Missouri Books

I was captivated by the book as soon as I saw the cover. Having an expectation of what the book was like, I opened it and recieved an unexpected book. What I thought was going to be a historical account of what went on in Pilot Grove since the turn of the century, turned out to be one persons account of how he grew up, and became a man during some of the most troubling times of our country. The very details that he remembered and captured into words concerning some of the littlest things and the biggest things that he did. Such as when he used to by ice cream in the local ice cream parlor, or when he worked on the railroad when he was just fifteen years old. He described how he managed a crew of older men that could well have been his grandfathers with such detail, that I felt like I was right there with him. I felt a sense of aw when he related his motor cycle troubles with the reader. I was in complete attention when he commanded a quad fifty-caliber machine gun in Korea, and especially when he unleashed a halo of fire into a bunker of Chinese, that were trying to take out his entire unit. I felt saddened when he came back to a town that had changed so significantly, by taking out the railroad, the one thing that had meant so much to him, and his father. I think that the raw feelings of this man's story was there, and if somebody else were to read the book they would be in agreement with me. Thank you.

The stereotype of the south has always been one of a people backwards and not up with the times. "Technology, Innovation, and Southern Industrialization: From the Antebellum Era to the Computer Age" seeks to dispel that myth by discussing the south's contributions to America's revolutions in technology as the country entered the twentieth century and brought technology to the forefront of humanity's achievements. With a look at southern inventions so often overlooked as southern, "Technology, Innovation, and Southern Industrialization" is a history book that any southern intellectual can look on with pride for his region.

The textbook I purchased was exactly what I expected! Fast Shipping and easy purchase!

The Temptation of Innocence in the Dramas of Arthur Miller stands as an important contribution to Miller scholarship as well as an appealing text that speaks to all individuals interested in the plays of Miller. In the tradition of Christopher Bigsby and other Miller scholars, Otten explores the Miller canon thoroughly in an historical and comprehensive cataloguing of the plays and an exploration of Miller's personal and political psyche. In the book's seven chapters that analyze Miller's works from his beginnings at the University of Michigan to his later works and Mr. Peters' Connection, Otten elucidates the development of Miller's recurrent themes and characters as consistent yet varied versions of Miller's philosophical and political commentary; while building on those themes often discussed by other scholars, Otten aptly clarifies how the theme of innocence and the clash between incorruptibility and experience emerge consistently in Miller's works.
Beginning with All My Sons, Otten explains how Miller's reaction to the Depression and the war, coupled with his earliest developing moral themes, becomes the groundwork for Miller's continuing preoccupation with the presence of innocence in his plays. Otten compares All My Sons to The Iceman Cometh as a significant moral and social commentary on post-Depression and post-war enigmas. Otten's examination of Death of a Salesman and The Crucible is elucidating in that he carefully constructs from traditional readings of Willy Loman and John Proctor as tragic heroes a vision of them that places them in the center of the conflict between innocence and experience. Through a close reading of The Misfits and After the Fall, Otten underlines Miller's conscious and unconscious connections with Marilyn Monroe in the light of the plays' expostulations about innocence and redemption. Otten continues his investigation of the parameters of innocence, virtue, responsibility, and guilt in chapter five in his examination of Incident at Vichy, The Price, and The Creation of the World and Other Business through an elucidating discussion of the varying personal psychological paradoxes and behavioral patterns that emerge from the characters as they wrestle with issues of innocence, guilt, and the loss of an Edenic construct.
Chapter six explores The Archbishop's Ceiling, The American Clock, and some of the one-act plays of the 1970's and 1980's in which Miller becomes more experimental in his attempt to delineate the projection of the psychoanalytic self into the various dramatic components of the drama; Otten assembles from previous critical assessments of these plays his hypothesis concerning how innocence operates within the structure of the plays as a critique of human behavior with all its inherent dialectical, political, and psychological accouterments. The book's final chapter carefully investigates The Ride Down Mount Morgan, The Last Yankee, Broken Glass, and Mr. Peters' Connections, plays written at the end of the century, as examples of Miller's continuing concerns with familiar issues explored in innovative manners through his development and presentation of characters morally bankrupt or socially misguided who, nevertheless, are able to encounter modes of expression and human interaction that accentuate the role of innocence in their behavior.
Otten's text is a valuable and revealing study with significant scholarly implications that will enhance the perspectives of Miller scholars; the text also will prove
to be beneficial to those who teach Miller in undergraduate and graduate courses as well as to those who are interested in learning more about Miller's canon.

