Missouri Books

Delicious recipes... appetizers that look perfect for holiday cocktail parties. Main entrees from Christmas Golden Goose to Long Island Duckling to Pork Tenderloin with Easy Plum Sauce. This is a collection from the author's friends and families. It looks like everyone shared their BEST recipes!

This book is a fine study of the Katy's Northwestern District. The extensive rare photographs, many by the author, are a wonderful complement to the well organized text. The detailed coverage of the last days on the District is particularly poignant.

-A superb piece of work from Katy expert Raymond George and Joe Collias, the dean of Missouri railroading. Heavily illustrated history of the M-K-T railroad, featuring locomotives, trains, structures and cabooses. A joy to read for anyone with affection for the Katy Railroad.

The poems in this book are realistic and moving. I was able to relate to many of the life situations and found the book an uplifting experience. If you are looking for real people, real places and truth, this is the book for you.

John Shelton Reed's ability to write with humor and seriousness at the same time never ceases to amaze me. He gets his usually penetrating point across with such concise facility. This book is a just a collection of impressions about the South written from a Southerner's point of view. It's not intended as an academic treatise, but I've read other works by Reed which shows him to be a brilliant academic, so it's nice to know that these aren't just the ramblings of some ill-informed and provincial person. He's seen the world, and frankly prefers the South to any of it. Really, I have to agree with him whole-heartedly in this vein!

This is one of my favorite books. I provided at least 11 images and the format is really nice. Great job Peter!

This is one of the best collections of short stories I have ever read. The settings for the stories is Montana and the inevitable impact of the harsh environment on the people living there. In seven short stories and less than one hundred pages Blew has managed to combine the effects of an unforgiving climate with the turbulent lives of so-real characters that experience conflict, brutality and heart breaking violence. The environmental effect on the characters in the title story "Lambing Out" is stark and readily apparent. However, the impact in "Paths Unto The Dead" and "Monsters" is more subtle and will give the reader pause and, upon reflection, insight into the incredible talent of the author. This blend of human and natural landscape into the written word is powerful and unforgetable. If you ever wondered why anyone would live "out there", try these stories. For anyone interested in first-rate writing about the interrelationship between a regional environment and the people that inhabit it, this is as good as it gets. Don't be surprised if you end up with the impression the characters are real, that somehow Blew is not making these stories up. She is that good. These are powerful, thoughtful, moving stories that come very close to transcending region.

Modern poetry has become more and more obscure and increasingly obtuse. Last Lambs is a refreshing movement away from the didacticism of most recent poetry and offers much insight into the personal experience of participating in the Vietnam War. The "ghosts" of that war will be with us in nightmares for most of history. To have these poems at hand might well remind us that there is no reason to repeat our mistakes. Bill Bauer captures that less than admirable experience and presents far reaching considerations. All those who read "Fragment of a Letter" might take to heart the promise "they'll write when they get home." This book is the keeping of that promise. Readers would be advised to also write after they read this break through poetry. It is historically accurate, personally exact, and well intentioned. "...the man who was robbed of his laughter by the killing searches for it everywhere" leaves us all searching the"barrel" of our historical "throat" and the title to those lines, "Joy", reminds us that complacency might well be the greatest thief to joy. In "Side Glance", Bauer states "I am the bastard boy/of the World Wars " as are the multitude of senior citizens and the two generations after them that occupy the United States. Bauer does not trivialize the price paid for those wars. He does not trivialize the price paid for Vietnam. In "Warning" he explains it to vandals- "Let this wall be./It belongs to them./They paid for it."- and the reader knows that this would be true of any of the war memorials. Bauer in that same poem advises the would be vandals, "Slide your fingers over their names/and tell me you can't hear/the echo of their voices/chanting peace, peace." The poems in this volume allow us to slide our fingers and our minds over the names and the unknown names of those who gave their lives in Vietnam. These poems also allow us to "slide our fingers" over the names of those we know who returned from Vietnam and tried to retreive their former lives. The ghosts of those lives haunt those verterans daily. These poems allow us to look at the ghosts and enable us to identify with them. They allow us to look at the "ghost" that guides us and, in the sense of clear, precise, excellent poetry, provide us with much to contemplate.

I didn't actually buy the book until we were in Nauvoo, so we read it late but it can basically plan your trip for you. It tells you how long you need for things, where to go, what's a "must see", and many other things. I loaned to book to my sister for her trip to Nauvoo, and she also loved it. It also pays for itself with all of the discounts that you get that are inside the book. I loved it!

The author writes in a direct conversational way. It's a page-turner from its opening and you can't put this book down until you finish it and find out how the author's story ends. The author writes of many aspects of pre-war Europe which were largly neglected before. This is a valuable book with mainly new information on the Holocaust.