Essays

A Timely Vision, by Richard Manning

It is difficult to imagine scenes more politically relevant at this very moment than these photos from America’s great grasslands. The pivotal period for most of these places occurred in a time that is a close parallel to our own…

Grasslandus Interruptus, by Jay Dusard

This book had to be called Grasslands because of discontinuity. The truthful S at the end of the word reinforces our knowledge that a once-vast Grassland existed on this continent before the onset of Manifest Destiny.

Wheatcountry Afterword, by Jay Dusard

There was something mesmerizing about the way heartland sod rolled off the moldboards of a gang plow. You’d twist around in your tractor seat to behold the absolute continuum of the transformation of sod to dirt.

Wheatcountry Introduction, by Richard Manning

To the people who know it only as “flyover country,” it is a flat, barren land. They are wrong about this, as anyone who has walked or even driven the high plains and the Palouse Prairie knows. Roads wind and wrap wide, round hills.