KU News Release

KU faculty contribute to new book on movers and shakers in Kansas history

LAWRENCE — A new book on Kansas history, John Brown to Bob Dole: Movers and Shakers in Kansas History, features 27 people whose work helped shape the state’s character. Nearly half the contributing authors are University of Kansas faculty, including the authors profiling John Brown and Bob Dole.

Scheduled for release on Kansas Day, Jan. 29, the University Press of Kansas book focuses on 150 years of state history with profiles of men and women — many of whom may not be as well known as the radical abolitionist Brown of Osawatomie or the former U.S. senator from Russell.

Two public pre-Kansas Day events are scheduled in Lawrence featuring KU (or contributing) authors discussing the book and the Kansans whose lives they have researched.

At 7 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 17, at the Lawrence Public Library, KU professors Jonathan Earle and Burdett Loomis and the book’s editor, Virgil Dean, will talk about the state’s history and specifically about the men whose names form the book’s title. Earle, associate professor of history, writes about Brown, and Loomis, professor of political science, about Dole. The program is free.

A public book signing with Dean and many of the contributing authors attending is planned from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Friday, Jan. 27, at the Dole Institute of Politics. KU’s Spencer Research Library is co-sponsoring the book signing.

In all, 11 of the 27 contributing authors are from KU’s faculty and the book’s editor earned his doctorate in history from KU.

Dean, who has served as editor of the Kansas State Historical Society’s journal, Kansas History, since 1991, notes that selecting authors may not have been as difficult as selecting who to profile. “It couldn’t be a comprehensive listing” nor just a collection of biographies of famous Kansans, Dean said, noting that a second list could easily be compiled.”

“If we were successful this book will be more analytical than just a biographical story,” Dean said of the intent of the carefully researched profiles.

Over the years, Dean has been compiling lists of interesting people and events that characterize the state’s history. His lists in hand, Dean consulted other historians to select a mix of Kansans recognized as movers, shakers or innovators and who would fit into five chronological periods of the state’s history beginning with the territorial and Civil War years and concluding with Kansas since World War II.

The final list included agitators such as Brown; William H. Russell, Leavenworth proslavery partisan; and Mary Elizabeth Lease, Wichita Populist attorney known for advising farmers to “Raise less corn and more hell.” Motivators such as Dole and former President Dwight D. Eisenhower of Abilene, Clarina I.H. Nichols, women’s rights activist of Quindaro, and William Allen White, the “Sage of Emporia.” Innovators included Joseph G. McCoy, the cattle trader who settled in Abilene, as well as contemporary visionaries such as Wes Jackson, Salina environmentalist who founded The Land Institute, and Gordon Parks, the New York City artist whose childhood memories of Fort Scott were the basis for his book and his movie.

In addition to Earle and Loomis, other KU faculty contributors include K. Allen Greiner, assistant professor of family medicine at the KU Medical Center, on Dodge City’s Dr. Samuel J. Crumbine, whose public health crusades to “swat flies” may have led to the invention of the fly swatter.

M. H. Hoeflich, the John H. & John M. Kane professor of law, on Girard publishers Emanuel and Marcet Haldeman-Julius whose Little Blue Books dished out advice on par with today’s Dr. Phil.

Timothy Miller, professor and chair of religious studies, on Charles Monroe Sheldon, the Topeka minister and prohibition activist who coined the phrase ‘What Would Jesus Do?’

Brian Moline, adjunct professor of law, on Vern Miller, Wichita sheriff whose methods of enforcing drug and alcohol laws during the 1970s after he was elected State Attorney General made national headlines.

Rita G. Napier, professor of history, on William H. Russell, Leavenworth proslavery agitator.

Norman E. Saul, professor of history, on Mennonite leader and flour milling executive Bernhard Warkentin, who lived in Halstead and Newton.

Marjorie Swann, associate professor of English, and William M. Tsutsui, associate professor of history, teamed up professionally to write on John Steuart Curry, the Dunavant (Jefferson County) artist whose mural of John Brown on the walls of the Kansas Capitol is renowned.

John Edgar Tidwell, associate professor of English, on Gordon Parks.

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