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Book Review
Canada and the United States
Craig Miner.
Harvesting the High Plains: John Kriss and the Business of Wheat Farming, 19201950. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. 1998. Pp. xi, 225. $29.95.
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John Kriss was a quintessential Horatio Alger figure who, armed with only an eighth-grade education, rose from very humble circumstances to become one of the largest and most prosperous wheat farmers in western Kansas and eastern Colorado. According to various newspaper articles about him, including one excerpted in the Reader's Digest (1947), Kriss harvested more than one million bushels of wheat on nearly 50,000 acres. Yet, during the agricultural depression of the 1920s, his family was in such dire straights that his grandparents went to the county poor farm. Craig Miner was originally commissioned to write a biography of John Kriss by the Kriss family; he was able to interview his subject at length before he died and was given access to his extensive personal papers and business records. This new book combines elements of Miner's earlier biography with more general agricultural and rural history to provide a rich and detailed portrait of large-scale farming and agribusiness during its formative years. |
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