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Thomas D. Isern

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Thomas D. Isern

Goodreads Author


Born
in Barton County KS, The United States
Website

Genre

Member Since
October 2011


Professor of History & University Distinguished Professor, North Dakota State University
Author & presenter of Plains Folk on Prairie Public radio (and NPR One)
Author & presenter of the Willow Creek Folk School, livestream at plainsfolk.com
Married to historian & editor Suzzanne Kelley
Home in North Dakota, farm in Kansas
Bethany Swede
OSU Cowboy
NDSU Bison
Originator of the following Goodreads Listopia lists:
*The Dakota War in Dakota Territory
*German-Russian Country
Goodreads group manager, "Great Plains Book Club"

Join Prof. Isern for the Willow Creek Folk School, Fridays at 8pm Central, on the Facebook timeline of Plains Folk.

Plains Folk - listen and read at Prairie Public , or download the NPR One app, search for Plains Folk, and subscribe.
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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 Pla…moreCurrent long-form work: an 8000-word essay for the Wiley Companion to American Agricultural History, edited by R. Douglas Hurt. Subject: The Great Plains.(less)
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…moreHaving 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.(less)
Average rating: 4.12 · 75 ratings · 20 reviews · 23 distinct worksSimilar authors
Pacing Dakota

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Dakota Circle

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Bull Threshers and Bindlest...

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Custom combining on the Gre...

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Kansas Land

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liked it 3.00 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 1988 — 3 editions
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it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating
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The Antelope Valley Station...

0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 2014 — 2 editions
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The Welk Homestead: A Sourc...

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0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 2015
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Touring German-Russian Coun...

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Heritage Themes of the Nort...

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Reading with Tuck

I used to read to Angie the History Dog, especially when a new issue of Ducks Unlimited arrived. Since Tuck is now 6 months old, I figured she would enjoy the same exercise, and I was right. Her attention span needs development, though. From my own point of view, I got two things from the reading this morning.

1. The publisher's column, "Where the Ducks Are," resonated with a short essay I have dra Read more of this blog post »
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Published on March 15, 2025 13:27 Tags: greatplains-outdoorlife-labby
Symposium on the ...
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Dark Emu
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Thomas’s Recent Updates

Thomas Isern and 83 other people liked Richard's review of Travels with Herodotus:
Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuściński
"(The review in the Economist which recommended this book to me is here, and their obituary of Kapuściński is also available, here.)

I’ve recently been categorizing my reading material into “fast” and “slow”, but after reading Kapuściński’s Travels wit" Read more of this review »
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We Now Know by John Lewis Gaddis
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Blue Camas, Blue Camas by Danielle S. Marcotte
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Be a Man by Russell Rowland
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The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
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Ike's Road Trip by Brian C. Black
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This book came to hand during a visit to a fine independent bookstore in Council Grove, Kansas; I picked it up because I had seen notices of its publication, and I am always on the lookout for new works that might help me think in new ways about the ...more
" Here's my review of the work by Black. It seems impossible to make the auto-link above point toward the cloth edition. So just go to my review, here - ...more "
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Ike's Road Trip by Brian C. Black
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This book came to hand during a visit to a fine independent bookstore in Council Grove, Kansas; I picked it up because I had seen notices of its publication, and I am always on the lookout for new works that might help me think in new ways about the ...more
Thomas Isern wants to read
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
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Ike's Road Trip by Brian C. Black
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Quotes by Thomas D. Isern  (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)

“Mountains are all right, I guess, because you can get on top of them and get a good view of the plains.”
Thomas D. Isern

“In Conclusion, let us inquire what has been and what is to be the Meaning of the Great Plains in American Life”
Walter P. Webb

“We agreed that no one who had not grown up in a little prairie town could know anything about it. It was a kind of freemasonry, we said.”
Willa Cather

“Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience; to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder about it, to dwell upon it. He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at every season and listens to the sounds that are made upon it. He ought to imagine the creatures there and all the faintest motions of the wind. He ought to recollect the glare of the moon and the colors of the dawn and dusk.”
N. Scott Momaday

“For history is a pontoon bridge. Every man walks and works at its building end, and has come as far as he has over the pontoons laid by others he may never have heard of.”
Wallace Stegner

“Why not a new village of farmers, citizens of the world through schools and radio and space-consuming transportation, grouped together in friendly sociability, building directly upon the soil?”
Angie Debo

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