University of Missouri Books

I read this book because I'm interested in labor history. It was not what I expected--I think the title is a little deceiving. The book really is a work of political, or really intellectual, history. Coker's treatment of these intellectuals--Lens, Lipset, Mills, and Gutman--each read as stand-alone pieces. Each is an easy read and makes different points about the left. His criticism of Herbert Gutman is, I think, a little unfair, but also is the most interesting. The main point is that the intellectuals never really knew how to deal with the labor movement--I agree. If you are interested in political history or labor, this is worth a look.

Befroe the time of tabiod news, there was a man who felt that journalism should be taught in college so that the people who entered the field knew what they were doing. From that beginning at the University of Missouri, many other colleges have gone on to teach journalism. But it took the work of one man who believed that journalism was a respeceted profession to make the rest of the world to believe that too. A fascinating read about Walter Williams and how the School of Journalism came to be at one university and changed the way journalist were thought of.

Asada is a Japanese scholar who received his college eduction in the US shortly after WWII. He reports that he was "Americanized;" however, he eventually returned to Japan to a university position where he remains today. The content of the book is somewhat limited compared to what its title might be taken to imply. Nevertheless, there is considerable, and interesting, discussion to the mind-set, both Japanese and American, that led the two countries into the conflict of WWII. Well worth reading by somebody interested in this subject matter.

While the text provides useful information about the fall of Germany, the text could be put together in a more clear and consice way.

W.E.B Du Bois (1868-1963) was one of the leading and most controversial African-American leaders of the 20th Century. He received a PhD from Harvard and wrote in 1903 a short book, "The Souls of Black Folk", which remains an American classic. He wrote several scholarly works on African-American history which are still valuable. He helped found the NAACP and for many years edited its magazine, The Crisis, which worked agressively and tirelessly for civil and political rights for African-Americans. Near the end of his long life, Du Bois became embittered with the United States. He became a communist,, renounced his American citizenship, and died in Ghana in 1963 at the age of 95.

In his informative and clearly-written history, Professor Wolters discusses the nature of Du Bois's accomplishment by discussing his relationships, his agreements and disagreements, with other African-American leaders of his day. The book is an important study of the history of black America (indeed of all America) and it sets out the many and varied approaches African-American leaders have used to bring justice to their people. Not surprisingly, it shows areas of agreement but also areas of strong disagreement and in-fighting.

Professor Wolters contrasts Du Bois, with his emphasis on academic education and on agressive support of civil rights, with that of Du Bois's predecessor and rival, Booker T. Washington. He also stresses the large areas of agreement between the two men. Similarly, Wolters discusses Du Bois's reactions to Marcus Garvey, a black leader in the 1920's with broad mass appeal who tried to get American blacks to unite and establish a homeland in Africa. He points out that late in his career Du Bois came close to Garvey's position in many ways, involving African-American self-help from the bottom-up rather than from the top-down. Wolters then describes Du Bois's break with the NAACP and its leader Walter White. The break was occasioned by the NAACP's commitment to integration. Du Bois had moved away from this approach arguing instead that black Americans ought to work among themselves and within their community to achieve economic, political and social justice. Wolters gives a relatively brief treatment to Du Bois's final years.

Wolters finds that a philosophy of pluralism governed Du Bois's efforts throughout his long career. Under his concept of pluralism, black Americans had two identities: an American identity and a black identity. He urged that blacks live in both worlds -- in other words, he urged African-Americans to share in the values of the American experience while creating their own uniquely black contribution to America and to civilization. Early in his career, Du Bois expressed his pluralistic vision as follows (Wolters, p.38):

"One ever feels his two-ness,-an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn assunder. The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife."

In his commitment to pluralism, Du Bois opposed the earlier 19th Century African-American leader, Frederick Douglass, who was assimilationist in his thinking (there should be no differences between Americans of different colors) as well as, to a degree, later-day integrationists, such as the NAACP and Dr. King. He came closer to the views of Garvey and to the views of Garvey's more modern successors. Du Bois became more militant in his beliefs as he aged.

There is a long disagreement between assimilationist and pluralist visions of America in many areas besides African-American history. The tension between the two visions is still with us today as we try to understand and shape our country. The assimilationist vision is that of a melting pot. Pluralists speak in terms of instruments in a symphony orchestra, each with its own voice yet contributing to a whole.

Wolters book does not describe in great detail the broader issues between assimilationism and pluralism. He gives an excellent carefully-crafted account of how this question affected African-Americans in their quest for justice. In expressing his own opinions in the book, Wolters is careful to point out areas of alternative interpretations among scholars. The reader thus may form his or her own opinions.

