'In this fascinating social history, Haywood unravels the web of values, ideas, and philosophies that tied East to West.' --Journal of American History

Picture a Kansas cattletown. What do you see? Most people see a "Gunsmoke" version of Dodge City--a dusty frontier town full of thirsty cowboys, gunslingers, outlaws, and ladies of the evening.

But the "Gunsmoke" version tells only half the story, according to historian C. Robert Haywood. Two cultures existed simultaneously in Kansas cattle towns, Haywood writes. Alongside the Wild West culture of the cattle trailing industry there existed a highly developed Victorian society, complete with civic activists, churches, boosterism, small-town politics, and Victorian architecture to rival...

By reputation, Kansas isn't the funniest place on earth. But it has its share of humor. It can boast of politicians who taunted puritan farmers with "raise less corn and more hell," a gubernatorial candidate whose claim to fame was perfecting and marketing a goat-gland transplant for men desperate to restore their sexual vigor, and a legendary attorney general who covertly flew the friendly skies of Kansas in hot pursuit of illegal liquor consumption on passenger planes.

In Tough Daisies, Robert Haywood reveals the lighter side of a state that's too often pegged a collection of...