Some destinations claim colorful monikers like Big Sky Country, Sportsman's Paradise, the Sunshine State, Land of Enchantment, or the Last Frontier. The Nebraska Sandhills, which makes up about a quarter of the state of Nebraska, can honestly claim all of that-and a whole lot more. Paddle past more than 200 waterfalls while kayaking the Niobrara River or hop into a livestock water tank and float through the dunes on the Calamus, Cedar, Loup, and North Platte rivers. Tour the remnants of tunnels associated with Chicago gangster Al Capone in O'Neill, meet the locals at a volunteer fire department barbecue at Wood Lake, and sample the Sandhills' Finest craft brews in Ord. And don't forget to explore the ranching culture of this vast region where cowboys still ride horses, cattle outnumber people, rodeo is a lifestyle, Cornhusker football is tradition, and God and family mean more than anything else. Follow along page by page as writer, photographer, lifelong Nebraskan, and travel expert Alan J. Bartels takes readers on a tour of the region he's loved since childhood. Along the way, he points out well-known events and attractions, and off-the-beaten-path curiosities and small-town celebrations discovered through chance and dogged exploration. With 100 Things To Do In The Nebraska Sandhills Before You Die as your guide, you'll have all the insider information needed for memorable Sandhills adventures of your own.

Many slogans have been used over the years to describe Nebraska: the Good Life, the Beef State, the Cornhusker State. But the Good Life does seem to sum up how most Nebraskans feel about living here. Whether it’s Cornhusker football in the fall or canoeing the Niobrara River in the summer, Nebraska is a special place. And with 100 Things to Do in Nebraska Before You Die, 2nd edition, as your guide, you’ll see just what it is that people love so much about the state. Explore the birthplaces of Nebraska-centric events, such as the Old West Balloon Festival and O’Neill’s St. Patrick’s Day celebration. Remember the people, from visiting Johnny Carson’s hometown to the birthplace of civil rights leader Malcolm X. Find great places to eat and drink, including Potter, the birthplace of the Tin Roof Sundae and Glur’s Tavern, the oldest continuously operating bar west of the Mississippi, and find adventure amidst the diversity and beauty of the country’s 16th geographically largest state. Local authors and travel bloggers Tim and Lisa Trudell are your expert guides through the diversity and beauty of the Cornhusker State. 100 Things to Do in Nebraska Before You Die, 2nd edition, is a veritable bucket list of Nebraska’s best experiences that will help even born-and-bred Nebraskans see the state in a new light.

The Good Life. The Beef State. The Cornhusker State. We've used a lot of slogans over the years to describe Nebraska. But, The Good Life does seem to sum up how the vast majority of Nebraskans feel about living here. Whether it's Cornhusker football in the fall or canoeing the Niobrara River in the summer, Nebraska is a special place. And with 100 Things to Do in Nebraska Before You Die as your guide, you'll see just what it is people love so much about the state. The book is a veritable bucket list of places to visit, things to do, and top tips for the best places to eat and sleep. Explore the birthplaces of Nebraska-centric events and people. From the founding of Arbor Day to the hometown of Johnny Carson, as well as great places to eat and drink, 100 Things to Do in Nebraska Before You Die explores the diversity and beauty of the country's 16th largest state. Local authors and travel bloggers Tim and Lisa Trudell are your expert guides through the diversity and beauty of the country's sixteenth largest state. Whether you call yourself a Husker, or are just passing through, this book will help you see Nebraska in a new light.

A resonant true story of small-town politics and community perseverance and of decent people and questionable choices, Zoo Nebraska is a timely requiem for a rural America in the throes of extinction. Royal, Nebraska, population eighty-one--where the church, high school, and post office each stand abandoned, monuments to a Great Plains town that never flourished. But for nearly twenty years, they had a zoo, seven acres that rose from local peculiarity to key tourist attraction to devastating tragedy. And it all began with one man's outsize vision. When Dick Haskin's plans to assist primatologist Dian Fossey in Rwanda were cut short by her murder, Dick's devotion to primates didn't die with her. He returned to his hometown with Reuben, an adolescent chimp, in the bed of a pickup truck and transformed a trailer home into the Midwest Primate Center. As the tourist trade multiplied, so did the inhabitants of what would become Zoo Nebraska, the unlikeliest boon to Royal's economy in generations and, eventually, the source of a power struggle that would lead to the tragic implosion of Dick Haskin's dream.

