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$21.99
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Alongside the nostalgic appeal of Route 66 lurk ghostly roadside hitchhikers, the Goatman of Rolla, amusement park spirits, Civil War dead and the shadows thrown by the mighty Thunderbird. Spanning three hundred dangerously curving miles, the stretch of the Mother Road in Missouri earned the title of "Bloody 66, "? and some of its stopping places are marked by equally grim history. The Lemp Mansion saw family members commit suicide one by one. Springfield's Pythian Castle was an orphanage before becoming a military hospital and housing World War II prisoners of war. Follow Janice Tremeear as she takes a detour down Zombie Road, peers into the matter of the Joplin Spook Light and even stays overnight in Missouri's most haunted locations to discover what makes the Show Me State such a lively place for the dead.
People's History of the Lake of the Ozarks, A
9781467135504
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$21.99
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For tourists, the beautiful Lake of the Ozarks must seem in complete harmony with the natural order of its surroundings. Even lifelong natives can struggle to imagine a time when the reservoir created by the Bagnell Dam didn't exist. But beneath the placid waters of the lake that draws bustling visitors to its shores lies the drama of a remote Ozark community suddenly thrust into an urban world. True locals Dan William Peek and Kent Van Landuyt piece together the fascinating story of how that community adapted to the lake that redefined their home.
Haunted Graveyards of the Ozarks
9781609499846
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$14.99
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From the neatly tended urban necropolis to the long-forgotten family plot at the end of a winding gravel road, these "quiet cities" of the Ozarks have the power to send chills up and down the spine of the most hardened skeptic. Be it the restless Civil War soldiers of Greenbrier, the mass murderer who stalks Peace Church or the red eyes that persecute visitors to Robinson, tales of ghostly activity abound in every burial ground carved out of the ancient Ozark hills. Follow Dave Harkins as he explores the fascinating history and unsettling lore clinging to these haunted graveyards.
The Civil War Missouri Compendium: Almost Unabridged
9781625858450
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$24.99
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During the Civil War, only Virginia and Tennessee saw more action than Missouri. Ulysses S. Grant first proved his ability there. Sterling Price, a former governor of Missouri, sided with the Confederacy, raised an army and led it in battle all over the state. Notorious guerrilla warriors "Bloody" Bill Anderson and William Quantrill terrorized communities and confounded Union military commanders. Brian Warren and Joseph "Whit" McCoskrie provide a chronological overview of more than three hundred of the documented engagements that took place within Missouri's borders, furnishing photos, maps, biographical sketches and military tactics.
Haunted Hannibal
9781609490447
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$21.99
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After living in Rockcliffe Mansion, where the haunted hallways were a rite of passage for countless Hannibalian youth, Ken and Lisa Marks learned firsthand that Hannibal, Missouri, is indeed haunted. Hannibal's own Mark Twain held a lifelong fascination with paranormal activity after experiencing an uncanny premonition of the death of his brother in 1858. Even skeptics will find it hard to resist the marvelously strange history of the limestone cave made famous in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer where the real-life, macabre Dr. McDowell experimented with his own daughter's corpse. Stories of the town's notorious red-light district and Hannibal's larger-than-life lumber barons provide even more spine-tingling evidence of the haunting of America's Hometown.
Wicked Women of Missouri
9781467119665
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$23.99
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Marauders like Jesse James and the Younger gang earned Missouri the title of "Outlaw State," but the male desperadoes had nothing on their female counterparts. Belle "Queen of the Bandits" Starr and Cora Hubbard kept Missouri's sensationalist newspapers and dime novelists in business with exploits ranging from horse thefts to bank heists. Missouri native Ma Barker and her murderous sons rose to infamy during the gangster era of the 1930s while Bonnie Parker crisscrossed the state with Clyde Barrow. From savvy burlesque dancers to deadly gold diggers, historian Larry Wood chronicles the titillating stories of ten of the Show-Me State's shadiest ladies.
Hidden History of Downtown St. Louis
9781467136839
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$23.99
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A reputation as the town of shoes, booze and blues persists in St. Louis. But a fascinating history waits just beneath the surface in the heart of the city, like the labyrinth of natural limestone caves where Anheuser-Busch got its start. One of the city's Garment District shoe factories was the workplace of a young Tennessee Williams, referenced in his first Broadway play, The Glass Menagerie. Downtown's vibrant African American community was the source and subject of such folk-blues classics as "Frankie and Johnny" and "Stagger Lee," not to mention W.C. Handy's classic "St. Louis Blues." Navigate this hidden heritage of downtown St. Louis with author Maureen Kavanaugh.
