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Nebraska: This Place, These People is a collection of over eighty poems by former Nebraska State Poet, William Kloefkorn, about the state he is most identified with. As the subtitle indicates, these poems focus on the landscapes and residents of Nebraska, in intimate descriptions, which ultimately lead to bigger questions through Kloefkorn’s musings.
State Poet of Nebraska from 1982-2013, William Kloefkorn captures the small towns and wide plains of the Midwest in his sparse, precise style of poetry. Born in Kansas in 1932 outside the town of Attica, Kloefkorn enjoyed a childhood freely roaming the prairies, skinny-dipping and fishing for turtles, and hopping train cars for a quick ride. He worked on his grandparents’ dairy farm milking cows and gathering eggs, as well as delivering papers in town for movie tickets. This idyllic childhood was contrasted with grim accidents that left his father disabled and the family house burned to the ground. Both the hardships and pleasures of farm life and the open plains influenced Bill as a young man and remained themes he would return to throughout his career.
Set in Omaha, “the insurance capital of the Midwest,” Richard Dooling’s Bet Your Life follows insurance fraud investigator Carver Hartnett as he attempts to solve the sudden death of his friend and coworker, Lenny, after a wild night out and a mysterious online gaming session. He is aided in his search by another coworker, and unrequited love interest, Miranda. As they uncover the secrets of Lenny’s life, a macabre tale is revealed involving drug abuse, insurance fraud, and clandestine emails, with Miranda possibly playing a large role.
Richard Dooling is an author, screenwriter, professor, and lawyer from Omaha, Nebraska. Born in 1954, he attended Creighton Prep High School and he received his B.A. from St. Louis University. Shortly after studying at UNMC, he began working as a respirational therapist in an intensive care unit in Clarkson Hospital. Returning from a year-long journey through Europe and Africa, Dooling enrolled in St. Louis University to receive his law degree. While there he was the editor in chief of their law journal.
In Yonnondio: From the Thirties, Tillie Olsen traces the life and growth of the Holbrook family and their struggles for a better life in the Midwest in the early twentieth century. Beginning in a Wyoming mining town and eventually ending in the streets of Omaha, the family’s quest for the American dream is thwarted by the harsh realities of the working class. Focusing on the daughter, Mazie, the reader gains a view into the conflict between the poor conditions of early industrialism and the desire for identity and independence from “the Company” – the ubiquitous forces of capitalism that hold the family down.
Nebraska is a place of open country and congested city, farmland and factory, and no author better captures the joys and hardships of these conflicting dynamics than Tillie Olsen. Born Tillie Lerner in 1913 or 1914 in either Wahoo, Mead, or Omaha (no birth certificate exists), to Russian immigrants, she learned at an early age the hard facts of poverty both in the country and the city. Her family relocated to Omaha where she attended Lake School Elementary in North Omaha and Omaha Central High School.
Floating down a lazy river may be relaxing and a good way to get some sun, but with the right kind of mind it can be a way to reconnect with the beginning of life on the planet. In his essay, The Flow of the River, Loren Eiseley takes an impromptu journey on the Platte River which becomes a meditation on the way water unites all life on Earth. With his unique blend of philosophy and science, wonder and understanding, Eiseley takes us on a journey through time, back to the mysterious origins of life in the primordial oceans.
Loren Eiseley, anthropologist, philosopher, nature writer, and poet, was born in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1907. Renowned for his creative nonfiction essays on the natural world, Eiseley combines personal narrative with scientific research to illuminate the mysteries of nature, especially the evolution of humans, animals, and the universe, as well as the uniqueness of the human experience.
We have all been there before, after finishing a test, you have a moment of doubt and panic about one of your answers. You flip back and go over the question again, but erasing that mark can seem like a tremendous effort. Most of us believe that our first instinct is correct, so we leave it as it is, despite our misgivings. We may even have been told by instructors to leave an answer once it is on paper because more often than not our doubts are unfounded and simply products of nervous overthinking. This is known as the first-instinct fallacy. In reality, studies have shown that students usually change their answer to the correct one. Adam Grant uses this example to introduce us to the practice of rethinking.