University of Missouri Books

I have quite a collection of regional geologies. This volume is, by far, the best organized and complete one I've seen. If you have any interest in the geology of Missouri or the mid-continent area, I'd strongly recommend it.

I've always been interested in geology but never educated in it. I hung with geology types in the caving club at the University of Missouri-Rolla but was never able to understand the significance when they'd remark on the Roubidoux sandstone or Gasconade Dolomite. I have an old copy of Vinyard's "Geologic Wonders and Curiosities of Missouri" and was always teased by his mention of those and many other formations throughout that book.

He and Unklesbay makes up for it in this book! All the rocks in Missouri, from bottom to top, are given their due -- what they are and how they got here, and what they're good for. And without having to try too hard, I even managed to memorize all the basic geologic ages, eras, and epochs that had always muddled me.

This book shows its age in some ways, though I'm not qualified to judge how badly. I have read about interesting research into the Weaubleau and Crooked Creek structures identifying them as potential meteor strikes, e.g., whereas this book identifies them as explosive in orgin. In fairness, some of that research is very new, if I recall correctly.

The section about economically important geologic resources is all about numbers and recoverability without any thought given to the ecologic and cultural damage widespread mining can cause. But in fairness, that's not the aim or purpose of this book, and neither are those concerns overtly slighted. Keep in mind the age of this book, too, when reading about Missouri mining industries. The lead belt still produces, but the Pea Ridge iron mine has been shuttered, or so says my Internet research.

Okay, now that I've shown balance by pointing out some shortcomings, I can now highly recommend that you read this book if you're curious but uninformed about the mid-continent region geology. It is exactly the book I was looking for.

Phillips obviously researched his topic thoroughly and has great insight into Jackson and the reasons Missouri found its identity with the southern states.
Phillips weaves his story masterfully. Well done.

Driving in Jefferson City, Missouri a few years ago, I saw a man selling Confederate flags by the side of the road. In the St. Louis area, where I live, this man would probably have been beaten to within an inch of his life, but to most Missourians, St. Louis might as well be New York City. In out-state Missouri, publicly displaying a Confederate flag does not seem to be an unofficial felony.

Why? Why did a state which began life and perceived itself as Western become the most Confederate state in America(as some of us like to point out, WE didn't surrender until 1882, when Frank James turned himself in after Jesse's murder)? In this biography of Claiborne Jackson, the Missouri governor who tried to take his state out of the Union, Christopher Phillips argues that Missouri's transformation from Western to Southern basically boiled down to the protection of slavery. Central Missourians, the people around whom this book mostly revolves, did not see owning slaves as contrary to democracy but central to it. Their families had owned slaves since emigrating to the West from Kentucky or Virginia. Threats, or perceived threats, to slavery finally drove segments of Missouri's leadership to a full-fledged Southern identity and led to Missouri's exceptionally violent civil war, which in turn fueled Missouri's fierce postwar attachment to the Confederate States.

This is both a good biography of Jackson and a good study of antebellum Missouri. But I do have a few problems with it. Phillips spends the bulk of his time in the Boon's Lick(now called Little Dixie another result of the war)among the slaveholding aristocracy there. Natural, one assumes, because that's where Jackson was from, but the rest of the state is neglected. St. Louis is paid attention to, but other areas of the state, like the fiercely Unionist regions of the Ozarks, are barely mentioned. And once the war starts, Phillips seems in a hurry to wrap things up; I wish he'd spent more time on the war itself.

Nonetheless, if you're interested in antebellum American history, this book is well worth your time.

