During a recent visit to omaha nebraska we visited john price argues that the tall Grass Prairie deserves to be protected much like the forests and mountain ranges in the tall Grass Prairie reader. The prairie hasnt had as many literary account in literature because the tall Grass Prairie was destroyed in 90 of that was destroyed so it was destroyed so quickly between about 1830 to 1900. So they didnt gave the authors a chance to appreciate and write about it in the sense john having chance to appreciate and write about. It was pretty much gone by the turnofthecentury. It does still exist in the imagination and i should say in the early treatments in the region and exploration literature it was a presence like in the journals of lewis and clark he describes describes this area begindoublequotes wildlife and diversity and also George Kaplan who was an artist and explorer that came through the region. These descriptions were immensely popular in the early and mid19 century soon as a place of adventure it could be found and appreciated. But its really about the transformation of my old prairie into cropland so often times you would hear it referred to as prairie that they are talking about the cropland support of the book is a part of the book is to correct that inaccuracy. Theres a number of reasons it was destroyed. People looked at this place and skipped over it and went last but then discovered these torques legals created and thats when it began in the middle of the 19th century through now with the introduction of the steel plow that hastened the destruction. I grew up in iowa and i knew nothing about the prairie. I wouldnt have been able to identify it so i had no emotional connection to my home landscape. There were a lot of cornfields and agricultural areas in North Central iowa. It wasnt until 93 by elias and i were living in a small town of belle plaine and the flood occurred into the fleet fields were left unplowed and there was an eruption of strange flowers and grasses that were 8 feet high and i was blown away by the beauty of some of these things and my neighbor thought i was nuts. The floods went away into the human destruction was over i found myself in a kind of morning to understand that lost landscape. So i traveled across the region and connected with prairie sites and it became clear to me that it would take more than a knowledge of the prairie to maintain this new commitment and connection as a writer. I needed accounts of an emotional connection even in a spiritual connection. For that i turned to the american nature writing and i found that just like the prairie in reality is endangered as a literary landscape most include very few examples of writing about the tall Grass Prairie for all the reasons i mentioned earlier and so i have no model or how to write about it or connect with it. I had no way to understand what that looks like so that began the search or the literature in the 90s of the anthology now that it has a role to play but this is a traditional natural beauty. As americans we like our mountains and deserts and oceans and literature on that and lots of poetry dedicated to it. This can be kind of an acquired taste and so when people first see it especially here in the spring they dont appreciate the intricate beauty of it so there are a lot of examples of the writers that are speaking to that of kind of the grand scale and too little for the postage stamp prairie is like this one. A great deal of beauty but you have to stay and look at it up close. Stackable with men in this book describes the prairie is as americas characteristic landscape and felt more than any other landscape in this country the prairie represented a unique character something unlike anything else in the world and he was blown away when he came out here and experienced it. And you hear that again and again. Once you experience the prairie directly, come back in the summer please do its described as oceans that have that kind of profound impact the color, the diversity, the wildlife. The literature, those who havent visited cant give people a taste of that and hopefully inspire them to care. Now on booktv professor of journalism at New York University talks about the life of a dwarf featured in an anthropology exhibit in the 1904 st. Louis world