Molly Brown from Hannibal, Missouri
9781609498719
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$21.99
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In the film version of the life of the "Unsinkable Molly Brown," she is rescued from the Colorado River and raised in the Rocky Mountains, but the actual Margaret Tobin Brown was born and raised in Hannibal, Missouri. Her formative years took place in the town's Gilded Age; the railroad brought in lumber barons, and as the wealth of Hannibal grew, so too did the dreams of young Margaret. Even though her future career as a philanthropist and socialite would span continents and she would become famous for surviving the sinking of the "Titanic," Molly Brown was always proud to be from Hannibal.
Kansas City Beer
9781467135610
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$21.99
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Westbound immigrants, pioneers and entrepreneurs alike arrived in Kansas City with a thirst for progress and beer. Breweries both small and mighty seized opportunity in a climate of ceaseless social change and fierce regional competition. Muehlebach Brewing Company commanded the market, operating in Kansas City for more than eighty years. Built in 1902, the iconic brick warehouse of Imperial Brewing still stands today. Prohibition made times tough for brewers and citizens in the Paris of the Plains, but political Boss Tom Pendergast kept the taps running. In 1989, Boulevard Brewing kicked off the local craft beer renaissance, and a bevy of breweries soon formed a flourishing community. Food and beer writer Pete Dulin explores Kansas City's hop-infused history and more than sixty breweries from the frontier era to the twenty-first century.
That's the Way it Was
9781609499709
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$24.99
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Segregation was a way of life in St. Louis, aptly called the most southern city in the North." These thirteen oral histories describe the daily struggle that pervasive racism demanded but also share the tradition of self-respect that the African American community of St. Louis sought to build on its own terms."
Haunted Columbia, Missouri
9781467136181
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$21.99
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According to Columbia ghost lore, the city's dead only dabble with departure. The specter of Broadway legend Maude Adams checks in on classes at Stephens College, while ragtime pioneer John William Boone returns to trail invisible fingers along his grand piano. Some linger from love, like the spirit of the Osage woman who waited for a final walk with the brave she was to marry. Others remain for a reckoning, like the guerrilla stalking Brannock Hall for the Union sniper who shot him down or the murdered child discovered in the plaster of a frontier tavern. From the columns of Mizzou's quad to the region's winding country roads, author Mary Collins Barile explores the restless graves of Columbia's eerie heritage.
St. Charles, Missouri
9781467136198
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$21.99
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Louis Blanchette came to Les Petites Côtes (the Little Hills) in 1769. The little village, later dubbed San Carlos del Misury by the Spanish and St. Charles by the Americans, played a major role in the early history of Missouri. It launched Lewis and Clark's expedition, as well as countless other westbound settlers. It served as the first capital of the new state. Important politicians, judges, soldiers, businesspersons, educators and even a saint all called St. Charles home. Despite its rapid growth from a sleepy French village into a dynamic city amid one of the fastest-growing regions in the country, St. Charles never forgot its history. Author James Erwin tells the story of its fascinating heritage.
Founding St. Louis
9781609490164
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$24.99
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The animal wealth of the western "wilderness" provided by talented "savages" encouraged French-Americans from Illinois, Canada and Louisiana to found a cosmopolitan center of international commerce that was a model of multicultural harmony. Historian J. Frederick Fausz offers a fresh interpretation of Saint Louis from 1764 to 1804, explaining how Pierre Lacl de, the early Chouteaus, Saint Ange de Bellerive and the Osage Indians established a "gateway" to an enlightened, alternative frontier of peace and prosperity before Lewis and Clark were even born. Historians, genealogists and general readers will appreciate the well-researched perspectives in this engaging story about a novel French West long ignored in American History.
