Frank Carlson Library

Deeply moved by his mother's memories of a waning era and rapidly disappearing lifestyle, John Ise painstakingly recorded the adventures and adversities of his family and boyhood neighbors—the early homesteaders of Osborne County, Kansas. First published in 1936, his "nonfiction novel" Sod and Stubble has since become a widely read and much loved classic. In the original, Ise changed some identities and time sequences but accurately retained the...

Recounts episodeses of American western gunfighters, including Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, and Wild Bill Hickok, as seen by their contemporaries.

"Every day, in natural history museums all across the country, colonies of dermestid beetles diligently devour the decaying flesh off of animal skeletons that are destined for the museum's specimen collection. That time-saving process was developed and perfected at the University of Kansas Natural History Museum by Charles D. Bunker, a lowly assistant taxidermist who would rise to become the curator of recent vertebrates and who made an indelible...

Dodge City, Kansas, is a place of legend. The town that started as a small military site exploded with the coming of the railroad, cattle drives, eager miners, settlers, and various entrepreneurs passing through to populate the expanding West. Before long, Dodge City's streets were lined with saloons and brothels and its populace was thick with gunmen, horse thieves, and desperadoes of every sort. By the 1870s, Dodge City was known as the most violent...

"Rollicking, adventurous, touching. Whether the reader invests only a few minutes at a time or finishes the book at one sitting, he is in for a lot of fun."--American West'Fascinating tales set down succinctly and excitingly. There are stories of lost treasure and sudden riches, of outlaws and sheriffs, of massacres and heroics. Over the trails: Milt Bryan's adventure on the Santa Fe Trail; The massacre on Walnut Creek; A ride for life; The crazy...