Awards

• Short-listed for High Plains Book Award in Art & Photography 2014
• Winner of Nebraska Book Award in Nonfiction, Nebraska as place category 2015

Overview

The numbers of farms and farmers on the Great Plains are dwindling. Disappearing even faster are the farm places-the houses, barns, and outbuildings that made the rural landscape a place of habitation. Nancy Warner's photographs tell the stories of buildings that were once loved yet have now been abandoned. Her evocative images are juxtaposed with the voices of Nebraska farm people, lovingly recorded by sociologist David Stark. These plainspoken recollections tell of a way of life that continues to evolve in the face of wrenching change. Warner's spare, formal photographs invite readers to listen to the cadences and tough-minded humor of everyday speech in the Great Plains. Stark's afterword grounds the project in the historical relationship between people and their land. In the tradition of Wright Morris, this combination of words and images is both art and document, evoking memories, emotions, and questions for anyone with rural American roots.

Full Product Details

9780231165228

Table of Contents

Reviews

I was very moved by this evocative, literate, and informative book. Warner's beautiful -- and painful -- photographs are a perfect companion to Stark's writing and the 'voices' of the Nebraskans that are included. I am very grateful for this sensitive and sad look back. -- Ruth Silverman, former associate curator of the International Center of Photography and two-time winner of the Photography-Book-of-the-Year award for The Dog and Athletes The photographs and the words so beautifully preserved here evoke powerful -- and indeed painful -- memories of the homes left behind when millions of rural Americans packed up, said good-bye to all they had known, and relocated to the nation's cities and suburbs. The memory of that transition continues for many of us, tearing at our hearts. -- Robert Wuthnow, author of Remaking the Heartland: Middle America Since the 1950s This marvelous book offers us a glimpse of the ghost of the Great Plains as it makes a last appearance. We ought to be immensely grateful to David Stark and Nancy Warner for inviting us to their deeply moving seance. -- Ted Kooser, former U.S. Poet Laureate These resonant photographs and recollections evoke a world almost gone from American life. They are as filled with time as old monuments, and as moving. -- Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Warner's exquisite and haunting images are like memory itself: fragments that the imagination weaves together into a meaningful whole. -- Martha Casanave, photographer Richly nuanced. Publishers Weekly 9/23/2013 A melancholy, touching look at a vanishing way of life. -- Sarah Bryan Miller St. Louis Post-Dispatch 12/14/13 Each photo presents a snapshot of a place vacated. Together, they tell a larger story of an America fading into the landscape... Conversations, captured by Stark, are sprinkled throughout the book, bringing insight and understated humor to the inanimate beauty of Warner's photographs. -- Casey Logan The Omaha World Herald 12/15/13 A moving collection... The country and the book are spacious, the stories are moving, and the photographs are wonderful. RALPH magazine No 249 Spring 2014 Quietly evocative Billings Gazette 9/28/14

I was very moved by this evocative, literate and informative book. Nancy Stark's beautiful -- and painful -- photographs are a perfect companion with David Starks' writing and with the voices of the Nebraskans that are included. I am very grateful for this sensitive and sad look back. -- Ruth Silverman, former Associate Curator of the International Center of Photography, twice winner of the Photography-Book-of-the-Year award for The Dog and Athletes The photographs and the words so beautifully preserved here evoke powerful -- and indeed, painful -- memories of the homes left behind when millions of rural Americans packed up, said goodbye to all they had known, and relocated to the nation's cities and suburbs. The memory of that transition continues for many of us, tearing at our hearts. -- Robert Wuthnow, Princeton University, author of Remaking the Heartland: Middle America since the 1950s This marvelous book offers us a glimpse of the ghost of the Great Plains as it makes a last appearance. We ought to be immensely grateful to Nancy Warner and David Stark for inviting us to their deeply moving seance. -- Ted Kooser, Former US Poet Laureate

I was very moved by this evocative, literate and informative book. Nancy Stark's beautiful -- and painful -- photographs are a perfect companion with David Starks' writing and with the voices of the Nebraskans that are included. I am very grateful for this sensitive and sad look back. -- Ruth Silverman, former Associate Curator of the International Center of Photography, twice winner of the Photography-Book-of-the-Year award for The Dog and Athletes

I was very moved by this evocative, literate and informative book. Nancy Stark's beautiful -- and painful -- photographs are a perfect companion with David Starks' writing and with the voices of the Nebraskans that are included. I am very grateful for this sensitive and sad look back. -- Ruth Silverman, former Associate Curator of the International Center of Photography, twice winner of the Photography-Book-of-the-Year award for The Dog and Athletes The photographs and the words so beautifully preserved here evoke powerful -- and indeed, painful -- memories of the homes left behind when millions of rural Americans packed up, said goodbye to all they had known, and relocated to the nation's cities and suburbs. The memory of that transition continues for many of us, tearing at our hearts. -- Robert Wuthnow, Princeton University, author of Remaking the Heartland: Middle America since the 1950s

Author Information

David Stark is the Arthur Lehman Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Columbia University, where he directs the Center on Organizational Innovation. His most recent book is The Sense of Dissonance: Accounts of Worth in Economic Life. Nancy Warner is a fine-art and portrait photographer based in San Francisco. Many of the photographs in this book were first exhibited at the Great Plains Art Museum as Going Back: Midwestern Farm Places (2008). The photographs are available for sale, exhibit, or licensing. Contact Nancy Warner at www.warnerphoto.com.

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