Paris of the Plains
9781609490621
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$19.99
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From the end of the Great War to the final years of the 1950s, Kansas Citians lived in a manner worthy of a place called Paris of the Plains. The title did more than nod to the perfumed ladies who shopped at Harzfeld's Parisian or the one-thousand-foot television antenna nicknamed the "Eye-full Tower." It spoke to the character of a town that worked for Boss Tom and danced for Count Basie but transcended both the Pendergast era and the Jazz Age. Author John Simonson introduces readers to a town of vaudeville shows and screened-in porches, where fleets of cream-and-black streetcars passed beneath a canopy of elms. This is a history that smells equally of lilacs and stockyards and bursts with the clamor of gunshots, radio baseball and the distant whistle of a night train.
Murder & Mayhem in Missouri
9781626190337
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$21.99
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Desperadoes like Frank and Jesse James earned Missouri the nickname of the "Outlaw State" after the Civil War, and that reputation followed the region into the Prohibition era through the feverish criminal activity of Bonnie and Clyde, the Barkers and Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd. Duck into the Slicker War of the 1840s, a vigilante movement that devolved into a lingering feud in which the two sides sometimes meted out whippings, called slickings, on each other. Or witness the Kansas City Massacre of 1933, a shootout between law enforcement officers and criminal gang members who were trying to free Frank Nash, a notorious gang leader being escorted to federal prison. Follow Larry Wood through the most shameful and savage portion of the Show-Me State's history.
Haunted Cape Girardeau
9781609497590
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$21.99
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For nearly 250 years, the mighty Mississippi has granted Cape Girardeau a legacy of prosperity and dealt it some fearsome scars. Walk through buildings cut by the shrapnel of exploding steamboats, swamped in the debris of sudden floods and haunted by the restless spirits of those who washed ashore. And beyond the riverfront, tragedy's indelible mark can be found in places like the back row of the Rose Theater or the ashen mists of Spook Hollow. Joel Rhodes keeps company with the most forlorn figures and entrenched phantoms in this history of Cape Girardeau, where the river turns a thousand chilling tales.
Yankees & Rebels on the Upper Missouri
9781467135627
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$24.99
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During the 1860s, the Missouri River served as a natural highway, through snags and rapids, from St. Louis to Fort Benton for steamboats bringing Yankees and Rebels and their families to the remote Montana territory. The migration transformed the Upper Missouri region from the isolation of the fur trade era to the raucous gold rush days that would keep the region in turmoil for decades. The influx of newcomers involved its share of dramatic episodes, including the explosion of the Chippewa triggered by a drunken crew member, the mystery of the fugitive James-Younger gang and Colonel Everton Conger's journey from capturing John Wilkes Booth to the Montana Supreme Court. Acclaimed historian Ken Robison reveals the thrilling history behind this war-weary wave of migration seeking opportunity on Montana's wild and scenic frontier.
Prohibition in Kansas City, Missouri
9781467138710
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$21.99
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Like most cities during Prohibition, Kansas City had illegal alcohol, bootleggers, speakeasies, cops on the take, corrupt politicians and moralizing reformers. But by the time the Eighteenth Amendment was repealed, Kansas City had been singled out by one observer as one of the wettest cities, as well as the wickedest. A grocer managed a still in the basement of his store. A raid on the Tingle Oil Company found two hundred drums of oil and the largest illegal brewery ever found in the state. This seedy underworld transformed the Heart of America into the Paris of the Plains. Author John Simonson resurrects forgotten stories by revisiting places where they occurred and telling the salacious history of booze in Kansas City.
Kansas City Chronicles
9781596299863
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$21.99
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From guerilla warfare and martial law to the elegant dresses of the Harzfeld Parisian Cloak Company, discover how everything became up-to-date in Kansas City (including the phrase "up-to-date" itself, which predates the song in Oklahoma!). Watch as the Jackson County Poor Farm became the state-of-the-art Truman Medical Center and learn why Old Westport is the real McCoy. Meet the resident mouse of the Laugh-O-Gram studio on Thirteenth and Forest, which took food from Walt Disney's hand as Mortimer before taking shape on Disney's drawing board as Mickey. In this collection of his best historical columns, David Jackson delivers a vivid portrait of the people, places and events that continue to shape this fascinating town.
