About this item
Descending 1,885 miles straight down the center of the United States from Westhope, North Dakota, to Brownsville, Texas, is U.S. 83, one of the oldest and longest of the federal highways that hasn’t been replaced by an Interstate. Award-winning author Stew Magnuson takes readers on a trip down the road and through the history of the Northern Great Plains. The famous and the forgotten are found in stories he discovers in the Dakotas. Explorers Pierre de la Vérendrye, Lewis & Clark, Jedediah Smith, are all encountered along with Chief Spotted Tail of the Brulé Lakotas, TV sensation Lawrence Welk and rodeo superstar Casey Tibbs. The murderers, settlers, ballplayers and rail barons from yesteryear meet today’s truckers, oil rig workers and ghost towns inhabitants as Magnuson launches his own Voyage of Discovery in a beat-up 1999 Mazda Protégé.
About the Author
A native of Omaha, Nebraska, Stew Magnuson is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist and the author of The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder, an award-winning nonfiction book published by Texas Tech University Press.
His latest works are: The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83 in Texas; The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: The Dakotas, part one of his Highway 83 Chronicles series, and the second installment, The Last American Highway: Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma edition.
He also penned Wounded Knee 1973: Still Bleeding, which was released by Now & Then Reader in eBook format and separately as a paperback ahead of the 40th anniversary of the Wounded Knee Occupation.
The Nebraska Center of the Book named The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder the 2009 Nebraska Book of the Year in the nonfiction category. Graphic artist Lindsay Starr was also honored for her work on the cover design.
The Nebraska Literary Heritage Association, in partnership with the Nebraska State Historical Society and the Nebraska Library Commission, chose The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder: And Other True Stories from the Nebraska-Pine Ridge Border Towns for its list of Nebraska books that "represent the best literature produced from Nebraska during the past 150 years" to mark the state's sesquicentennial in 2017.
Magnuson was a resident of Tokyo on March 20, 1995 when the apocalyptic cult, Aum Shinrikyo, released nerve gas in the subway system. He has published one novel, The Song of Sarin, based on his experiences and research into the incident.
The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder won ForeWord magazine's bronze medal in the regional nonfiction category. The Center of Great Plains Studies also nominated the work as the 2008 Great Plains Distinguished Book of the Year. It was also nominated as the Writers' League of Texas nonfiction book of the year.
In 2006, Amazon.com Shorts posted an abridged excerpt of the book, "The Battle of Whiteclay," which was named by the editors as one of the top five nonfiction pieces published during the website's inaugural year.
Magnuson is a former foreign correspondent who has filed stories from Japan, Cambodia, Burma, Laos, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, Mali and Indonesia. He has worked as a reporter for The Cambodia Daily, the Asahi Shimbun, Kyodo News Service, Space News, Education Daily, and is now managing editor of National Defense Magazine. He has contributed articles to the Christian Science Monitor, Reuters, Defense News, and numerous other publications.
He was part of the team that successfully published a daily newspaper during a coup d'etat in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in July 1997.
Magnuson has traveled to all 50 U.S. states and visited or lived in 48 countries, including the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, where he served in the Peace Corps, and Peshawar, Pakistan, where he wo
