Nebraska Authors

From its first publication in 1937, Everett Dick's The Sod House Frontier 1854-1890: A Social History of the Northern Plains from the Creation of Kansas and Nebraska to the Admission of the Dakotas has been considered a classic account of the European settlement of the Great Plains. It was recognized both as a work of careful and detailed scholarship and as a lively portrait. Dorothy Canfield Fisher commented that while a work of reference, "any of its chapters is as absorbing as fiction (The Lincoln Journal, 10-3-1937)." Dick studied with John D. Hicks at the University of Nebraska, and Hicks got Dick into the Ph.D. program in History at the University of Wisconsin under his own dissertation advisor Frederic Paxson. Those contacts put Dick in the second generation of "Prairie Historians," a school that found new significance in the Great Plains frontier. Dick himself had been born in a Kansas sod house.

Dick was a fixture as Professor of History at the Seventh-Day Adventists' Union College in Lincoln. He joined the faculty there in 1930. The college's administration building is named for him. Dick continued to write about the social history of European settlement. His 1975 Conquering the Great American Desert was published by the Nebraska State Historical Society. His focus was always more on social history and what we now call environmental history, than on politics.

Dick was a Marine veteran of WWI. In the 1933 he founded the Seventh-Day Adventist Medical Cadet Corps at Union College, to give his co-religionists the opportunity to serve without bearing arms. The Corps became a world-wide Adventist organization.

See also Merrill Mattes

dsc

Read More

Historian Manley was senior historian at the Stuhr Museum from 1980-1986. He renowned for combining story-telling and singing with his teaching of history. He hosted the "Rails West," and "Nebraska Heritage" television shows on NET for a decade beginning in the 1950s. His promotion of Jim Fras's song "Beautiful Nebraska," helped make it the official state song. He did much to promote interest in Nebraska history.

In a notable 1991 controversy, Manley's essay for Nebraska's 125th-birthday book was excluded because it 'left out racial and ethnic minorities and women'. Among Manley's sharpest critics was humorist Roger Welsch. Manley's submission was edited by the commission to focus on economic history, while critics said that it ought to focus on social history and celebrate diversity. The essay was later published by the Department of Economic Development.

In HR archive: Copy of corrected typescript of Kansas: Our Pioneer Heritage in gray upright document case.

dsc

Read More

Harm, who grew up in Lincoln, describes himself as a "scholar of the life and works of Art Deco Architectural sculptor Lee Oskar Lawrie, photographer and author." Harm became a life-long enthusiast for Lawrie after encountering Lawrie's works at the Nebraska State Capitol. His 2009 book, Lee Lawrie's Prairie Deco: History in Stone at the Nebraska State Capitol provides us with what have been recognized as some of the most impressive photographs ever made of Lawrie's work, both at grand scale, and in unique perspectives of detail. Reviewers have also noted that Harm is not a trained art scholar, and in his writing he offers a somewhat idiosyncratic appreciation or fellow artist's insight into what Lawrie is up to. He continues to have interesting things to say about Lawrie.

Harm's book Lee Lawrie's Prairie Deco: History in Stone at the Nebraska State Capitol, has been revised and expanded in several editions since its original publication in 2009, including a fourth edition in 2018. Additions include new photographs and references to other examples of Lawrie's work.

See: Robert Haller, "Review of Lee Lawrie's Prairie Deco: History in Stone at the Nebraska State Capitol by Gregory Paul Harm," 2011 UNL digital commons (originally from the Great Plains Quarterly). Katherine M. Skolnik, "History in Stone at the Nebraska State Capitol," (book review) in Chicago Art Deco Society Magazine, Spring, 2018.

Read More