Slightly over a century ago, the tallgrass prairie in North America stretched over most of what is now Iowa, Illinois, southern Minnesota, northern Missouri, and the eastern edges of the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Today, only a few scattered patches--less than one percent--remain of the endless, flat, silent land that greeted the pioneers and finally fell to their plows. Konza, an area of over 8,600 acres in the Flint Hills in Kansas, is the largest remaining undisturbed tract of tallgrass prairie in the nation.

Konza Prairie is the extraordinary and often lyrical story of...