The Divorce Colony, by April White

While divorce is somewhat unremarkable these days, in the not-so-distant past, it was remarked upon quite a bit. We forget how relatively recent that attitude shift happened. Divorces were not always easy to obtain. In the early days of this country, it literally took an act of the legislature to grant someone a divorce. While Read More

Sod Busting by David B Danbom

The subtitle of this slim book is “How Families Made Farms on the Nineteenth-Century Plains”, and is part of a series of books called “How Things Worked”. The focus of this book is mainly Kansas, Nebraska, and North and South Dakota, between about 1862 and 1900. And the author does not describe just how farms Read More