True Tales of Kansas
by Roger L. Ringer
Both of Ringer’s books are collections of very short pieces about people, businesses, places, and events in or related to Kansas . . . all the stories take place someplace in Kansas or are about people with some Kansas connection. Fatty Arbuckle, for example, only lived in Kansas as an infant, but has a relatively long story in True Tales. . . the stories are intriguing and interesting, some of the featured people are also intriguing and I wanted to read more about them (Pelican Pete in Eccentric Kansas, for example, and Maud Stevens Wagner in True Tales).
Ringer’s writing style is casual, as if he recorded and transcribed the stories being spoken rather than writing them. This makes the books easy and quick to read. They are not meant to be academic history, but collections of stories, and in this endeavor, Ringer is completely successful.
Dr. Ellen Hansen
2021 Martin Kansas History Judge
Ringer’s writing style is casual, as if he recorded and transcribed the stories being spoken rather than writing them. This makes the books easy and quick to read. They are not meant to be academic history, but collections of stories, and in this endeavor, Ringer is completely successful.
Dr. Ellen Hansen
2021 Martin Kansas History Judge
Ellen Hansen is professor emerita in the Department of Social Sciences, Sociology, and Criminology at Emporia State University, where she taught cultural geography for 22 years. Her areas of teaching and research interest are gender and development, geography and history of the U.S.-Mexico border, and geography of Kansas and the Midwest. She is a fiber arts enthusiast, has taught knitting classes at Flint Hills Technical College, and is faculty advisor to the Unwind Fiber Crafts Club at Emporia State. She is rarely without a knitting or crochet project in her hands.
RSS Feed