our non-TBBS users, we have many Cather titles, as well as biographies and nonfiction titles about the author, available on Nebraska OverDrive Libraries. We also have ten of Willa Cather’s novels available for check out in our Book Club Kit collection.

“These five stories span almost the entire length of Willa Cather’s career and juxtapose her two worlds: the Nebraska prairie and the world of art. Five short stories; The Enchanted Bluff, Tom Outland’s Story, Neighbor Rosicky, Paul’s Case, and The Best Years, along with an article by George N. Kates on Miss Cather’s last unfinished, and unpublished Avignon story.

— From the BARD description

This week’s #BookFace model is long TBBS narrator Connie Healy! A volunteer with TBBS for over ten years, Connie has narrated more than eleven books and countless magazines in her time with us, including three One Book One Nebraska titles: “Dancing with the Octopus” by Debora Harding, “The Bones of Paradise” by Jonis Agee, and “Prairie Forge” by James J. Kimble. You can find all of the books she’s narrated on the National Library Service website.

TBBS borrowers can request “Five Stories” DBC02016 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.

Love this #BookFace & reading? We suggest checking out all the titles available for book clubs at http://nlc.nebraska.gov/ref/bookclub. Check out our past #BookFaceFriday photos on the Nebraska Library Commission’s Facebook page!

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New Book Available on BARD!

Mollie: The Journal of Mollie Dorsey Sanford in Nebraska and Colorado Territories, 1857-1866” with an introduction and notes by Donald F. Danker 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.

The record of a young woman, school teacher and wife on the Nebraska and Colorado frontiers. An intensely feminine account of homesteading in the raw, new land, and of the hardships of pioneer life, reported with gaiety and courage.

“Mollie is the best and most readable western journal I know this side of Francis Parkman’s. . . . It is important as a document of social history, and vital and alive as the record of one honest, sharp-eyed, and appealing pioneer woman.” — Rocky Mountain News

TBBS borrowers can request “Mollie: The Journal of Mollie Dorsey Sanford in Nebraska and Colorado Territories, 1857-1866” DBC02068 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.

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New Book Available on BARD!

Covered Wagon Days: A Journey Across the Plains in the Sixties, and Pioneer Days in the Northwest, from the Private Journals of Albert Jerome Dickson” edited by Arthur Jerome Dickson, with introduction by A.B. Guthrie, Jr. 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.

Albert Jerome Dickson was fourteen years old in 1864 when he left LaCrosse, Wisconsin, in a small caravan of covered wagons headed for Montana Territory. Thousands of emigrants had preceded him on the Oregon Trail, but none ever described the journey in sharper detail. Covered Wagon Days recreates the daily progress of Dickson’s party, which included his guardians, Joshua and Rebecca Ridgley. The logistics of such a trip, the sights along a trail marked by ruts and fresh graves, the rigors of camping, the encounters with Indians and returning pilgrims and vigilantes running after road–agents all figure in Dickson’s memoir. The payoff for the Ridgleys is not the gold being discovered in the mountains near Virginia City but a fine farm in Gallatin Valley. As vivid as any novel about the Oregon Trail and pioneering in the Northwest, Covered Wagon Days, first published in 1929, is based on journals and materials that were edited by the author’s son, Arthur Jerome Dickson.

TBBS borrowers can request “Covered Wagon Days: A Journey Across the Plains in the Sixties, and Pioneer Days in the Northwest, from the Private Journals of Albert Jerome Dickson” DBC02070 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.

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Bess Streeter Aldrich Book Available on BARD!

Mother Mason” by Nebraska author Bess Streeter Aldrich 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.

Molly Mason, 52, is a devoted wife, mother, and reliable standby for every organization in town. In fact, Mother Mason never has time to do just as she likes. Then one day she makes a headlong dash for liberty–and look out!

“A novel of home happiness, which, although it does not sentimentalize, will make many a family smile over its own humor and vicissitudes.” — Literary Review

TBBS borrowers can request “Mother Mason” DBC02032 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.

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Children’s Book Now Available on BARD!

Sweet Sister Ella” by Nebraska author Rosekrans Hoffman 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.

A neglected older brother plots to recapture his mother’s attention, in this original tale of sibling rivalry. Recommended for grades 2 – 4.

