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LAWRENCE -- An essay relating Lawrence, the University of Kansas and William Quantrill's raid to the Sept. 11 attacks will be part of a Life magazine collection of prose and photographs that is to be published next month under the title "The American Spirit."
The collection is a follow-up to last year's popular "One Nation," Life's compilation of photographs and essays relating to the attacks.
Richard Norton Smith, director of KU's Dole Institute of Politics, contributed the piece to the book, which its editors describe as an assessment of the state of the union after Sept. 11. Editors asked contributors to "simply experience" this year's Independence Day celebrations, then record their thoughts "in light of Sept. 11."
Smith's essay compares the events in New York and William Quantrill's Civil War-era attack on Lawrence but also portrays the town's quiet defiance against modern terrorism exhibited in backyard gatherings, neighborhood parades and fireworks.
"As night falls on the Fourth, little else in Lawrence is quiet," Smith writes. "The near-constant sound of exploding shells suggests small arms fire. Close your eyes and it becomes faintly possible to imagine, amid the acrid smoke clouds rising from the town below, what terrorism might have sounded like in August 1863."
Quantrill's raid killed nearly 200 people, but Smith's essay focuses on Lawrence's recovery. His comments turn to the town's thriving business district, active tourism and internationally recognized university.
He also discusses the town's long-term reaction to 2001 terrorist attacks.
"Ten months after Sept. 11, the white ribbons have been taken down, but KU's ubiquitous Jayhawk still shares window space with the American eagle along Massachusetts Street," he writes.
Contributors to "One Nation" and "American Spirit" include Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough; authors James Bradley, Melissa Faye Greene and Alan Brinkley; and Boston Globe columnist David Shribman.
Smith, who was named director of the Dole Institute less than a month before Sept. 11, is a nationally recognized authority on the American presidency who has written or collaborated on eight books, three of them with Dole. Smith formerly was executive director of the Gerald R. Ford Foundation in Grand Rapids, Mich., and previously served as director of the Ford, Reagan, Hoover and Eisenhower presidential libraries.
The Dole Institute, established at KU in 1997 to honor the former Kansas senator, is designed to foster new thinking on major policy issues and encourage student participation and citizen involvement in public service.
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