Illinois Authors

Tall Corn Books, North Liberty, Iowa : ©2015.

Tall Corn Books, North Liberty, Iowa : ©2009.

Iowa, the Definitive Collection gathers for student, teacher, researcher, and leisure reader alike a rich harvest of Iowa lore as told by a bevy of its most famous and forgotten voices Iowa history as made and told by Iowans, for Iowans. Totaling over 500 browsable pages and nearly 100 highly readable, classic and contemporary selections, this mammoth compendium of Iowa history, literature, and lore captures the Hawkeye State more diversely and more comprehensively than ever before. Here is a book a big book of Iowa readings of every conceivable kind (campaign platforms, creeds, diaries, editorials, ethnographic studies, fictions, government documents, history, humor, journalism, legal opinions, letters, memoirs, pamphlets, speeches, travel narratives, and more) and of every historical vintage (from Black Hawk s lament on being ordered to move west to Iowa in 1831 to Iowa writer-anthropologist Robert Leonard s freshly-penned roll call of the many different Iowans he has known). Between these covers, world-famous sons and daughters of Iowa, including Carrie Chapman Catt, Bob Feller, Susan Glaspell, Herbert Hoover, Ted Kooser, Aldo Leopold, Glenn Miller, Wallace Stegner, Henry Wallace, Grant Wood, and many others join a chorus of forgotten or neglected native greats to tell the story of their home state as only Iowans can tell it. Perfect fodder for Iowa history and literature classes, book clubs, civic organizations, museums, libraries, and visitor centers across the Land Between Two Rivers, Iowa, the Definitive Collection offers a first-of-its-kind, popular documentary history suitable for singing loudly, proudly, and circumspectly across the State, and across generations.

University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln : ©2011.

Up close look at Pebble Beach Golf Links/Carmel, CA in the year leading up to the 2010 U.S. Open.

Shares the story of how "General" Rosalie Gardner Jones marched an army of women nearly one hundred seventy-five miles to win support for voting rights for women.

Tall Corn Books, North Liberty, Iowa : ©2011.

Love Fresh. Love Local. What happened during the author?s search for a bride this past year (What Cheer:A Love Story)? At the height of summer, seventh-generation Iowan Zachary Michael Jack embarks on an unforgettable journey to test what he calls the Beach Boys hypothesis:?What if we really do live in a world where native boy meets native girl?What if the cutest boys and girls in the world really are those right under our nose?? So begins a Cinderella season in search of a love homegrown in the Heartland. Jack delivers speeches in farflung farm burgs and readings in well-to-do college towns while setting up listening posts in public libraries and chautaquas in 4-H cattle barns. One part travelogue and two parts love story, Native Soulmate offers not just an account of a magical quest and its unlikely settings, but a moving argument for why voting with your feet and leading with your heart really do matter. Much more than a look into marriage, brain drain, or dating. An honest, caring, and heart-felt look at our Midwestern world of agriculture, community, family, and love. --from author's website.

Smithtown Press, West Plains, MO : ©2006.

New Buffalo Press ; St. Charles, Ill. : 2005.

Sportswriters Collaborative, Chicago : 2010.

Purdue University Press, West Lafayette, Ind. : ©2012.

From yesterday's gingham girls to today's Farmer Janes, The Midwest Farmer's Daughter unearths the untold history and renewed cultural currency of an American icon at a time when fully 30 percent of new farms in the US are woman-owned. From farm women bloggers, to back-to-the-land homesteaders and seed-savers, to rural graphic novelists and, ultimately, to the seven generations of farm daughters who have animated his own family since before the Civil War, the author travels across the region to shine new documentary light on this seedbed for American virtue, energy, and ingenuity. Packed with many memorable interviews, print artifacts, and historic images, this groundbreaking documentary history describes the centuries-long reiteration and reinterpretation of agrarian daughters in the field, over the airwaves, on the printed page, and in the court of public opinion. Offering a sweeping cultural and social history, it ranges widely and well from Jane Smiley's Pulitzer Prize-winning A Thousand Acres to Laura Ingalls Wilder's proto-feminist commentaries for the Missouri Ruralist; from the critical importance of rural girls and young women to time-honored organizations such as the Farm Bureau, 4-H, and FFA to the entrepreneurial role today's female agriculturalists and sustainable farm advocates play in farmers' markets, urban farms, and community-supported agriculture. For all those whose lives have been graced by the enduring strength of this regional and national touchstone, The Midwest Farmer's Daughter offers a one-of-a-kind scholarly examination and contemporary appreciation.

Tall Corn Books, North Liberty, Iowa : ©2010.

"Here's a comedy of errors featuring three not-yet-over-the-hill friends, a series of dreamy love letters, and a mysterious list of warm, nearly-gone touchstones that inspire a rollicking ride through the Heartland."--Page 4 of cover.

Wish You Were Here offers a clear-eyed yet tender look at life in the modern Midwest from the perspective of a seventh-generation ruralite. Championing the romance of wide-open spaces in a rapidly urbanizing world, Zachary Michael Jack challenges the stereotypes of rural and small-town midwestern life in a well-grounded and deeply felt counter-narrative of love and longing sustained in communities where young and old alike plant roots.