R. D. O’Leary (1866–1936)
R. D. O’Leary (1866–1936)

Author: Margaret R. O’Leary

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2015-04-15

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 1491758732

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Over the span of forty years, Professor Raphael Dorman OLeary labored tirelessly to make his students understand the importance of originality and of apt expression in English composition. He especially loved words well chosen and dared his students to put beauty and smoothness and sinew into their sentences. He tried passionately to make them feel the dignity and the majesty of the English language at its best. When he died after a short illness in 1936, his personal effects passed among descendants until finally coming to rest with Dennis OLeary and his spouse, Margaret, who discovered them in a poor condition while restoring a family house. Amid Professor OLearys papers was his handwritten journal from the year 1914 to 1915. The journal displays the full measure of R. D. OLeary in his myriad academic, social, political, and religious experiences at the University of Kansas atop Mount Oread; in the adjacent city of Lawrence, Kansas; and while traveling to rural Kansas during the summer months and to Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the dead of winter. Throughout his journal, Professor OLeary portrays with humor and pathos his encounters with students, colleagues, his spouse, his three sons, his mother, shopkeepers, religious zealots, pro-German zealots, anti-German zealots, drayers, Pullman conductors, bankers, politicians, publishers, educated spinsters, and garden wasps, while vividly describing cold classrooms, interminable whist parties, trilling sopranos, Kansas football games, and Lawrence seed stores. R. D. OLeary (18661936): Notes from Mount Oread 19141915 is a fascinating glimpse into the life and times of a revered English professor, half way through his forty years of teaching at the University of Kansas.

Kansas
Kansas

Author: Craig Miner

Publisher: University Press of Kansas

Published: 2002-10-21

Total Pages: 552

ISBN-13: 0700614249

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Kansas is not only the Sunflower State, it's the very heart of America's heartland. It is a place of extremes in politics as well as climate, where ambitious and energetic people have attempted to put ideals into practice-a state that has come a long way since being identified primarily with John Brown and his exploits. Craig Miner has written a complete and balanced history of Kansas, capturing the state's colorful past and dynamic present as he depicts the persistence of contrasting images of and attitudes toward the state throughout its 150 years. A work combining serious scholarship with great readability, it encompasses everything from the Kansas-Nebraska Act to the evolution-creationism controversy, emphasizing the historical moments that were pivotal in forming the culture of the state and the diverse group of people who have contributed to its history. Kansas: The History of the Sunflower State is the first new state history to appear in over twenty-five years and the most thoroughly researched ever published. Written to enlighten general readers within and well beyond the state's borders, it offers coverage not found in previous histories: greater attention to its cities-notably Wichita-and to its south central and western regions, accounts of business history, contributions of women and minorities, and environmental concerns. It presents the dark as well as the bright side of Kansas progressivism and is the first Kansas history to deal with the post-World War II era in any significant detail. Craig Miner has spent almost forty years researching, teaching, and writing Kansas history and has dug deeply into primary sources-especially gubernatorial papers-that shed new light on the state. That research has enabled him to assemble a wider cast of characters and more entertaining collection of quotations than found in earlier histories and to better show how individual initiative and entrepreneurial aspirations have profoundly influenced the creation of present-day Kansas. Ranging from the days of cattle and railroads to the era of oil and agribusiness, this history situates the state in its own terms rather than as a sidebar to a larger American epic. Miner brings to its pages an identifiable Kansas character to preserve what is distinctive about the state's identity for future generations, echoing what one Kansan said over half a century ago: "Kansas is simply Kansas. May she never be tempted to become anything else."

Birds, Bones, and Beetles
Birds, Bones, and Beetles

Author: Chuck Warner

Publisher: University Press of Kansas

Published: 2019-04-15

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 0700627731

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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 mark on his field. That innovative breakthrough serves as a testament to the tenacity of a quietly determined naturalist. Bunker was part of the small team of men who constructed and installed the famous Panorama of North American Mammals, the centerpiece exhibit of the KU Natural History Museum located in Dyche Hall. That iconic building on the KU campus was expressly built to house the collection of mounted animals that impressed the world a decade earlier at the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition and World’s Fair. Once the panorama was completed, Bunker turned his attention to field collecting. Bunker’s field notes provide an accurate, authentic account of several expeditions to collect such specimens as well as a rare view of the extreme hardships of fieldwork in those early days. Perhaps most notable is “Bunk’s” 1911 expedition to western Kansas, where he discovered the fossil remains of a forty-five-foot-long sea serpent—later identified as Tylosaurus proriger, an aquatic reptile from the mosasaur genus and the largest example of the species found in North America. In 2014, Tylosaurus was named the marine fossil of the state of Kansas. Birds, Bones, and Beetles tells the story of a man whose passion for learning led to remarkable discoveries, extraordinary exhibits, and the prestigious careers of many students he mentored in the natural sciences.