A New History of Kansas

The first comprehensive history of Kansas in a generation, offering a fresh perspective on the people, conflicts, and ideas that have defined both the state and the nation. For more than a century, Americans have struggled to define Kansas. Is it Midwestern or Western? Northern or Southern? A land of small towns and wheat fields, or a crossroads shaped by migration, industry, innovation, and cultural change? Too often, Kansas has been reduced to clichÉs—an overlooked state known more for stereotypes than for its remarkable history. Yet beneath its familiar image lies a place where some of the nation??s most consequential political battles, social movements, and cultural transformations have unfolded. Rejecting the search for a single “Kansas character,” A New History of Kansas instead uncovers the diverse communities, peoples, and experiences that have shaped the state. From Native nations and early settlers to immigrants, workers, activists, farmers, entrepreneurs, and urban residents, Kansans have never shared one story or one vision of the future. Their histories are marked by resilience and reinvention, cooperation and conflict, continuity and change, revealing a vibrant complexity that challenges long-held assumptions about life in the Sunflower State. Wide-ranging, accessible, and deeply researched, A New History of Kansas presents Kansas not as a peripheral corner of the nation but as a dynamic meeting place where regional, national, and global forces intersect. By tracing the competing ideas, identities, and movements that have shaped the state, Epps and Leiker offer a fresh and compelling interpretation of Kansas’s past and its enduring significance. The result is an engaging, authoritative history that transforms how readers understand Kansas—and, in the process, America itself.