Ask the Author: Thomas D. Isern
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Thomas D. Isern
Way too many irons in the fire, but an underlying animus underlying most of my writing these days is the production of a new history of the Great Plains for the 21st Century. Reading heavily, making notes, revising the outline, drafting germ papers to try out chapters through conference presentations.
Thomas D. Isern
Having finished the Wiley chapter on agriculture of the Great Plains, I'm moving on to another commissioned piece, this one for an anthology being put together by Jon Lauck. My subject is the shape of South Dakota - no irony intended! Addressing the question how, through the stages of territorial acquisition, territorial organization, and statehood movements, South Dakota came to have the borders that define the modern state. This could become a rather mechanical, legalistic, political narrative, but I am choosing to make it something else: the story of developing interests and societies that pushed and pulled the territory into the shape of the state as we now know it. I am being fortified, intellectually, by a growing bibliography, and physically, by stacks of books hauled home by my F150, The Pacer. Sometime early summer there will be a research expedition to Pierre, where I will divide time between the heritage center and the Zesto Drive-In.
Thomas D. Isern
Current long-form work: an 8000-word essay for the Wiley Companion to American Agricultural History, edited by R. Douglas Hurt. Subject: The Great Plains.
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