Missouri Books

For anyone interested in the background, impact, and future of the Pick-Sloan Plan, you need look no further than Lawson's aptly titled "Dammed Indians". The tribes from Gavins Point Dam near Yankton, SD to Ft. Peck Dam in Montana have all been adversely affected with the damming of the Missouri River, a truth which Lawson documents with precision and skill. Originally a Ph.D. dissertation written in the history department at the University of New Mexico, Lawson is a fine example of some of the many outstanding American West historians who have come out of that institution.

I purchased this book for my son for a book report and decided to read it myself. It's a wonderful book for all readers and we're looking forward to purchasing the set.

"Day Trips" is filled with enough historical material to keep a neophyte historian busy for a year. Many of the entries are tidbits of the past oft forgotten or never stored in the mental database. The book makes planning each trip an adventure and will help to fill up the weekends with local travel.

I had this set of books minus and was pleased to find the missing one. Service was great.

This book is great for the Missouri traveler on a budget, or for homeschooling parents looking to add adventure to the school day.
Some of these would make great two or thre day weekends. The best book I have found for Missouri.

Professor Lukacs might best be called a historic conservative rather than an ideological one. This collection of essays and articles reflects the mindset of a gentleman who wishes to conserve what is best from history. He has a few novel theories. Nationalism, not ideologies like Nazism, Communism and Fascism, has been the root cause for most of this century's struggles. One can disagree with Prof. Lukacs but one must respect his view. He hints in some fifteen year old essays that Europe would de-Americanize; as the age of the Euro nears, Prof. Lukacs was prescient. His theory on mountains and romanticism is fascinating. Before the English initiated Romanticism in the early 1800s, mountains were considered horrible. Today, Prof. Lukacs says we love mountains and their beauty; we are all romantics now. My favorite vignette was Prof. Lukacs's touring of Hitler's birthplace of Braunau on the 100th anniversary of Hitler's birth. The good professor made a side-trip from Braunau to a small Austrian village where a heroic peasant by the name, I believe, of Jagrstatter stood up to the Nazis and refused to be drafted. He was guillotined in 1943. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK.

Biographies of 700+ individuals who have contributed significantly to the development of the state of Missouri with many achieving national fame as well. The book draws from all fields of activities--politics, business, science, religion, art, etc. without regard to race, gender, etc. Although the book seems a little pricy at first glance, I wasn't disappointed--the thoroughness and quality makes it well worth the price.

I am extremely impressed with Taylor's book, which explores the real and imagined consequences of the Civil War on families in border states, where the question of secession was the most complicated and the most fraught. This book not only documents (in writing that rises to the level of great literary writing -- a rarity in young historians) the actual occurrence of split families and what they had to say for themselves, but also the psychological, moral, and political implications of families at odds with each other. That is, this book gets beyond the idea of "the brother's war" as merely a curiosity or a sentimental metaphor, and shows how the state of the society -- the relations between men and women, white and black -- itself is revealed in the experience of these families, observed in extremis.

The writing, again, is extraordinary. Fans of Doris Kearn Goodwin or David McCullough will love this book, and will be pleased to know that Taylor is of the new generation of historians and likely to be around and writing for a very long time.

This was a fun and nostalgic read. Although Vance is "just a little" older than I am I sure experienced some "blast from the past" type feelings as I read the book. Vance has a real way with words, descriptive and informative. It was a little sad to remember how it was growing up in the 40s and 50s and knowing it will never be as innocent as it was then, whether you lived in a big city, small town or a "really small" town such as he did. Basketball was king in much of the Midwest and social events were pretty tame. And most of us had similar relationships with our parents . . . they were the adults and we were the kids and never the twain met yet there was enormous unspoken love that crafted us into who we are.

This is a big book, running to 484 pages, including the index. This volume, together with Volume 32, is where the editors put materials that don't fit anywhere else. Some of the things included here:

1. CONVERSATIONS WITH ERIC VOEGELIN, from 1967, 1970, and 1975
at the Thomas More Institute in Montreal. It has been
circulating all these years in photocopy or photo offset
versions. It contains some of Voegelin's choicest comments, such
as his remarks on teaching evolution in the schools:

"You get some funny situations. In California now there is a
fight between literalists or providentialists, and biological
theorists. And you get in the textbooks both Genesis and
Darwinian evolutionism as two "theories" of evolution. You see
what that really means? The fundamentalist theologians in
California (fundamentalism was well established there at the
beginning of the century) don't know what a myth is. They
believe it is a theory. They're in ignorance.

"And the biological theorists don't know that Kant has analysed
why one cannot have an immanentist theory of evolution. One can
have empirical observation but no general theory of evolution
because the sequence of forms is a mystery; it just is there and
you cannot explain it by any theory. The world cannot be
explained. It is a mythical problem, so you have a strong
element of myth in the theory of evolution.

"So both the theoretical evolutionists and the fundamentalist
theologians are illiterate. That level of illiteracy is taught
in the text books as "two theories"-neither one of which is a
theory. "
Myth as Environment p 307, 335

The publication of these three conversations was something of an
afterthought. There were four conversations originally and
the first was published in Volume 11 of the CW as "In
Search of the Ground." One can hope that all four conversations
will be reunited in a paperback version in the not-too-distant
future-perhaps with some other informal exchanges.

2. Then there is the question and answer period from the Boston
College conference from 1983 entitled THE BEGINNING AND THE
BEYOND, chaired by Frederick Lawrence. It is here that Voegelin
makes his comment on the Eucharist:

"Parousia means presence, and you remember this presence by
speaking it out: Where the name of Christ is pronounced, there he
is present. But you have to be reminded you are in Christ, and
pronounce it right. It is quite possible that the formulation of
the Eucharist as 'in my remembrance' (which is anamnesis) of
which Paul speaks always evokes the double-meaning of the
remembering of recollection and of remembering in the sense of
establishing what the reality is to be."

Responses at the Panel Discussion of
"The Beginning of the Beginning", p 415, 427.

3. There there are the exchanges between Voegelin and "father of
the atom bomb" J. Robert Oppenheimer at the 1959 Swiss conference
directed by Raymond Aron, "Colloques de Rheinfelden." Also
present: Michael Polanyi and Bertrand de Jounvenel. The chapter
is entitled "The West and the Meaning of Industrial Society:
Excerpts from the Discussion." What is not clear from these
excerpts is that it is pretty much Voegelin "contra mundum" 'though
Aron leans heavily his way. The paper Voegelin delivered at the
conference is found in Vol 11 CW under the title "Industrial
Society in Search of Reason."

4. The transcript of Voegelin's lecture, "Structures of
Consciousness," from the 1978 York University conference is
included. The lecture was videotaped and some have seen it in
this form.

5. In "Natural Law in Political Theory" (1963) we have exchanges
between Voegelin and his Doctor-Father Hans Kelsen. To
put it plainly, they disagree more than once.

6. In "Man in Political Institutions" we have Voegelin and a
distinguished group of colleagues exchanging views, including Alois Dempf and Jürgen Gebhardt.

7. For the literary-minded there are Voegelin's notes on T.S.
Eliot's "Four Quartets."

8. The book concludes with the much-admired "Autobiographical
Statement at Age Eighty-two."

And there is more, but you will have to read the book. It is
one of the most inviting of the the Voegelin volumes. A genuine
delight.

I have put up on the web the table of contents:
http://www.fritzwagner.com/ev/cw/cw_33_contents.html

And the index, beautifully done as always by Linda Webster:
http://www.fritzwagner.com/ev/eric_voegelin_volume_index_list.html#33