Missouri Books

Great book on a great American. Our lives are so easy now days. Read this and you can appreciate this!

"Life in the Valley of Death" by Edward R. Ward is an excellent and highly thought provoking book that can be appreciated by NCAA Basketball devotees and also the shrinking minority of social students looking to learn more about race relations, structural racism, and sociological interaction through the deceptively small scope of Missouri Valley Conference basketball in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Ward begins with a brilliantly and thoroughly researched guide through that brief period of college basketball history. He leads the reader through the information with intelligence, sensitivity and subtle humor.

He closes the book with a discussion of the philosophical and sociological implications of the tumultous time of sports history where segregation, contempt for black people and the desire to win was balanced on a political, social, and academic tight rope.

Any reader will find that once one finishes with the body of content, the actual reading is only half way over, as Ward has tightly packed his end notes with additional anecdotal and general facts, findings and reflections that range from Bill Walton's coaching tips to postmodern analysis of diversity within large institutions.

Ward's quality of prose never disappoints and shows that he not only possesses the ability to research, but also the skill of storytelling.

David Masciotra

Excellent book of fiction if you're into unsentimental realism, darkish humor, and existentialism... This guy is brilliant.

The resurgence of interest in daguerreotypes (witness the the recent auction record of $315,000 for one image) has resulted in a host of beautiful books, of which this volume ranks as the best. Delores Kilgo has done a masterful job of presenting the unparalleled collection of the Missouri Historical Society. Nowhere else will you find the work of one photographer so magnificently displayed and critiqued.

Literary St. Louis: A Guide features fifty authors who lived and worked in St. Louis in a guidebook that is ideal for visitors or city residents wanting to explore the diverse literary history of this fascinating region. Enhanced throughout with photographs, maps, illustrations, and colorful anecdotes, the reader is treated to a St. Louis Literary Chronology, commentaries by literary luminaries ranging from Mark Twain to Tennessee Williams, a locations list, bibliography, and a very useful index. If you are planning a trip to St. Louis, Missouri, then William Gass and Lorin Cuoco's Literary St. Louis: A Guide offers a unique, fun and informative approach to sightseeing and historical surveys.

this book is just wonderful. It captures the essence of the dirt under our feet. A perfect spring time read, just as earth begins its awakinin'

Este libro está revolucionado la forma en que evangelizamos en estos tiempos. El autor Ray Comfort describe en forma sencilla y clara la manera Bíblica de evangelizar que es usando la ley para que la gente se de cuenta de que son pecadores ante Dios y que van a enfrentarlo el día del jucio debido a su desobediencia (de los 10 mandamientos.)

El autor describe de una maneria seria la forma moderna de evangelizar donde se habla de un Dios de amor y que le dicen a los pecadores que "Dios tiene un plan perfecto para ellos" o que "Dios odia al pecado pero ama a los pecadores" siendo que en realidad Dios está airado con el pecado Y con los pecadores. Este evangelismo moderno que Ray describe como inadecuado produce "convertidos falsos" dentro de la iglesia. Y la razón de esta falsa conversion en muchos es porque no se han dado cuenta de su pecado por lo cual no valoran el sacrificio de Jesús.

Debido a este evangelismo moderno, es que el autor Ray ha escrito este libro para rescatar la forma bíblica de evangelizar para no mandar estos convertidos falsos al infierno, sino que podamos evangelizar BIEN y crear verdaderos convertidos que no nadamas estén sentados en las bancas de los templos sino que estén con esa passion de rescatar a los perdidos.

En lo personal este libro me ha dado la confianza para hablarle a cualquier persona de Cristo. Mis familiares, amigos, compañeros de trabajo, en fin. El usar la ley de Dios para evangelizar como Ray lo explica en este libro es algo increible. Yo estoy planeando comprar unas 50 copias de este libro para distribiur en mi ciudad natal en México.

Varios de mis familiares inconversos que eran renuentes al evangelio, han empezado a ser sensibles a la palabra de Dios por medio de la forma que este libro explica.

