A columnist for the Jewish Federation News and the Des Moines Skywalker, Harris writes about her life after the death of her fifty-eight-year-old husband.

"Bread on the Table" is an exciting new novel written by Renetta Burlage. It tells the heartwarming story of Lottie Porter and the family she raised during the hard times of the Great Depression and World War II. As a young widow at the age of forty-six, Lottie was faced with the challenge of raising eight children while living on a small produce farm in Iowa. Courageous and determined, Lottie always found a way to put bread on the table for her family. Filled with personal accounts of humor, tragedy and good ole fashioned fun, the reader will be entertained by this remarkable family as well as educated about the historical period in American history during which they lived. A story for all ages, the author captures the essence of growing up in the heartland while demonstrating the core values of family life in rural America.

Coming of Age, the fourth and final volume in the series The Soviet Union at War, is the unadorned story of Russian life told by an observant person who lived it. Elena Skrjabina tells how the tremendous military casualties suffered in World War I hit home, how almost all their family and friends were losing sons or relatives at the front. She describes the pillaging of estates and how the supposed class enemies were arrested. Her impressions of the famine on the Volga in the post-Civil War period, the tremendous housing shortage, the American Relief Administration, the Leningrad famine in the early twenties that turned people into beasts-all flash through the pages of these remarkable memoirs.

During World War II, Marie Mountain completed U.S. Air Force pilot training with the Women's Air Force Service Pilots (WASP) and then served at the Las Vegas Army Air Base. While stationed there, she wrote frequent letters home, informing her parents of the adventures, joys and difficulties she experienced as a participant in the ground-breaking national experiment of having women serve as military aircraft pilots. This book presents her letters and an autobiographical memoir, as well as many personal photos.

145pp. Swalin writes about growing up in Waukee, Iowa, about her marriage and the making of the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra.

312pp. Vignettes written from the perspective of a mathematician span one hundred years of living and include descriptions of turn of the century Ottumwa, a Colorado cabin, and atom bashing in Iowa City.

Trummel reflects on growing up near Washington, Iowa, and working her way through high school in Fairfield during the Depression.

This book is comprised of 12 stories by World War II veterans. These detailed and compelling stories bring a critical time in our history back to life. Editor Jane Cox helps these veterans tell their stories in their own voices, sharing with us their life-changing experiences.

As a young woman growing up in the early 1900's Pearl Mirich spent several summers on her sisters' homestead in Wyoming. Both a personal memoir and a historical work, Homestead on the Range reflects Pearl's real-life experiences in the West and her instinctive and life-long role as a teacher. Homestead on the Range is a reminder of what life used to be like, but it's also a reminder of what anyone can accomplish with hard work and an adventurous spirit.

92pp. In this memoir, Krysan details the impact of the Depression on her middle-class family in Calmar, Iowa, and examines her non-traditional decision to forego marriage and pursue a career in nursing.  Krysan served in the WAAC during World War II and worked for the World Health Organization in Iraq from 1956 to 1966.

"This is a memoir about growing up in a town of 5,000 people in the 1950's. People who grew up during that decade will recognize much of the nostalgia: playing outdoors all day and evening, making their own fun, wringer washing machines and hanging clothes on the outdoor clothesline during the summer, playing fox and geese in the snow, party telephone lines and outhouses, electric fans and black and white television, hula hoops, stilts, bar swings and friends.
"Cindy Wiren Bartlett grew up in the small Iowa town of Chariton, during the 1950's and 1960's, but her favorite and the most carefree decade was the 1950's. ..."

Chronicling Noun's struggle for feminism, this memoir not only provides an account of one woman's emerging politics, but shows how the women's movement was affected and in fact created by remarkable women such as Noun.

516pp. A central Iowa farm woman from Story County writes about her student years at Simpson College in 1929, teaching rural school in the 1930s, and married life.

448pp, 518 footnotes. The autobiographical writings of the author’s mother, Josephine Curtis, a native of Jefferson County, Iowa, are woven into the fabric of this biography, which places the life and times of its subject within a broad and richly annotated historical framework.

221pp. Ella writes of her parents Edward and Laura Elmegreen who married in 1883 and farmed near Davenport, Iowa.

275pp. Middlebrook provides details of her childhood and early career as a one-room schoolteacher from Fremont Township, Iowa, during the Depression.