This book is a fine study of the life and ideas of a man who, as Wolters observes, is one of the leading figures of the 20th Century.

Eringa's warm Christian personality is revealed through his letters and brief autobiography. I am happy to have the original letters on which much of the book is based; they were given me by the man in Holland who found them in his attic. Eringa's faith was passed on to his children and grand-children, one of whom I am.

Having lived in Virginia, Tennessee, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Oklahoma, I can honestly say that Missouri has one of the best and strongest State Park Systems in the US. In fact, Missouri is a hidden gem in a nation of vacation goers who flock lemming like to Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the Smokies.

Missouri is centrally located and has an outstanding highway system that gets you to all corners and to the most remote of its state parks.

This book provides a great source of photographs and text, which are enough to tease you for a visit to parks as diverse as Ha-Ha-Tonka, Washington State Park, Taum Sauk Mountain, and Babler to mention only a scant few.

Don't expect this tome to go into great detail about each of the parks. It doesn't, but the book's purpose is to relate how Missouri's State Park system evolved and then to showcase each one of them. And the book is remarkably succesful in achieving this goal. Perhaps the books most glaring shortcoming is the lack of maps, but this is a coffee table book and won't fit in most fanny packs.

It remains an oft looked at resource in my library. Many a trip began in its pages.

Grab a copy of this book, and let it guide you to some of Missouri's hidden treasures. And treasures they are. In 1978 I arrived in St. Louis, a Tennessee teen raised on Blue Ridge hiking. In my sullen anger at having been transplanted from God's country, I assumed Missouri had nothing to offer me. Some 25 years later, I continue to be pleasantly surprised by all that Missouri can offer. About the only thing Missouri can't provide are crowds...and that's a wonderful thing.

Despite the florid language he chooses to use, Conger Beasley, Jr. writes compelling accounts of his travels, both recent and past. He explores not only places in the world: Cuba, Paris, Kansas, California; but also places in the mind and spirit. Each essay is based on a very different experience from the last, yet somehow, they all contrive to work together, with themes weaving lazily from one essay to the next, to make a compelling and well thought out book.

Frank Blair was one of the more significant figures of the Civil War era, helping keep his home state of Missouri within the Union. Blair, who was a son and brother of equally famous politicians, served as a state politician, congressman, senator, and was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 1868. Blair also achieved a solid record as a political general during the Civil War serving in the Vicksburg, Chattanooga, Atlanta, and Carolina Campaigns. Blair was one of the founders of the Republican party in Missouri, although he held conservative views and switched to the Democratic party after the conclusion of the war. Blair was virulent racist who opposed political rights for blacks. He died at a relatively young age, worn out by a stressful life and abuse of alcohol and tobacco.
Parrish is the leading historian of Civil War-era Missouri. His work focuses heavily on Blair's political life, but also provides details on his subject's family life. Due to the subjects' relative obscurity and the heavy concentration on politics, this work will appeal to Civil War specialists only.

"There is first of all the difficulty of being heard at all," David Walsh writes in the introduction to his new book on the liberal political tradition, "The Growth of the Liberal Soul." Indeed, Walsh does not enjoy much name recognition in academic political theory, and copies of his book are hard to find. He does not improve his predicament by warning that his distinctive approach to liberal political thought has few if any practitioners today and saying that the "only demonstration" of his thesis consists in patiently "undertaking the journey" traced by the whole book. But as one who was lucky enough to come across Walsh's book and accompany him on the journey, I wish to testify that his contribution to liberal thought should be widely read and taken seriously.According to Walsh, liberal politics is in deep crisis. Liberalism has more or less managed to hold centrifugal forces--namely, those of religion, class, and race--within itself since John Locke's time. But Walsh says that the present crisis is new: "The corrective centripetal forces have all but disappeared" (p. 15). The latitudinarian Judeo-Christian consensus that long served as the moral core of liberal society is now pushed to the margins in service of the dogma of diversity. The prospect of equal opportunity and endless economic growth, which has quelled class divisions for three centuries, now entails great sacrifices of certainty and security. Where once Martin Luther King, Jr., stirred Americans "to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands," God is no longer so publicly available to help bring the races together. Hence the rancor and hollowness of public life have increased....Much has happened since Locke's time to loosen liberalism from its religious mooring, but Walsh argues that liberalism cannot completely break with its founding father's religious understanding of freedom and remain liberalism. Liberalism is ample enough to honor some non-Christian faiths and even classical Greek philosophy, but the minimum consensus of liberal society must be that each and every human being has a sacred, otherworldly essence--a soul--that is capable of participating in an eternal and divine perspective through moral growth. This intimation of divinity, in human beings and in human life, is the necessary justification for individual dignity and freedom.