Probably no other newspaper writer in the first half of the twentieth century mirrored the values of small-town life more clearly and enthusiastically than did William Allen White. White's life spanned a remarkable period. He was born in Emporia, Kansas, on 10 February 1868, the same year Ulysses S. Grant was first elected president. The United States, still recovering from the devastation of the Civil War, was predominantly an agrarian society. When White died in early 1944, in the midst of World War II, America had become a mighty urban, industrialized nation, second to none in military strength.

Unlike many writers and intellectuals who fled the village for the excitement--and often despair--of the city, White lived most of his life in small-town Kansas. He wanted it no other way. As the very foundations of rural America crumbled, White celebrated life in his beloved Emporia. Although the circulation of his paper, the...