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Bull Threshers and Bindlestiffs

Harvesting and Threshing on the North American Plains

Thomas D. Isern

xiv, 250 pages, 103 photographs, 20 tables, 6 figures, 6 x 9
Cloth ISBN 978-0-7006-0468-5, $29.95

Book Cover ImageBull Threshers and Bindlestiffs is a panorama on a continental canvas: the Great Plains of North America, stretching from Texas to Alberta. Onto this surface the author lays the large features of regional practice in the harvesting and threshing of wheat during the days before the combined harvester--harvesting with binder and header, threshing with bull thresher and steam engine. Into the picture he places the key figures who accomplished the task of gathering the grain--the farm men and women, the custom threshermen, and the bindlestiffs, or itinerant laborers. Affectionately he sketches the small details of folklife that comprised the everyday work and culture of the wheat belt--building shocks, loading racks, constructing stacks, pitching bundles into the separator, hauling water to the engine, drinking deep from the crockery water jug.

Bull Threshers and Bindlestiffs is a profusely illustrated study of a complex, vigorous regional culture concerned with the production of wheat--a culture that centered around the annual harvest and declined with the advent of the combine. This is an examination of the interaction of culture, environment, and technology with import for the fields of agricultural history and regional history. More than that, with its grassroots research, its descriptions of tools and customs, and its lavish illustrations, it is a re-creation of a proud phase of regional life previously captured only in yellowed albumen photographs.

"A major contribution to agricultural history, specifically on the history of the Great Plains. This well-written book will interest agricultural historians and may well find a market with people who collect and run old machinery."--Pete Daniel, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution

"A significant contribution . . . because Isern has taken a continental approach. . . . Isern is one of the foremost historians of the Great Plains, and he surely will gain further recognition with the publication of Bull Threshers and Bindlestiffs."--R. Douglas Hurt, author of The Dust Bowl and American Farm Tools

"This splendid account, clearly presented and beautifully illustrated, is a major addition to the agricultural and economic history of the region. It will not only be useful to scholars, but also will be of interest to those residents and former residents of the Great Plains who can remember the thrill and hard work of harvesting and threshing a generation or more ago."--Gilbert C. Fite, past president of the Agricultural History Society and the Western History Association

"Here is an example of rare scholarship, thorough and alive. It is a fresh and significant contribution to the history and political economy of the North American plains, essential reading for scholars, students, and farmers in Canada and the United States like."--James N. McCrorie, executive director, Canadian Plains Research Center

THOMAS D. ISERN, Roe R. Cross Distinguished Professor of History at Emporia State University, is himself a native of the winter wheat belt, having been raised on a farm in Barton County, Kansas. An authority on the history and folklore of the North American Great Plains, he is the author of Custom Combining on the Great Plains and coauthor of Plains Folk: A Commonplace of the Great Plains, Plains Folk II: The Romance of the Landscape, and Kansas Land.