La version en español de este libro está disponible también en http://www.livingwaters.com y se ofrece descuento al compras mas de 10 libros.

London was the major port involved in the early development of the English Transatlantic slave trade, but it is often discounted in favor of Bristol and Liverpool, which overshadowed London in terms of participation as the 18th century wore on. As Rawley points out, the London trade did not actually end in the 1720s, as many have suggested, but persisted until the British abolished their participation in the trade in 1807.

What makes this book important to those who want to know more about how the trade got started and accepted is that it is is the late 17th and early 18th centuries, that you can see the entrepreneurial and ethical development of the trade most clearly. At this point the trade was not the well-oiled machine that it later became and people were able to make choices. Those who chose to participate set the tone and developed the methodology of what was to come.

This excellent book traces the lives of some of London's foremost traders of the period, putting a human face on people we now find hard to understand. It is an extraordinary effort of research that is surprisingly readable, considering the wealth of information and the nature of the subject. James Rawley has spent a life time specializing in this area, and this is an important collection of recent essays.

In LONG ODDS, Gordon Weaver's characters desperately grasp at simple and sometimes absurd ceremonies to find hope in their lives. Kleczka in the title story routinely goes to a once-a-month gambling and drinking party with his high school buddies. While he notes the erosions of their lives and delights in his winnings, he counts his blessings-a house in the suburbs, the second best looking girl from high school as a wife, two good kids, and a good job at a Saturn dealership. But with a mean, cruel remark from one of his buddies, he psychologically unravels his life. In the "The Divorced Men's Mall Walkers Club," Leichtfuss arrives at 6 in the morning to join his clique, the divorced men, for their walk. The social pecking order breaks into groups, and Leichtfuss sees the triteness in the mall and the walkers, but etches just a bit of dignity and hope from it. And Q in "Q: Questing," Q finds relief from his dismal academic slave life in cruising the freeways. Weaver takes the quotidian of our world and lets his characters glimpse the hopelessness in their lives and in our culture. But deep down they have a hard won dignity that keeps us rooting for them because in a way they are us. And as the names of the characters indicate, we get a picture of the old ethnic neighborhoods giving way to corporate middle American. But this collection is not just more dismal modern angst. In his own unique way, Weaver exaggerates the desires of the characters and their worlds are exaggerated just enough so that we can't help but laugh at them and us. Weaver's stories should be far more popular because of their humor and pathos, and aficionados of fiction should take a look at the stories to look at how a master subtly manipulates the tools of the trade: point of view, verb tense, phrasing, colloquialisms, flashbacks, and flashforwards.

An amazing collection of black and white photographs that date from 1899, 15 months before Thomas Wolfe was born, to Wolfe's funeral, 1938. Each photograph includes a caption, and most are dated. The captions helped me identify dates and descriptions for the online photos that I have viewed.

In addition to Thomas Wolfe and his family, the photographs include:
· Exterior and interior views of the Old Kentucky Home, including the porch where Eugene slept during the summer of his first love, the windows to the second-story porch that face the window of the adjacent room where Laura James slept, the bedroom where Eugene and Laura made love.
· Exterior views of Wolfe's residences while at Harvard University and during his stays in New York.
· The Olin Dow's family mansion in Rhinebeck, NY, referred to as Far Field Farm in "Of Time and the River".
· The ledgers purchased for Wolfe by Aline Berstein and dust jackets for the first edition of "Look Homeward, Angel", "Of Time and the River", "From Death to Morning", and "The Story of a Novel".
· Wolfe's first trip west and last trip to Europe, his return to Ashville in 1937, his last months in New York, and last trip to the West in 1938.

The books ends with photos of the last clear picture taken of him; the Firlawns Sanatorium in Kenmore, Washington; Providence Hospital, where Wolfe was a patient from August 6 to September 5, 1938; and the Wolfe family plot at Riverside Cemetery.