Epiphanies come hard. In Ruth Hamel's new book of 14 short stories, the reader meets a gaggle of neurotic thirty-and-forty-somethings who live in tight little mental cages, yet who are all yearning to break free. Few, however, are willing to give up the security of not knowing. In other words, they are ordinary people.
In the hands of a concept sculptor like Hamel, the stories engender pleasure through pain. "Kinded," for example, features two fortyish brothers who despise each other, competing even about their mutual inadequacies, negative memories, and social incompetencies. They reach an impasse on kvetching ghrough a stranger's act of kindess which results in the possibility, the mere possibility, of hope for a better future.
The narrator in the book's title story tells lies, ostensibly to soothe the hurts truth would bring. She is a furnitue refinisher who uses creative destruction to improve damaged goods. But her congenital "tact" is only a way of avoiding pain and, in the end, seems self-delusional. "Seems" is the operative verb for this author's work. Ambiguity is all.
Her stories are set in faceless high-rises, bedraggled factory towns, mildewed basements. They are filled with loathsome lovers, ex-drum majorettes, cast-off wives, nerds and George Costanzas. Hamel's world may even contain the sad truth, as one of the characters says, that life is content to let us pass unnoticed.
The epiphanies may be ambiguous. The pleasure of "My Favorite Lies" is not.

Sy Barasch

Ann Beattie, watch out: you've got some serious competition. With razor-sharp wit and not a word wasted, Ruth Hamel deftly captures the quirks of ordinary people and in so doing makes them extraordinary--and fascinating. The prose in "My Favorite Lies" is so deliciously, audaciously precise that it makes you want to shout, leap up, and find someone to read these stories to. A friend who admires Hamel's talent as much as I do said that after reading "My Favorite Lies," he found himself viewing the world through her lens. Succeeding in getting us to see in a new and different way: isn't that the definition of art? I'm eagerly awaiting more from this seriously gifted writer, and am shocked that a major publishing house hasn't yet grabbed her. Maybe they have by now--I hope so.

A delightful collection of short stories in letter form; an anthology that makes sense, not an anthology that recycles old material. Gail Goodwin's letter story is particularly good.

This book is wonderful fun. The stories use the letter form in as astonishing variety of ways. Usually I read anthologies by dipping into them from time to time, but this one I read straight through for the incremental pleasure of discovering yet another ingenious manipulation of the form. Pool's brief introductory notes to each story are perfect, giving just enough to whet the appetite without giving anything away. A GREAT Christmas gift for any reader.

I really loved this book. It's not just "short stories" but a carefully crafted work that interweaves the lives of the characters throughout. At the end, another complete story has revealed itself. A very cleaver and difficult thing to accomplish. What I really liked is that the stories didn't get showy and exaggerated. It left me feeling like these were real people that had interesting lives that were worth hearing about. Van Winckel's other books are a treat as well.

This collection of short stories, connected by common threads of gypsys, quakes and troubled lives, was one of the most enjoyable books I've read yet. I practically read it cover to cover in a single sitting, it is that enthralling. If I have a complaint, it would be that it ended too soon, before I was ready to put it down. I recommend this book to everyone.

for those nay sayers, here is yet another text that reveals how "color lines" still exist, and more than likely always wil. read and follow his footsteps for those who are not african american and want to see it again, hear it again, and feel it again...racism and discrimination against africans and african americans here in the U.S. in 2001.

If you need to know.. this will let you.. if you need to read about it ... this will tell you.. pick it up read it and pass it on.

I put this book up and down over several months - and that was mostly an effect of the power of certain segments of the book.

The stories move through overlapping lives - and relationships. Universally overcoming their own obstacles - molestation, racismn, sexuality, living and dying... realizing one is aging. Strong and weak - the characters feed off of each other and show a need for one another even at their stubbornest moments.

Nina is the main character - but I aim to tell you - so that you give him your undivided attention - the real story is her little dog (who seems to have no name).

The book is strongest in the final two chapters - Chapters from A Dog's Life and Block Party. I smiled hard and cried harder through the final movements between Nina and her dog.

We are all witnesses to their ceremony...

Kelly Cherry's collection of short stories is an outstanding example of refined English language prose as well as a philosophical exploration into the meaning or meaninglessness of human existence. However, inspite of these grand subjects, Ms. Cherry often choses the most humble of subjects and the smallest events to story the plight of her sometimes hapless, often kind, characters as they forage for love and understanding in the Wisconsin college town neighborhood where these stories take place. There is heartbreaking irony and tenderness in these stories. Ms. Cherry deftly written sentences sweep the reader toward the edge of consciousness itself, and indeed we stare over the edge and into the abyss more than once, and then we are swept back again with great waves of emotion to the everyday existence we cling to. There is great humor in these stories as well as an undertone of darkness in every sentence. Only a poet of Ms. Cherry's brilliance could render such a remarkable display without calling attention to the language itself. These are stories, not merely for the student of literature but for the student of life. Above everything else there is a great reverence for human beings and their spiritual quest in a world that harbors few places of refuge for the vulnerable.

