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In the aftermath of the Civil War, thousands of former slaves made their way from the South to the Kansas plains. Called “Exodusters,” they were searching for their own promised land. Bryan Jack now tells the story of this American exodus as it played out in St. Louis, a key stop in the journey west. Many of the Exodusters landed on the St. Louis levee destitute, appearing more as refugees than as homesteaders, and city officials refused aid for fear of encouraging more migrants. To the stranded Exodusters, St. Louis became a barrier as formidable as the Red Sea, and Jack tells how the city’s African American community organized relief in response to this crisis and provided the migran...
Jerry Cline exists at the whim of an 1869 Comanche raiding party on his birthfather's family ranch in Central Texas. Jerry could also be a poster-boy for successful adoptions. He was adopted at age 3 months in 1939 by a hard-living couple from East Texas, via the Indian Territory of Oklahoma before it became a state. Despite the raw and dusty origins of his forbearers, Jerry grew up to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics from Purdue University and enjoyed a long career in the aerospace industry with McDonnell Douglas Corporation (now The Boeing Company). He worked on several space and missile programs and was part of the team which developed the design for the Space Shuttle. Dr. Cline also held an a...
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For generations, men have left their homes and families to defend their country while their wives, mothers and daughters remained safely at home, outwardly unaffected. A closer examination reveals that women have always been directly impacted by war. In the last few years, they have actively participated on the front lines. This book tells the story of the women who documented the impact of war on their lives through their art. It includes works by professional artists and photographers, combat artists, ordinary women who documented their military experiences, and women who worked in a variety of types of needlework. Taken together, these images explore the female consciousness in wartime.
Though the city of St. Louis is located on the Missouri side of the Mississippi River, for the railroads, the St. Louis Gateway extends into Illinois, north and south along both sides of the river. Two factors conspired against St. Louiss aspiration to become the preeminent rail center of the 19th-century American Midwest: there was no bridge across the Mississippi, and Missouris loyalty to the Union during the Civil War was suspect. Chicago beat out St. Louis to attain the regions top railroad billing. Fast forward to the 1970s, when the Gateway Arch, dedicated in 1968, redefined the St. Louis riverfront and when the St. Louis Union Station closed to rail service. The 1970s was a decade of railroad debutsBurlington Northern, Illinois Central Gulf, Family Linesand a decade of railroad demisesRock Island and Frisco. It signaled the end of a century of rail domination of the American transportation scene.
In the South Side, there lived a tactless TV guy who had a way of getting tossed out of everything on camera, from the old VP Fair to Bill Clinton’s 1996 local re-election victory party. On the South Side, there dwelt a collector of ancient vacuum cleaners, none of which worked when he demonstrated them before millions of guffawing viewers watching on national television. And on the South Side, a beer baron tried to fight off Prohibition with a high-class, three-sided beer hall. It’s all in the second edition of Hoosiers and Scrubby Dutch: St. Louis’s South Side. The first edition captured the essence of the South St. Louis, with its tales of women scrubbing steps ever Saturday, the yummy brain sandwich, and a nationally known gospel performer who ran a furniture store in the Cherokee neighborhood. These stories, along with the new ones that fill the second edition, convey what gives a truly unique place its rough but charming personality. The result—Holy Hoosiers!—is an edition that’s even better than the first!
In 1927, on the northeast corner of Cherokee and Iowa Streets in south St. Louis, a multistory, multipurpose building was erected. Retail shops and a bowling alley occupied the first floor, while upstairs was a place that defied the imagination of someone driving by in their brand new Model T Ford. Today, that upstairs space, with its lofty ceiling, huge maple tongue-in-groove dance floor, and wraparound balcony, is the Casa Loma Ballroom -- St. Louis' last grand ballroom. Today, one gets the feeling that the ghosts of the big bands and the vocalists still linger there -- and with good reason. Just about everybody who was anybody played there at one time or another. Ol' Blue Eyes himself, before he was the idol of millions, received just a meager "Featured Singer, Frank Sinatra" note at the bottom of the Casa Loma bill the night he played with the Harry James Orchestra.