Discover an incredible true story full of travel, adventure, and an unexpected romance with Myrna Kinsinger Farraj's enthralling new memoir, My Heart is Singing. The year is 1957. Myrna has just graduated college and is expected to become a teacher in the Midwest. Instead, she defies everyone's expectations, perhaps even her own, when she enrolls in Mennonite service and accepts a teaching post at an all-girls school in Amman, Jordan. There, the shy farm girl who seldom ventured outside her sheltered community discovers a vibrant world full of brand-new tastes, sounds, and cultures. As Myrna endears herself to this strange new land, she meets a handsome, determined young man from Jericho who promptly sweeps her off her feet. The two soon embark on an epic romance that will change their lives forever. Their relationship, however, is filled with seemingly insurmountable challenges. Told through her writings and the real life letters between Myrna and her sweetheart, My Heart is Singing beautifully illustrates the realities of a young love facing unusual obstacles.

84pp. Vandervelde describes growing up in Le Grand, Iowa, the daughter of a country doctor.

Excerpts from the diary of Sarah Gillispie, a pioneer from Iowa in the nineteenth century. Includes activities and a timeline related to the era.

Populist singer, Mid-Roader, editor, publisher, wife, mother of eleven, Luna Kellie was a well-informed, fervent member of the Farmers' Alliance movement in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Radicalized by railroad monopolies, corrupt government, recurring drought, heavy mortgages, and a desperate combination of rising costs and falling returns, prairie farmers were turning their energy toward raising "less corn and more hell." Kellie actively sought to organize Nebraska into cooperatives and educate rural people about land, transportation, and money reform. Her compelling, often heartbreaking memoirs--written on the backs of ornate red-and-gold Farmers' Alliance certificates in 1925--give us her own description of how she became motivated to join the Alliance and participate in the Populist party. Kellie writes of her homesteading and political life from the age of eighteen to forty, of failed crops, mortgaged fields, intense hardships, and her devastation at the death of her children. One of the most complete accounts of the Mid-Road political faction available, relevant in many ways to the plight of today's farmers, A Prairie Populist should be read by anyone with an interest in national politics, the farm protest movement, women's studies, and American cultural history.

“Lots of people have dreams, but C. Vivian Stringer is the dream—a coalminer’s daughter who believed when her Poppa told her there was no obstacle she could not surmount. And she lives that dream, teaching others to rise up to meet challenges, turning underdogs into champions again and again—on and off the court. This is the quintessential American story, of a woman and of a family pulling together against the odds.Standing Talloffers an important message of hope to so many.” —John Chaney, Hall of Fame college basketball coach At a time when heroes are too rare, C. Vivian Stringer sets a shining example. She has time and again shown character, fortitude, and heart, both on and off the hardwood, and in the face of unbearable loss. InStanding Tall, she shares her remarkable life story, inspiring us to find this fortitude within ourselves. “Work hard, and don’t look for excuses,” Stringer’s parents told her, “and you can achieve anything.” But her faith and perseverance would be tested many times. A gifted athlete, she had to fight for a place on an all-white cheerleading squad in the sixties. In 1981, just as her coaching career was taking off, her fourteen-month-old daughter, Nina, was stricken with spinal meningitis. Nina would never walk or talk again. Still grieving, Stringer brought a small, poor, historically black college to the national championships—a triumph hailed as “Hoosiers with an all-female cast.” In 1991, her husband, Bill—her staunchest supporter, the father of her children, and the love of her life—fell dead of a sudden heart attack, but that same year, she led yet another young team to the Final Four. Through these dark times and others—including her bout with cancer, shared here for the first time—Stringer has carried her burdens with grace. Given her history, it was no surprise that she led her team to respond to Don Imus’s slurs with dignity and courage. Standing Tallis a story of quiet strength in the face of punishing odds. Above all, it is an extraordinary love story—love for the game, for the players she has coached, for her close-knit family, and for the husband she lost far too soon. It will resonate long after the last page.

"In 1968 Michael Mullen, a graduate student in biochemistry, was drafted; in 1969 he was sent to Vietnam as a foot soldier in Colonel Norman Schwarzkopf's Charlie Company; and in 1970 he was killed by the same OC friendly fireOCO that destroyed thousands of other lives during the Vietnam War. Back home on the family farm in Iowa, his parents made his death a crusade to awaken all parents to the insanity of war. C. D. B. Bryan's "Friendly Fire" and the TV movie of the same name documented these dramatic years, and Peg Mullen became a national symbol of grassroots activism. Now Peg Mullen shifts from symbol to reality as she tells her story in print for the first time. Outspoken, fearless, and wickedly humorous, Peg Mullen had a duel mission in the years after Michael's death: to penetrate the lies and evasions behind the artillery misfire that killed her oldest son and to publicize the senseless horror of the Vietnam War. "Unfriendly Fire" draws on the many letters sent to the Mullens after Michael's death; in addition, Michael's own bitter, weary letters home are reprinted. In these the voices of parents, brothers, sisters, comrades, teachers, and Michael himself echo Peg Mullen's call for truth and peace.""

211pp. A portrait of Iowa farm life from the 1920s to the 1950s.