Missouri Books

Wheel Boats On The Missouri: The Journals And Documents Of The Atkinson-O'fallon Expedition 1824-1826 is an archival reference showcasing a specialized slice of early American frontier history - as reflected by the original words of the wheel boat men who were directed by President James Monroe to negotiate peace treaties with Native American tribes along the Missouri River. The resulting use of 475 infantry soldiers, "gunboat diplomacy," and man-powered wheel boats across a 3,000 mile expedition is meticulously detailed among numerous primary references. Journals dealing with daily life, navigation difficulties, American Indian cultures and political negotiations provide an amazing glimpse into army life in an America of almost two centuries past. Wheel Boats On The Missouri is an impressive work of scholarship and a strongly recommended addition to academic and community library American history reading lists and reference collections.

Trolley buffs and Missouri history folks alike will LOVE this book. Lavishly illustrated with excellent production values, this volume is sure to please. I highly recomend it!

The group of us that are using this study have been meeting now for 4 years and have done several different types of studies. This by far has been the best. We are a group that varies in age from 42 to 80 and we all love it!
I highly recommend this study to anyone.

This book is an interesting collection of little-known facts about towns in Missouri. A must have for any Missouri enthusiast!

This book is extremely interesting. The pictures and graphs truly enhance the manuscripts readibility. It is a great read, especially for anyone who is familiar with the upper south or has a true love for the natrual world. Two thumbs up!

This is the standard book on the lead and zinc mines of the TriState area, meaning the area where Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma come together. Gibson was a professor at the University of Oklahoma and was originally from the area. I suspect this was his doctoral dissertation, based on the date. It is based both on documents, such as mining reports, and interviews he conducted with miners about 1950.

It has all the factual information about the mines you could ever want. It is so thorough that no one has ever felt the need to go back and redo the overall story of the mines, though there are books about other aspects of the mines, such as the strike of 1935 or the miner's health. Dr. Gibson died about twenty years ago.

When this book was written the mines were still operating, though starting to wind down. Today the U.S. government is still spending millions to clean up this area from the heavy metals left by the milling and smelting process, and the threat to the water left by the underground mining.

Gibson's sympathies are clearly with the miners and the Quapaw Indians whose land the mines are on, but he also viewed the mines as the inevitable progress of the business system in the United States and had great admiration for the skill, strength, and courage of the miners and mining engineers.

I have read several of Dr. Gibson's other books as well, and he writes very well, but readers should be aware that he is not that interested in amusing stories about the miner and the mule and such, or really in individual stories. He is more interested in systems and institutions, so if you want a book of funny stories about miners getting drunk and falling into mines, this is not the book for you.

This book will leave you in awe of how hard people worked to make a basic living as recently as the 1950s.

This novel about an early midwestern American family is a facinating look at life in the 19th century. The author gives the characters such interesting lives that the reader keeps turning the pages to see what happens next. I will definitely look for more books by Wilma Lewis

William Adair Bernoudy, Architect will hold special significance for the residents of St. Louis as well as for any following the architectural legacy of Frank Lloyd Wright: it provides almost 300 color photos and almost thirty floor plans exploring the work of William Bernoudy, a leading advocate of Wright's style. An outstanding collection of examples.

William Clark, one half of the famous Lewis and Clark duo who crossed the continent to the Pacific, became one of the most important figures in antebellum America as an Indian agent, Missouri Territorial Governor, and Superintendent of Indian Affairs. His life provides a prism into the racial tensions prevalent in his day. More importantly, he is the central figure in Indian-white relations for nearly three decades and signed more treaties with Indian nations than any other American.

Frank Mayer's book not only gives us a written enthnographic view of the frontier life but also a "photographic" view of life on the frontier in North America. His book is a fingerprint in time for a place that will never be seen again.