FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Rick Collin (701) 328-1476 or Janet Daley Jury (701) 255-3360
April 11, 2008

READ NORTH DAKOTA CHOOSES NON-FICTION
AS ITS 2008 READING FOCUS

BISMARCK – A new listing of North Dakota authors of non-fiction is now available on the Read North Dakota website at www.readnd.org.  The list of the top 10 non-fiction books covers a rich variety of topics, from Lewis and Clark, homesteading and American Indian culture to George Armstrong Custer, the Nonpartisan League, and Gordon Kahl.

Read North Dakota is dedicated to celebrating and promoting literature created in and about North Dakota.  Partners include the State Historical Society of North Dakota, the North Dakota Humanities Council, the North Dakota Council on the Arts, Prairie Public, and the North Dakota Library Association.

The following is a selected list of the top 10 books featuring North Dakota authors of non-fiction:

• Barbour, Barton H.  Fort Union and the Upper Missouri Fur Trade.  University of Oklahoma Press, 2001.
• Corcoran, James.  Bitter Harvest: Gordon Kahl and the Posse Comitatus – Murder in the Heartland, 1995; republished, with new foreword by Mike Jacobs, the North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies, North Dakota State University, 2005.
• Handy-Marchello, Barbara.  Women of the Northern Plains: Gender and Settlement on the Homestead Frontier, 1870-1930.  Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2005.
• Howard, Thomas W., editor.  The North Dakota Political Tradition.  Iowa State University Press, 1981.
• Jenkinson, Clay S., editor.  A Vast and Open Plain: The Writings of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in North Dakota, 1804-1806.  State Historical Society of North Dakota, 2003.
• Lindgren, H. Elaine.  Land in Her Own Name: Women as Homesteaders in North Dakota.  The North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies, North Dakota State University, 1991; republished, University of Oklahoma Press, 1996.      
  
• Morlan, Robert Loren.  Political Prairie Fire: The National Non-Partisan League, 1915-1922.  University of Minnesota Press, 1955; republished, 1974; republished, with new introduction by Larry Remele, Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1985.
• Ronda, James P.  Lewis and Clark Among the Indians.  University of Nebraska Press, 1984.
• Utley, Robert M.  Cavalier in Buckskin: George Armstrong Custer and the Western Military Frontier.  University of Oklahoma Press, 1988.
• VanDevelder, Paul.  Coyote Warrior: One Man, Three Tribes, and the Trial That Forged a Nation.  Little and Brown, 2004.

All publications are in print and available at local libraries and bookstores.  Visit the website, www.readnd.org and add to the recommended reading list of non-fiction.  Readers may include comments on the website discussion board.

Following last year’s annual event in Bismarck featuring memoir writer Larry Woiwode, the 2008featured non-fiction author is writer is Civil War historian Dr. James McPherson, a distinguished professor of history at Princeton University and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for his epic work, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era.  He will present a free public address at the historic Fargo Theatre Thursday, October 16 at 7 p.m., to be broadcast at a later date by Prairie Public Television and Radio.  He is a native of Valley City, North Dakota.

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