"Beautifully written and meticulously researched, John Sharp provides us with a fascinating look at the growth and development of one of the most important institutions of Mennonite higher education." —Felipe Hinojosa, Assistant Professor of History, Texas A&M University 

"Hesston College is even more than a School on the Prairie. Sharp captures the wind of the spirit of God that generated the character and quality to plant a school on the plains and enlivens Hesston College today as a gift to the Mennonite church."— Elaine Moyer, Associate Director, Mennonite Education Agency

"Brimming with personalities, landscape, dreams, and issues, this account of what for a decade was the largest ‘Old’ Mennonite college vividly connects the dots in a century-spanning picture. With sympathetic irony, author Sharp lets key players speak their own colorful lines, whether endearing or off-putting. Paradoxes abound. A school planned for ‘somewhere in the West’ receives Mennonite support from Oregon to Ontario. A prairie campus teaching Homer, Plato, and Livy is shared with grazing Holsteins, overseen by a president perusing the Farm Journal. Pranks alternate with devotions, a noble spirituality with human slip-ups. An academy-college campus where ‘organized yelling’ is forbidden at games eventually turns out repeated national championships. A school for children of farmers successfully trains nurses and airplane pilots. A conservative but flexing ‘Old Mennonite’ peoplehood, with three colleges, dreams and improvises, binds and looses, cooperates and defends its campus turfs. All in all, this is a chapter necessary to understanding the American Mennonite story." —John. L. Ruth, Author, The Earth Is the Lord’s: A Narrative History of Lancaster Mennonite Conference

"Sharp has successfully accomplished the historian’s task. In portraying this history for his readers, Sharp’s voice is that of a storyteller with a keen sense of place, phrasing, and the curious facts that make the story come to life." —Jim Mininger, in the Foreword