TBBS borrowers can request “All is But a Beginning: Youth Remembered, 1881-1901” DCB02010 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.

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#BookFaceFriday – “On the Go with Senior Services” by Phyllis Goodman

Listen up, it’s #BookFaceFriday!

The Nebraska Library Commission is hiring! We are looking for a Marketing and Outreach Coordinator for our Talking Book and Braille (TBBS) department to help us recruit, retain, and engage our TBBS patrons.

The Talking Book and Braille Service is a no-cost braille and Audiobook library service for people with temporary or permanent low vision, blindness, or a physical or perceptual disability that prevents them from reading or holding the printed page or a reading disability. It’s one of the NLC’s core services and, while not limited to, is used by many Nebraska senior citizens.

On the Go with Senior Services : Library Programs for Any Time and Any Place” by Phyllis Goodman (Libraries Unlimited, 2020) is a part of NLC’s Library Science Collection, which provides professional and reference materials for Nebraska librarians and library science programs. This includes all librarians and library science students. The checkout period is 4 weeks, and items can be sent through the mail or picked up in person. You can find all of these books and more in our catalog, or reach out to our reference staff for a recommendation!

“Providing programming at senior living facilities may be uncharted territory for many libraries. If you’re looking to begin offering programs for senior residents, start your research with this book. Find inspiration to take seniors to the past or around the world, make everyone an artist or author, empower them to use technology confidently, and connect with people living with dementia.”

― Jennie Fidler, Special Services Coordinator, Oconomowoc Public Library

Love this #BookFace & reading? Check out our past #BookFaceFriday photos on the Nebraska Library Commission’s Facebook page!

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Nebraska Author Biography is Now Available on BARD!

All is But a Beginning: Youth Remembered, 1881-1901” by John G. Neihardt with introduction by Dick Cavett 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.

Nebraska poet, teacher, historian, and Indian scholar here provides a history of his youth, relating childhood experiences and outside influences (family, friends, and teachers) to the development of his life and his struggle to be a poet. He paints a realistic picture of growing up in the Midwest at the end of the 19th century, and of the people and events instrumental in shaping his life.

TBBS borrowers can request “All is But a Beginning: Youth Remembered, 1881-1901” DCB02033 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.

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“Nebraska Folklore” is Now Available on BARD!

Nebraska Folklore” by Louise Pound 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.

A distinguished scholar and writer who, in the words of H. L. Mencken, “put the study of American English on its legs,” Louise Pound was always intensely interested in the folklore of her home state. “Nebraska Folklore”, first published in 1959, collects her best work in that rich vein. Included are cave legends, snake superstitions, weather lore, tales of strong men who rival Paul Bunyan, stories of Indian lovers’ leaps, and the legends of Weeping Water and Lincoln Salt Basin. A section on old Nebraska folk customs provides a wealth of information about holiday observances, literary and debating societies, and various social traditions.

“Few people are successful in becoming authorities on the folklore of a region, fewer still on the folklore of a state. Louise Pound was recognized by folklorists for her mastery of both areas. Therefore, as one should expect, “Nebraska Folklore” is an important book.” — William E. Koch, Nebraska History

TBBS borrowers can request “Nebraska Folklore” DCB02004 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.

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New Nebraska Book Now Available on BARD!

Four Blue Stars in the Window: One Family’s Story of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and the Duty of a Generation” by  Barbara Eymann Mohrman, 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.

Fifty years ago, a young girl opened a cardboard box in her basement. Long forgotten, it contained her father’s World War II uniform, vintage photos, semaphore flags, and other WWII keepsakes. The box opened up a world of pain and joy to author Barbara Eymann Mohrman as she set out on a personal journey to trace her family history and inadvertently, unspoken Eymann family secrets. This is the story of hard-scrabble life in rural Oakdale, Nebraska (population 851) starting in the heyday of the 1920s. Chriss Eymann, a newly arrived Swiss immigrant and his wife, Hattie Mae, raised ten children on the Dust Bowl-ravaged plains during the 1930s in the depths of the Great Depression. But their greatest sacrifice was yet to come when they sent four young sons off to war in the South Pacific and Europe. The mother’s flag with its four blue stars proudly displayed the family’s precious contribution to the war effort. The story traces in detail and vintage photos from 1930 to 1947 the anguish, danger, and their everlasting hope with some surprising family news that brings the story full circle.

