Recovering the Prairie

Americans in ever increasing numbers are rediscovering the prairie. This vast inland sea of grasses, buried for a hundred years beneath farms, cities, and suburbs, has endured not only in physical remnants but also in the memories of its settlers and their descendants, the books of prairie authors, and the work of prairie artists. As restoration ecologists and amateur prairie preservationists recover the land, this book recovers the prairie of the American imagination—past, present, and future.

Beautifully illustrated with the work of sixteen contemporary prairie artists, Recovering the Prairie celebrates and examines the perspectives of artists, writers, native peoples, ecologists, and landscape architects—Willa Cather, Aldo Leopold, Jens Jensen, Alexander Gardner, and many others—who recognized the unique beauty of the prairie. And, this volume brings together people from many fields to consider the connections between aesthetics and economics, landscape and culture, politics and ethics, as illustrated by the prairie in American civilization.

Contributors and artists include:

Robert Adams
Lee Allen
Roger Brown
James D. Butler
Pauline Drobney
Fred Easker
Terry Evans
Ed Folsom
Lance M. Foster
Harold L. Gregor
Robert E. Grese
Walter Hatke
Harold D. Holoun
Stan Hurd
Gary Irving
Wes Jackson
Keith Jacobshagen
Joni L. Kinsey
Stuart Klipper
Aldo Leopold
Tom Lutz
Curt Meine
Genie H. Patrick
David Plowden
Rebecca Roberts
Robert F. Sayre
Jane E. Simonson
Shelton Stromquist
James R. Winn

Robert F. Sayre is professor of English and American literature at the University of Iowa. He is the editor of the anthology American Lives, also published by the University of Wisconsin Press, and of several other books, including Take This Exit: Re-Discovering the Iowa Landscape.