Rural America

A new college president takes a fantastic journey in western North Dakota. He steps into an idyllic, rural community. But within a year, the small-town stage of Williston meteorically and unexpectedly shoots to world fame after the discovery of rich oil reserves far beneath the picturesque farmland. Isolated, abandoned, and surrounded by turmoil, the college president joins forces with local heroes, leveraging the community, and the bottomless reservoir of resilience and do-it-yourself values, to keep their small town great.

From prehistory to the present-day conservation movement, Stephen Pyne explores the efforts of successive American cultures to master wildfire and to use it to shape the landscape. A timely environmental classic. Pyne was named by Science magazine as "the world's leading authority on the history of fire." The narrator of Fire in America, Jack de Golia, served as a firefighter with the National Park Service and then as a fire information officer for the NPS, Bureau of Land Management and US Forest Service.

Crowded in the Middle of Nowhere: Tales of Humor and Healing from Rural America is a collection of humorous and poignant stories from a veterinarian in a small, dusty farming and ranching community in rural West Texas. Dr. Brock gives you an intimate look into his small-town and big-hearted perspective on life, animals, and their owners. His unique perspective and tales of doctoring beloved pets, cantankerous livestock, and occasionally their owners will make you smile, laugh, cry, and evoke every other emotion under the sun.

In the 1980s, Phil Bellfy pondered the question: Why does Sault, Ontario, appear to be so prosperous, while the "Sault" on the American side has fallen into such a deplorable state? Could the answer be that the "American side" was little more than a "resource colony"--or to use the academic jargon of "Conflict and Change" Sociology--an "Internal Colony."

In the recent years, people have studied the unusual increase in the number of prime-aged men who are unemployed. According to Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist who holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute, the drop of the share of prime-aged men in the labor market in other prosperous democracies has never been as severe as it is in the United States.

Senator Jon Tester is a rare voice in Congress. He is the only United States senator who manages a full-time job outside of the Senate - as a farmer. But what has really come to distinguish Tester in the Senate is his commitment to accountability, his ability to stand up to Donald Trump, and his success in, time and again, winning red state voters back to the Democratic Party.

4-H, the iconic rural youth program run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has enrolled more than 70 million Americans over the last century. As the first comprehensive history of the organization, The 4-H Harvest tracks 4-H from its origins in turn-of-the-century agricultural modernization efforts, through its role in the administration of federal programs during the New Deal and World War II, to its status as an instrument of international development in Cold War battlegrounds like Vietnam and Latin America.

In this essential book written by a rural native and Silicon Valley veteran, Microsoft’s Chief technology officer tackles one of the most critical issues facing society today: the future of artificial intelligence, and how it can be realistically used to promote growth, even in a shifting employment landscape.

The Democratic Party has lost an entire generation of rural voters. By focusing the majority of their message and resources on urban and coastal voters, Democrats have sacrificed entire regions of the country where there is more common ground and shared values than what appears on the surface.

Ernest Seton's stories reach, inside the animals he writes about in telling their stories. He gives us a greater understanding of their lives on planet earth. Adventure, comedy and sadness all intertwine to make these stories hard to put down until the last word...

Allison: When I left for California, I gave myself a new name and never looked back. Now my carefully crafted good-girl image is getting torn to shreds in the press thanks to my Oscar-winning A-hole of an ex-boyfriend. So I escape to the only safe haven I know and trust - my hometown - to take a breather while I plot my triumphant Hollywood comeback. However, when I arrive at my parents’ house, Jackson Burke answers the door instead. And suddenly the past comes rushing back.... Jackson: First kiss. First time. First love. Allison Murphy and I shared a lot of firsts.

Rural Church RESCUE speaks directly to churches struggling with these issues. Speaking from his experience as both a rural church pastor and firefighter, Jon Sanders presents a unique perspective on these common problems facing the rural church. Using a metaphor drawn from the world of the fire service, Sanders outlines six principles necessary for rural churches to be healthy and reclaim the vital role God has called them to in their communities.

For many nonprofit organizations, volunteers have served a vital purpose in roles ranging from administrative to facility management. With an aging population and the reality of baby boomers entering the next phase of their lives, new ways of recruiting these mature, skilled individuals as volunteers are emerging. Through his research, Dr. Jesse Bolinger presents a compelling case for how their past work experience, educational background, and mental health can play a significant role and be a tool for retaining them in areas that best suit these three basic elements.