In The Elemental Prairie, the combination of George Olson's drawings and John Madson's essay "The Running Country" looks at the prairie world with appreciative eyes. It presents sixty images of tallgrass plants, from the familiar purple coneflower and black-eyed susan to the rattlesnake master and compass plant.
George Olson recently retired from the faculty of the College of Wooster in Ohio, where he taught art from 1963 to 2000. His prairie plant studies have been shown widely in the U.S. and England, including more than thirty one-person exhibitions at such venues as the British Museum (Natural History), the Missouri Botanical Garden, the Chicago Botanic Garden, and the Royal Horticultural Society. John Madson (1923-1995) is considered the father of the modern prairie restoration movement; his books include Where the Sky Began (Iowa reprint 2004), Up on the River, Stories from Under the Sky, and Tallgrass Prairie.