1919. White was both small-town newspaperman and national celebrity, a journalist, editor and author, and popular commentator. In his fiction, White frequently used the idealized, middle-western small town as a rhetorical device through which to preach reform. His novel, In the Heart of a Fool, begins: Sunshine and prairie grass-well in the foreground. For the background, perhaps a thousand miles away or more than half a decade removed in time, is the American Civil War. In the blue sky a meadow lark's love song, and in the grass the boom of the prairie chicken's wings are the only sounds that break the primeval silence, excepting the lisping of the wind which dimples the broad acres of tall grass-thousand upon thousand of acres-that stretch northward for miles. To the life the prairie grass rises upon a low hill, belted with limestone and finally merges into the mirage on the knife edge of the far horizon. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.