Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote the American classic Little House on the Prairie, from which the award winning television show was taken. Her first book was published in 1932 but long before that Laura wrote magazine articles on small farming and country living. She and her husband Almanzo lived on a small farm near Mansfield, Missouri from 1894 until their deaths, his in 1949 and hers in 1957, and it is from that happy life that the spirit of her books sprang. Laura’s articles are full of merriment, country lore, and old fashioned wisdom. They are the seed stock of the Little House® books.
This book includes Laura's articles written during the war years of 1917-1918. Conditions and events surrounding World War I, the Great War, caused her to write about the changing roles of women, duty and personal responsibility, self-sacrifice and honor, and the dreaded influenza epidemic.
"The self-government of our republic, of which we are so proud, is nothing after all but the governing of self and the whole cannot be greater than the sum of the parts."
"As a nation we stand for unselfishness, courage and self-sacrifice in defense of the right. Our soldiers are fighting on the battlefields that these principles shall be recognized as governing the nations of the world. And our hearts are the battlefields where these same qualities strive to become rulers of our actions."
"To be sure, everyone knows that a woman’s most important work is still her children, but other interest enter so largely into her life today that she is not classified solely on the one count. Altho still a vital part of a woman’s life, marriage is not now the end and aim of her existence. There are in the world, many, many other ambitions and occupations to take up her attention."
"A 'government of the people, for the people and by the people,' can be no better nor greater than the people."
These nearly 40,000 words of Laura’s writings are accompanied by setting and notes by Dan L. White, a fellow Ozarker who has lived for the last quarter century in Laura’s neck of the woods and has authored several books on Laura, including Laura’s Love Story, Laura Ingalls’ Friends Remember Her and Devotionals with Laura.