The Country Club District of Kansas City
9781626199149
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$21.99
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ONE OF THE GRAND EXPERIMENTS OF AMERICAN URBAN PLANNING lies tucked within the heart of Kansas City. J.C. Nichols prized the Country Club District as his life's work, and the scope of his vision required fifty years of careful development. Begun in 1905 and extending over a swath of six thousand acres, the project attracted national attention to a city still forging its identity. While the district is home to many of Kansas City's most exclusive residential areas and commercial properties, its boundaries remain unmarked and its story largely unknown. Follow LaDene Morton along the well-appointed boulevards of this model community's rich legacy.
The St. Louis Woman's Exchange: 130 Years of the Gentle Art of Survival
9781609491130
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$21.99
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On the surface, the Woman's Exchange of St. Louis is an exquisite gift shop with an adjacent tearoom--beloved, always packed, the chatter light and feminine, the salads and pies perfect. But the volunteers who run the Woman's Exchange have had enough grit to keep the place going through two world wars, a Great Depression, several recessions, the end of fine craftsmanship and the start of a new DIY movement. The "decayed gentlewomen" they set out to help in 1883 are now refugees from Afghanistan, battered wives and mothers of sons paralyzed in Iraq. Sample the radical changes they have made over the years, as well as the institutions they wisely left alone, like the iconic cherry dress that has charmed generations of women and mothers, including Jacqueline Kennedy and Gwyneth Paltrow.
Forgotten Tales of Kansas City
9781609496159
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$14.99
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Meet the folks who slip out of history books like they're playing the Kansas City shuffle. In this fascinating collection of stories, Paul Kirkman has dug up all sorts of head-scratchers: how did Jesse James rob a bank with John F. Kennedy, and how could a Beatles concert in the 1960s fail to make money? Watch a cow explode in a kitchen, frogs rain down from the sky and dogs pay for a public library system. Learn how Harry Houdini was trapped in a phone booth, why Clark Gable haunted street corners in a clown outfit and what kept Kansas City in Missouri.
The West Plains Dance Hall Explosion
9781609491161
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$21.99
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The 1928 explosion that transformed a West Plains dance hall into a raging inferno sparked feverish national media attention and decades of bitterness in the Missouri town it tore apart. And while the story inspired a popular country song, the firestorm that claimed thirty-nine lives remains an unsolved mystery. In this first book on the notorious catastrophe, Lin Waterhouse presents a clear account of the event and its aftermath that judiciously weighs conflicting testimony and deeply respects the personal anguish experienced by parents forced to identify their children by their clothing and personal trinkets.
African Americans in Mid-Missouri
9781596296091
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$21.99
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Brought to Mid-Missouri to serve as slaves but rising up to proudly serve the community as leaders, African Americans have made an indelible contribution to the region. Join historian Rose M. Nolen for the story of some of the most remarkable characters and institutions to come out of Columbia and Sedalia. Allow yourself to be drawn in by authors like Chester Himes and ragtime legends like Scott Joplin and to be inspired by educators like C.C. Hubbard and innovators like Tom Bass. Or link arms with some George R. Smith alumni and let loose a rousing rendition of the college yell from one of the best schools on the prairie.
Ghosts of St. Charles
9781609490195
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$21.99
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St. Charles is the second-oldest city in Missouri and one of the oldest cities in the United States. For most of its history, it could have been featured in any bad western movie, with a legacy of street shootings and lynch mobs. When you sit on the banks of the Missouri River, it does not take much of an imagination to see, feel and perhaps even smell the ghosts lingering there. The scoundrels, the criminals and the victims of traumatic events are the spirits that cannot rest. Join Michael Henry for some of their stories as he keeps vigil with representatives of the city's restless past, from the lost dogs of the Lewis and Clark Expedition to the mysterious Lady in White.
The Golden Lane: How Missouri Women Gained the Vote and Changed History
9781609490133
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$21.99
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It was June 14, 1916, a warm, sticky Wednesday morning. The Democratic Convention would soon meet in St. Louis. Inside the Jefferson Hotel, the men ate breakfast and met with their committees. Outside the hotel, thousands of women quietly took their places along both sides of Locust Street. They stood shoulder to shoulder, each one in a dress that brushed the pavement, shading herself with a yellow parasol and wearing a yellow sash that said Votes for Women."? The all-male delegations may not have had a comfortable walk down the Golden Lane, but they were moved to add women's suffrage to the national platform. Join Margot McMillen for an accessible history of a privilege too often taken for granted."