Filled with adventurous writing, sharp scrutiny, meticulous and audacious use of language, North of the Platte, South of the Niobrara: A Little Further into the Nebraska Sand Hills winds around its subjects the way the rivers and creeks of the Great Plains twist around humps of prairie grass, ranches and rock outcroppings. The ambitious goal of author Bryan Jones was to create a fresh understanding of the Nebraska Sand Hills from the inside. Surely he has done that, and more. He reflects with almost unbearable poignancy on war and its consequences, and with fierce advocacy on two beloved Nebraska poets. He brings humor and occasional cynicism to reflections about "the metaphysical and metaphorical aspects" of the Sand Hills, Ted Turner and other newcomers, the Sandoz family and other old-timers and a considerable chunk of Western history.

“A beautifully written epic that seamlessly intertwines a family’s history with a region’s, and, ultimately, with a nation’s. An ambitious novel.” —Ron Rash, New York Times–bestselling author of Above the Waterfall Ten years after the massacre of more than two hundred Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee, J.B. Bennett, a white rancher, and Star, a young Native American woman, are murdered in a remote meadow on J.B.’s land. The deaths bring together the scattered members of the Bennett family: J.B.’s cunning and hard father, Drum; his estranged wife, Dulcinea; and his teenage sons, Cullen and Hayward. As the mystery of these twin deaths unfolds, the history of the dysfunctional Bennetts and their damning secrets is revealed, exposing the conflicted heart of a nation caught between past and future. At the center of The Bones of Paradise are two remarkable women. Dulcinea yearns for redemption and the courage to mend her broken family and reclaim the land that is rightfully hers. Rose, scarred by the terrible slaughters that have decimated and dislocated her people, struggles to accept the death of her sister, Star, and refuses to rest until she is avenged. Jonis Agee’s bold novel is a panorama of America at the dawn of a new century and the durable men and women who dared to tame it. “Deceptively leisurely, intensely heart-rending . . . Rose and Dulcinea are women strong enough to cow John Wayne.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review “Deadwood has nothing on Nebraska’s Sand Hills. Jonis Agee serves up a gritty, bloody romance.” —Stewart O'Nan, bestselling author of A Prayer for the Dying “The finest western novel since Lonesome Dove . . . an epic saga with elements of a Greek tragedy.” —New York Journal of Books

Sanora Babb’s long-hidden novel Whose Names Are Unknown tells an intimate story of the High Plains farmers who fled drought dust storms during the Great Depression. Written with empathy for the farmers’ plight, this powerful narrative is based upon the author’s firsthand experience. This clear-eyed and unsentimental story centers on the fictional Dunne family as they struggle to survive and endure while never losing faith in themselves. In the Oklahoma Panhandle, Milt, Julia, their two little girls, and Milt’s father, Konkie, share a life of cramped circumstances in a one-room dugout with never enough to eat. Yet buried in the drudgery of their everyday life are aspirations, failed dreams, and fleeting moments of hope. The land is their dream. The Dunne family and the farmers around them fight desperately for the land they love, but the droughts of the thirties force them to abandon their fields. When they join the exodus to the irrigated valleys of California, they discover not the promised land, but an abusive labor system arrayed against destitute immigrants. The system labels all farmers like them as worthless “Okies” and earmarks them for beatings and worse when hardworking men and women, such as Milt and Julia, object to wages so low they can’t possibly feed their children. The informal communal relations these dryland farmers knew on the High Plains gradually coalesce into a shared determination to resist. Realizing that a unified community is their best hope for survival, the Dunnes join with their fellow workers and begin the struggle to improve migrant working conditions through democratic organization and collective protest. Babb wrote Whose Names are Unknown in the 1930s while working with refugee farmers in the Farm Security Administration (FSA) camps of California. Originally from the Oklahoma Panhandle are herself, Babb, who had first come to Los Angeles in 1929 as a journalist, joined FSA camp administrator Tom Collins in 1938 to help the uprooted farmers. As Lawrence R. Rodgers notes in his foreword, Babb submitted the manuscript for this book to Random House for consideration in 1939. Editor Bennett Cerf planned to publish this “exceptionally fine” novel but when John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath swept the nation, Cerf explained that the market could not support two books on the subject. Babb has since shared her manuscript with interested scholars who have deemed it a classic in its own right. In an era when the country was deeply divided on social legislation issues and millions drifted unemployed and homeless, Babb recorded the stories of the people she greatly respected, those “whose names are unknown.” In doing so, she returned to them their identities and dignity, and put a human face on economic disaster and social distress.