TBBS borrowers can request “Four Blue Stars in the Window” DCB02027 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.

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Nebraska Book Now Available on BARD!

Caril” by Ninette Beaver, B. K. Ripley, and Patrick Trese 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.

In 1958, fourteen-year-old Caril Ann Fugate followed Charles Starkweather on a cold-blooded murder spree. This is the story of Caril’s triumph over desperation and tragedy — of a young woman who found faith and hope behind prison walls.

TBBS borrowers can request “Caril” DCB02043 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.

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Historical Nebraska Book Now Available on BARD!

Oh Grandma, You’re Kidding: Memories of 75 Years in Lincoln” by Gladys S. Douglass, 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.

The author tells of her own early experiences in Lincoln, shortly after the turn of the century. The book previously appeared in the form of short articles which were published in Lincoln’s SUNDAY JOURNAL AND STAR.

“In these pages the reader will find the flow of family and tradition, the story of the common man and woman in Nebraska during the early years of the century. Mari Sandoz knew this secret: the story of the Kinkaid lands lay not with Moses Kinkaid – the “important” man of the law – but rather with the “unimportant” people who were the Kinkaiders – like her father Old Jules. Here we see the fabric of Nebraska life 75 years ago.”

Roger L. Welsch

TBBS borrowers can request “Oh Grandma, You’re Kidding” DCB02041 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.

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Nebraska Book Now Available on BARD!

The “Catfish at the Pump” by Roger L. Welsch, with Linda K. Welsch, 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.

Were our forefathers liars? “You bet they were,” says Roger Welsch, “and damned fine ones at that.” The proof is in “Catfish at the Pump”, a collection of the kind of humor that softened the hardships of pioneering on the Great Plains. From yellowed newspapers, magazines, and forgotten Nebraska Federal Writers’ Project files, the well-known folklorist and humorist Roger Welsch has produced a book to be treasured. Here are jokes, anecdotes, legends, tall tales, and lugubriously funny poems about the things that preoccupied the pioneer plainsman: weather extremes; soil quality; food and whiskey; an arkload of animals, including grasshoppers, bed bugs, hoop snakes, the ubiquitous mule, and some mighty big fish; and even sickness and the poverty that would inspire black laughter again in the Great Depression.

“The book is more than a collection of good tales and jokes; it is, in fact, a serious study about humor. . . . well documented and well written.”

Nebraska History

TBBS borrowers can request the “Catfish at the Pump,” DCB02038 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.

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New Book Now Available on BARD!

The “The Battle of the Little Bighorn” by Mari Sandoz, introduction by Elaine Marie Nelson, 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.

Mari Sandoz’s beautifully written account of the battle in which General George Armstrong Custer staked his life and lost it reveals on every page the author’s intimate knowledge of her subject. The character of the Sioux, the personality of Custer, the mixed emotions of Custer’s men, the plains landscape all emerge with such clarity that the reader is transported to that spring in 1876 when the Army of the Plains began its fateful march toward Yellowstone. The background of the tragedy is here: the history of bad blood and broken treaties between the Indigenous nations and the United States, the underlying reason for Custer’s expedition and for the convocation of Indians on the Little Bighorn that particular year. Sandoz’s final book was the first analysis of Custer’s motives and political ambitions to shed light on an old mystery that was hotly disputed by the general’s admirers. Historian Elaine Marie Nelson introduces this iconic work to a new generation and details the long, challenging road this book took to publication. Sandoz raced against time to complete the volume while undergoing cancer treatments, and the book was published just three months after her death. “The Battle of the Little Bighorn” is widely considered the apex of her writing.

“Mari Sandoz’s beautifully written account of the battle in which General George Armstrong Custer staked his life in 1876-and lost it-reveals on every page the author’s intimate knowledge of her subject. Historian Elaine Marie Nelson introduces this iconic work to a new generation.”

—Bison Books

TBBS borrowers can request the “The Battle of the Little Bighorn,” DCB02003 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.

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