Missouri Books

Assistant Curator at the St. Louis Art Museum Robin Lobianco meets gorgeous Vince and Amy Wheaton at a museum event. The trio hit it off and start to socialize, which is good for the curator who is separated from her husband Frank. Following one particular event, a somewhat intoxicated Robin joins the Wheatons in a ménage a trios.

What she did mortifies Robin, who wants to move on and forget the sexual encounter. They ask Robin to move in with them as they love her, but she is horrified by the suggestion and rejects it. They begin harassing her through greeting cards until Robin turns to the police for help. Detective Jack Jones, on clerical duty with the death of his third partner in the last two years is assigned to help Robin because the mayor declared the museum a key part of the city. As the Wheatons' campaign of terror increases, only Jack stands between them and their destruction of Robin, who, they insist, they love.

Fans of taut suspense chillers will be unable to refuse to read THE OFFER. The story line works because the key players seem human. The Wheatons are a Fatal Attraction duet whose obsession seems frighteningly real. Robin is a powerful victim filled with remorse while Jack is a cop struggling with being a death magnet that only his wife the stripper helps his esteem. Robert J. Randisi turns up the tension leaving the audience to think twice about whom they accompany home.

Harriet Klausner

Since I am not really old enough to remember the '85 season this book provides provides an opportunity to learn more about that year. It is a fascinating read for any baseball fan, but especially Cards fans.

Floating On The Missouri: 100 Years After Lewis & Clark is an engaging and informative historical travelogue of James Willard Schultz and his Blackfeet wife Natahki (Fine Shield Woman) who took a small boat along the route that the historic explorers Lewis & Clark once forged through uncharted territory a century after two of America's most famous explorers. A very highly recommended compendium of anecdotes, reminiscences, history, and much, much more fill the pages of this involving and absorbing narrative.

Flora of the Venezuelan Guayana, Volume 1

This volume commences publication of a multivolume flora that is the first full scientific account of the plants of a botanically rich and geologically ancient part of northern South America, the Venezuelan Guayana. This area is dominated by massive table mountains, tepuis, that tower over surrounding rain forest and savannas and provide a wealth of habitats for nearly 10,000 species of vascular plants.

Volume 1 is a general introduction to the southeastern half of Venezuela that encompasses the flora area, with chapters on geography, history of botanical exploration, vegetation types, endemism, and conservation. Keys to the families of seed plants are also provided. Volume 2 begins the alphabetical sequence of family treatments, first within the ferns and their allies, then followed by the initial 11 families of seed plants. Keys, descriptions, and illustrations of more than half the species treated - a feature rarely found in floras of even more familiar areas - make this work an enduring reference that will be useful far beyond the borders of the region now carefully documented. Nine volumes are anticipated for publication of the complete flora.

More than 180 botanists from around the world have collaborated on this project, which is based at the Missouri Botanical Garden.

MAPS ACCOMPANYING The "Flora of the Venezuelan Guayana" - Topographical Map of the Venezuelan Guayana, - Vegetation Map of the Venezuelan Guayana

During the Great Depression, Stu Paine signed on as a dogsled driver for Admiral Byrd in his attempt to reach the South Pole. It was Paine and his companions who set the record for the "farthest South" any American had yet gone. Now his daughter has edited his diaries for publication, with lots of contemporary photos. The result is a book that is raw and real. Paine's diaries have given me more of a picture of Antarctica than a dozen books I've read about that vast, cold land.

For example, he wrote on August 14, 1934: "Nature, strong + big, has let human ambitions contaminate her realm only at great cost. But it is only for a while -- We will return. Other expeditions will come + go, hanging like flies on an edge of a dish, to the edge of Antarctica, here to-day, gone tomorrow. And all the while the blizzards come, the temperature sinks to the seventies +eighties [below zero F], the seals + penguins + gulls come +go, the overwhelming forces of the ice pressing down from the plateau will go on, tremendous, grand + awful. How few see it -- what a pity, a land of inspiration and to most people a land of monotony + terror. As in no other place, peace holds sway, the peace of God perhaps --"

A great book for Arctic and Antarctic fans and also for those who love reading diaries to get a glimpse of the person who wrote them.

One of the most complete listings of the men who fought the war for Missouri. Fishery Report. Excellent source for finding your Confederate ancestor from Missouri.

Research historian Jerome A. Greene presents Fort Randall on the Missouri, 1856-1892, an in-depth study of the military post of Fort Randall: its establishment, the day-to-day life of its troops and their support of military expeditions against American Indians, routine patrols of Dakota and Nebraska territory, exploration and mapping missions among the Black Hills, and more. Black-and-white photographs and illustrations, including all twenty-four of the original stereopticon photographs of Sitting Bull's incarceration at Fort Randall, illustrate this heavily researched and meticulously accurate chronicle. A welcome addition to American and Missouri state history shelves.

Written by former Truman State University director of the graduate program in music David C. Nichols, Founding the Future: A History of Truman State University is an eye-opening chronicle of the proud history of Truman State from its visionary founding over a hundred years ago to modern changes and transformations, such as the introduction of value-added assessment and student reactions. Founding the Future also looks beyond Truman State's rich history toward its future legacy, from study abroad to the development of liberal education outside the classroom. Black-and-white photographs, notes, and appendices round out this glowing tribute to the evolution of an American font of higher learning.

I have been an admirer of Gordon Weaver's short stories since I read "Getting Serious" (winner of the Best American Short Story in 1980 and included in this collection) twenty years ago. I won't say that it is the "best" short story I ever read - but I will say that it is one of the few that I have come back to again and again because of the way it speaks to me about life, loss and memory - the way each of us "fictionalizes" our past to make sense of it and how the dreams and aspirations of our youth collide with the realities of middle age. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to meet with Mr. Weaver in 1992 in Stillwater, OK before he retired from his english professorship and tell him how important his work had been. Highly recommended.

Deftly edited for modern publication by William L. Andrews (E. Maynard Adams Professor of English, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill), From Fugitive Slave To Free Man is a compilation of the two autobiographical works "Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself" and "My Southern Home" by William Wells Brown, who born in 1814 to a slave mother and a white father. Brown's varied life, and his perspective of slavery from all sides, make for a uniquely insightful and powerful historical narrative that has weathered the test of time. A welcome and valued contribution to American History, From Fugitive Slave To Free Man is a welcome addition to any academic or community library Black Studies collection.