Although Tom Scanlon would just as soon spend it alone, his ninetieth birthday becomes the occasion for a family gathering in the Midwestern town of Lone Tree. The unlikely celebrants take this opportunity to reconceive their visions of past, future, and family in their own grotesque and ultimately liberating ways. Ceremony in Lone Tree is a spare and beautiful work by one of America's great postwar authors.

On March 28, 1966, Peace Corps personnel in Tanzania received word that volunteer Peppy Kinsey had fallen to her death while rock climbing during a picnic. Local authorities arrested Kinsey's husband, Bill, and charged him with murder as witnesses came forward claiming to have seen the pair engaged in a struggle. The incident had the potential to be disastrous for both the Peace Corps and the newly independent nation of Tanzania. Because of the high stakes surrounding the trial, questions remain as to whether there was more behind the final "not guilty" verdict than was apparent on the surface. Peter H. Reid, who served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tanzania at the time of the Kinsey murder trial, draws on his considerable legal experience to expose inconsistencies and biases in the case. He carefully scrutinizes the evidence and the investigation records, providing insight into the motives and actions of both the Peace Corps representatives and the Tanzanian government officials involved. Reid does not attempt to prove the verdict wrong but examines the events of Kinsey's death, her husband's trial, and the aftermath through a variety of cultural and political perspectives. Meticulously researched and replete with intricate detail, this compelling account sheds new light on a notable yet overlooked international incident involving non-state actors in the Cold War era.

The Great Plains has long been fertile ground for literature. The Nature of the Place is a comprehensive study of novels and stories by such Plains writers as Willa Cather, Wright Morris, Mari Sandoz, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Frederick Manfred, Wallace Stegner, and Bess Streeter Aldrich. Throughout, Diane Dufva Quantic is aware of the region’s collective social and cultural history—aware of the immensely fruitful clash between that complex history and Plains myth (such as “Garden of the World” and “Great American Desert”). In the vast and changeable Great Plains, as Wright Morris once remarked, “Many things would come to pass, but the nature of the place would remain a matter of opinion.”

This book is an attempt to approach the work of a leading American novelist from both sides of the looking-glass?from the opposite, but not necessarily opposing, points of view of the writer/creator and the reader/critic. In 1975, while the author was visiting professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, several scholar-critics (among them John W. Aldridge, Wayne C. Booth, and David Madden) were invited to speak about his craft and artistic aims and principles and to record conversations with him about issues growing from their addresses. Since Morris is also an important photographer, facets of his achievement in this field were considered by Peter C. Bunnell. In addition to four conversations, three lectures, and a portfolio of twelve photographs, this volume includes an essay by Wright Morris and a bibliography compiled by Robert L. Boyce.