Today is Kansas Day, celebrating the day Kansas was admitted into the Union in 1861 as the 34th state. In honor of this day, we've pulled a list of the top ten most popular books in the past 5 years that are about Kansas and recorded by your very own Kansas Talking Books library through efforts of staff and volunteers. These books cover a variety of topics, people, and events in Kansas history with a popular paranormal western included. Make one of these local interest books your next read.
1. DBC06570 It happened in Kansas: remarkable events that shaped history by Sarah Smarsh
It Happened in Kansas features over 25 chapters in Kansas history. Lively and entertaining, this book brings the varied and fascinating history of the Sunflower State to life. Some violence.
2. DBC17284 Flint Hills cowboys: tales from the Tallgrass Prairie by James F. Hoy
The Flint Hills are America's last tallgrass prairie, a green enclave set in the midst of the farmland of eastern Kansas. Known as the home of the Big Beef Steer, these rugged hills have produced exemplary cowboys -- both the ranch and rodeo varieties -- whose hard work has given them plenty of material for equally good stories. Adult.
3. DBC17310 Peggy of the Flint Hills: a memoir by Zula Bennington Greene
"Peggy of the Flint Hills" was a beloved Topeka newspaper columnist, dispensing common sense and uncommon insight six days a week for 55 years. But her true masterwork was this little memoir, now seeing publication for the first time--a breathtakingly rich recollection of her childhood in the Ozark foothills and her young adulthood in the Kansas Flint Hills. With a full heart and a matchless memory, Peggy writes of the people and places that shaped her, offering readers a crystalline window into a long-gone world.
4. DBC14923 Notorious Kansas bank heists: gunslingers to gangsters by Rod Beemer
Bank robbers wreaked havoc in the Sunflower State. After robbing the Chautauqua State Bank in 1911, outlaw Elmer McCurdy was killed by lawmen but wasn't buried for sixty-six years. His afterlife can be described only as bizarre. Belle Starr's nephew Henry Starr claimed to have robbed twenty-one banks. The Dalton gang failed in their attempt to rob two banks simultaneously, but others accomplished this in Waterville in 1911. Nearly four thousand known vigilantes patrolled the Sunflower State during the 1920s and 1930s to combat the criminal menace. One group even had an airplane with a .50-caliber machine gun. Join author Rod Beemer for a wild ride into Kansas's tumultuous bank heist history. Some strong language and some violence.
5. DBC06565 Of grave concern: Ophelia Wylde series, book 1 by Max McCoy
The Civil War is over, and many a young widow has turned to spiritualism to contact their husbands on 'the other side.' But Ophelia Wylde won't be fooled twice. After wasting her money on a phoney psychic, she decides if she can't beat 'em, join 'em. She leaves New Orleans and heads West, selling her services as a spiritual medium who speaks to the dead. By the time she reaches Dodge City, business is booming. Except for a handsome but skeptical bounty hunter named Jack Calder, no one suspects Ophelia of running a con game--until an unfortunate 'reading' of a girl who's still living exposes her to a town full of angry customers. As punishment, the mob drags Ophelia to Boot Hill and buries her alive in a fresh grave overnight. That's when the dead start speaking. To her. For real. And for dead people, they've got lots to say. Contains some descriptions of sex, some strong language, and some violence.
6. DBC08730 Harvey Houses of Kansas: historic hospitality from Topeka to Syracuse by Rosa Walston Latimer
Starting in Kansas, Fred Harvey's iconic Harvey House was the first to set the standard for fine dining and hospitality across the rugged Southwest. In 1876, the first of Harvey's depot restaurants opened in Topeka, followed just a few years later by the first combination hotel and restaurant in Florence. Fred Harvey and the Harvey Girls introduced good food and manners to the land of Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp and raucous cattle drives. In her third book on the Harvey House legacy, author Rosa Walston Latimer goes back to where it all began in this history of hospitality from the Sunflower State.
7. DBC05083 Time's shadow: remembering a family farm in Kansas by Arnold J. Bauer
Arnold Bauer grew up on his family's 160-acre farm in Goshen Township in Clay County, Kansas, amidst a land of prairie grass and rich creek-bottom soil. His meditative and moving account of those years depicts a century-long narrative of struggle, survival, and demise. A coming-of-age memoir set in the 1930s to 50s, it blends local history with personal reflection to paint a realistic picture of farm life and families from a now-lost world. Contains some strong language and some violence.
8. DBC06579 Shadow on the hill: the true story of a 1925 Kansas murder by Diana Staresinic-Deane
On Decoration Day in 1925, John Knoblock returned to his Kansas farm to find his wife slaughtered on the kitchen floor. Within hours, dozens of lawmen, family members, well-meaning neighbors and gawkers paraded through the Knoblock farmstead, contaminating and destroying what little evidence was left behind. A small team of inexperienced lawmen, including a newly elected sheriff who had never run a murder investigation, attempted to reconstruct and solve the most gruesome murder in the history of Coffey County, Kansas. Adult. Some violence.
9. DBC08676 The border between them: violence and reconciliation on the Kansas-Missouri line by Jeremy Neely
The author recounts the exploits of John Brown, William Quantrill, and other notorious guerrillas, as well as the stories of everyday people who lived through the conflict that marked the terrible first act of the American Civil War. He then examines how emancipation, industrialization, and immigration eventually eroded wartime divisions. Some violence.
10. DBC02420 And hell followed with it: life and death in a Kansas tornado by Bonar Menninger
Detailed account of the June 1966 tornado in Topeka, where property damage of $100 million made it the most destructive in U.S. history up to that time. Some violence and some strong language.