I bought this book because I came across a poem of Mitcham's a few years back which has become one of my favorite poems, "The Foolishness of God Is Wiser than Men." Though this particular poem is not included in this collection there are a number a very good poems here.

Many of these poems, including the best of them, deal with death and the relationships between parents and children. "Notes for a Prayer in June" describes a fatal car accident and how the author fears his son's judgement of him. "The Touch" describes a mother teaching her son how to dribble a basketball using it as a metaphor for how she "taught me what a softer touch could do,/how to go where I needed to, never looking down." "Home" has a beautiful stanza about a father playing a game with his children while "About Women" has a father trying to explain women to his son but realizing there are things he should never tell. "Last Words" and "Sunday" are both very powerful poems about a son losing a father.

There are other powerful poems here as well: "Epistles," which reworks the stories of the biblical figures Solomon, Salome and Jesus. And the poem sequence "Somewhere in Ecclesiastes" also has some powerful images though it, too, never strays far from the theme of death--the death of children and "unexplained death."

Some people find poetry of death & family too heavy. If you like this kind of poetry, however, as I do, you will likely find some poetry worth reading here. I have yet to come across a book of poetry that is uniformly powerful on every page but Mr. Mitcham does a very good job here.

This is one of the best books of poetry I have ever read. The way Judson Mitcham used his words and imagery packs a powerful emotional punch. Anytime you can feel the beauty or sadness of a poem in your gut, that physical feeling of being moved, you know you have found a good poet. Anyone who considers themselves an ardent fan of poetry must read this book to see what poetry is all about.

This superb book tells the story of an amazing man. His interesting life coupled with the author's determination to reveal his true story create a captivating read. I truly recommend this book; by reading it you will learn more about an important man in America's history; Stuart Symington.

This is the first full-length biography of Stuart Symington (1901-1988), Democrat from Missouri and one of the most significant political leaders of the middle part of the twentieth century. It is much anticipated, for the author has been at work on it for many years, but it is worth the wait. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, Symington was educated at Yale University. In the 1920s and 1930s he worked as an executive for several radio and steel companies. He moved to St. Louis, Missouri in 1938 and became president of the Emerson Electric Manufacturing Co.

This was prelude to a career after 1945 in politics. Symington began working with the war demobilization effort at the conclusion of World War II, and in 1946-1947 was Assistant Secretary of War for Air. When the Department of Defense was established in 1947, he became the first Secretary of the Air Force, 1947-1950. In that context he established the newly independent Department of the Air Force as a co-equal with the Army and Navy and led the defense establishment into the cold war era. He served in several other public positions until resigning in 1952 to run for the Senate from Missouri. He served four terms as Missouri's senator, choosing to retire in 1976. Throughout his senatorial career Symington was a knowledgeable leader in international and defense affairs, as well as an able counselor to several Democratic presidents. He also ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic Party nomination for the Presidency in 1960.

James Olson's biography covers fully the broad career of Stuart Symington and ably pinpoints his skill as both a politician and an administrator. It is a valuable starting point for any study of his life and career. It should probably be read in conjunction with "Cold War Strategist: Stuart Symington and the Search for National Security" (Praeger, 2001), by Linda McFarland and George M Watson's "The Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, 1947-1965" (Office of Air Force History, 1993), both of which offer detailed assessments of Symington's role in the development of air power.

Allen Chapel AME Church in Kansas City, Missouri is prominently mentioned numerous times throughout the book. As a member of Allen Chapel, The Mother Church in Kansas City, Missouri; I was please to know how many aristocrats were past members. Good book for historical purposes.

Ms. Jo Lee Brooks

This is a valuable contribution to the field of African-American urban studies. Coulter tells the forgotten stories of a vibrant black community that develooped around downtown Kansas City in the early twentieth century. He tells the stories of men and women, professionals and laborers, young and old. This work will stand as a benchmark for the study of black communities in the mid-west.