Comments on Clayton E. Jewett's book : "Texas in the Confederacy: An Experiment in Nation Building".
Sometimes hard to read because it is extraordinary well searched and contains a lot of appendixes, Clayton books is the definitive "must" about the role played by Texas in the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department during the American Civil War.
Unquestionably, Clayton Jewett has hit his aim : to prove the separate identity of Texas in the Southern Confederacy. Like a surveyor, his book is as straight as a die with its four well definite chapters : Defining, Establishing, Securing and Implementing the separate identity of Texas.
Serge P. Noirsain, Belgian historian. Author of "La Flotte européenne de la Confédération sudiste" and "La Confédération sudiste, Mythes et Réalités".

A great read. You can find alot of segments from it on Google-Book search, but I suggest buying a copy to get the full sense of what it was like to live in rural MO in the early 20th century.

On a personal note, I'm from Snow's home county - and everyone I've talked to have said he was a bit pompous and long winded. If that scares you away from this book, it shouldn't. This book isn't 'by' Snow - but it references his observations over the course of important events that helped to shape MO into the agrarian economy it is today.

The contents are a little political, a little economic, but all based in a lot of down home common sense. It's excellently compiled, well written, well cited, and a truly interesting read.

A very good, comprehensive overview of Missouri Tiger Football. This book covers all of the highs and lows of the football program in a cronilogical fashion . A must for any true Tiger fan. Go Mizzou!

A lively, descriptive and exciting narrative of Thomas James' adventures up the Missouri River in 1809-1810 and to Sante Fe in the years 1821-1823. His writing abilities are brilliant and the reader will find themself anxiously flipping through the pages to see what happens next. In 1809 James joined the St.Louis Missouri Fur Company and relates the experiences of his crew being mistreated by Manuel Lisa, then joining up with John Colter, along with several other personal accounts of the day to day activities and survival strategies they encountered. He was one of the first to describe and take part in the trade business from St. Louis to Sante Fe and it is absorbing to read of his confrontations with the Comanches and the Spanish during these years. This is a must read for early American West enthusiasts.The book itself may be difficult to find, but it is certainly well worth the effort.

Like many a frontiersman, Thomas James late in life decided to put into book form the tales of his adventures as a younger man in the West. He concentrated on three expeditions he had made: the first in 1809 when he accompanied Manuel Lisa to the headwaters of the Missouri; the second in 1821 when he brought supplies to Santa Fe by keelboat at first, and then overland, via the lower Arkansas and Cimarron Rivers, returning the next year by way of a route approximating the Santa Fe Trail along the Kansas stretch of the Arkansas to present day Wichita, and then overland to the Osage River and down it to the Missouri; and finally in 1823 when he attempted a trading expedition with the Comanches west of Fort Smith across present-day Oklahoma. None of these endeavors proved successful, and they landed James in debt for most of his life. They were high in adventure, however, which is related marvelously in this book.

James had limited formal education, and apparently these memoirs were dictated to Nathaniel Niles, an attorney in Belleville, Illinois. James was pretty straightforward in his criticisms in the book (he blames the "unprincipled" Lisa and the Missouri Fur Company for not getting paid for the 1809 expedition and doesn't hide his dislike toward the missionaries he'd encountered), and the book was suppressed after it was first published (the fact that the publisher tried to gather up all the published copies and then destroy them made the book extremely scarce). But James's account of his travails - the harsh weather (once he and his companions awoke with three feet of freshly fallen snow on top of them), the swollen streams, the scarcity of game, the unpredictability of the Indians, the sheer size and wildness of the country itself - are all captured magnificently. He also had his prejudices ("the Spaniards were all liars, but the Americans never lie"), but the Indians receive respect if not outright admiration from him, even after the Comanches rob him of $12,000 worth of goods. As an early portrait of life on the plains, the book is highly valuable and creditable.

It's a pity more readers haven't read Peter Schneeman's collection of short stories. But it's a complete tragedy that he hasn't followed up with more!

As a Penn State English Lit. student some years ago, I had the pleasure of studying under Mr. Schneeman. Not only is he a terrific writer, but he's also an inspiring and excellent lecturer.

While this collection and I have both aged a bit, it is still just as fresh as the first time I read it. Very thoughtful, surprising, and absorbing. It stil holds an honored spot on my overstuffed bookshelves.

I don't know if Mr. Schneeman is still teaching, but I hope other PSU students have the chance to read a great book by a wonderful writer.

P.S. He handed out copies of the book to our entire class -- gratis! The only thing better than a good book, is a FREE good book. :)