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Only in Minnesota can you snap a Polaroid of a fifty-five-foot-tall grinning green man with a size seventy-eight shoe or marvel at the spunk of a Swede who dedicated his life to spinning a gigantic ball of twine. The world’s largest hockey stick, as well as the biggest pelican, prairie chicken, turkey, fish, otter, fox, and loon also make Minnesota their home. Where else can you ponder the mysterious "miracle meat" of Spam in a museum dedicated to pork products or have your head examined by the phrenology machines at the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices? 

Minnesota Marvels is a tour of the inspired, bizarre, brilliant, scandalous, and funny sites around the state. Look up in wonder at the several Paul Bunyan statues, including the original (Bemidji), the tallest (Akeley), and the largest talking version (Brainerd). Ease on down the road to visit the first home of the heel-tapping native of Grand Rapids, Judy Garland, or walk the "main street" of Sauk Centre immortalized by native son Sinclair Lewis. See the birthplaces of Charles Lindbergh, the Mayo brothers, the Greyhound bus, the snowmobile, and the ice-cream sandwich. 

Minnesota is also the home of such attractions as the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden and the world’s largest aerial lift bridge in Duluth, and architectural wonders such as Frank Lloyd Wright’s modernist gas station in Cloquet and Frank Gehry’s arresting Weisman Art Museum. Stunning mansions with histories of ghost sightings, the hangouts and lairs of infamous gangsters, and old-fashioned breweries dot the state.

Conveniently organized by town name and illustrated throughout, Minnesota Marvels is the perfect light-hearted guide for entertaining road trips all over the state. 

In an engaging and readable style, renowned historian Theodore Blegen takes the reader on a tour of Minnesota's development, from the geological events that shaped the land to westward movement to twentieth-century modernization.  This second edition includes a concluding chapter by Russell W. Fridley that chronicles the impact of turbulent national politics and cultural changes of the 1960s and 1970s on the state, as well as an extensive reading list and detailed index. Minnesota is a concise yet comprehensive account of the state's progress, highlighting landmarks in politics, technology, the arts, and architecture.

Based on four years of travel and research, Minnesota’s Best Breweries and Brewpubs is a welcome addition to Robin Shepard’s series of guides to the best of the Midwest’s beer industries. From large-scale breweries such as Cold Spring, to chains like Granite City, to individual brewpubs like Fitger’s Brewhouse, Shepard provides commentary for more than thirty beer makers and three-hundred Minnesota beers. Accessible enough for people at all stages in their journeys to discover great-tasting beer, the information-packed guidebook also features a list of helpful books and websites, as well as information on Minnesota’s beer tastings and festivals.
    For each brewery and brewpub site you’ll find:
    • a description and brief history, plus many “don’t miss” features
    • a description of beers on tap and a list of seasonal and specialty beers
    • a space for the brewmaster’s autograph
    • notes on the pub food, with recommendations
    • suggestions of nearby sights and activities
    • general directions to the location
    • Shepard’s personal ratings of the experience, plus room to add your own.

In Minor Troubles, Erin J. Rand investigates a series of controversies about youth sexuality and queerness from the early twenty-first century: adult concerns about teen sexting, the bullying and suicides of queer kids, trans youths’ access to gender-segregated bathrooms at school, and sex education. In the public deliberation and mediation of each of these controversies, the imagined qualities of childhood—innocence, vulnerability, nonsexuality, and, crucially, whiteness—are deployed by adults to justify the protection of children. However, these rhetorical figurations of childhood often produce material precarities for actual young people, especially youth of color and queer, trans, and gender-nonconforming youth.

Rand foregrounds the fundamental role of racialization in forming ideas about childhood, arguing that the image of innocent white childhood depends upon the dehumanization of racialized youth. Moreover, the rhetorical process of figuration produces vulnerability and constrains agency for real young people and creates cultural ideas about childhood that come to justify policies, discipline behaviors, regulate identities, control knowledges, and determine interventions that shape children’s lives, bodies, and experiences.

Phoenix is the largest city in the Southwest and one of the largest urban centers in the country, yet less has been published about its minority populations than those of other major metropolitan areas. Bradford Luckingham has now written a straightforward narrative history of Mexican Americans, Chinese Americans, and African Americans in Phoenix from the 1860s to the present, tracing their struggles against segregation and discrimination and emphasizing the active roles they have played in shaping their own destinies.

Settled in the mid-nineteenth century by Anglo and Mexican pioneers, Phoenix emerged as an Anglo-dominated society that presented formidable obstacles to minorities seeking access to jobs, education, housing, and public services. It was not until World War II and the subsequent economic boom and civil rights era that opportunities began to open up. Drawing on a variety of sources, from newspaper files to statistical data to oral accounts, Luckingham profiles the general history of each community, revealing the problems it has faced and the progress it has made. His overview of the public life of these three ethnic groups shows not only how they survived, but how they contributed to the evolution of one of America's fastest-growing cities.

This study of the influence minority parties wield is both a major work of political science scholarship and a timely examination of an issue with real consequences for the functioning of democratic legislatures and the creation of legislation.

Challenging conventional assumptions that the majority party dominates the legislature, Jennifer Hayes Clark investigates precisely the ways in which—and under what conditions—members of the minority party successfully pursue their interests. For this study, Clark collects fine-grained data from both the U.S. Congress and state legislatures to get a close look at three key points in the legislative process: committee assignments, bill cosponsorship, and roll-call votes. She finds that minority party members are not systematically excluded throughout the policymaking process. Indeed, their capacity to shape legislative decision-making is enhanced when party polarization is low, when institutional prerogatives are broadly dispersed rather than centralized, and when staff resources are limited. Under these conditions, bipartisanship bill cosponsorship and voting coalitions are also more prevalent.

With the sharp increase of partisan polarization in state legislatures and in Congress, it is essential to understand how and when a minority party can effectively represent constituents.

 

This vivid study, richly illustrated with forty color photographs, offers a multilayered analysis of retablos—folk images painted on tin that are offered as votives of thanks for a miracle granted or a favor bestowed—created by Mexican migrants to the United States. Durand and Massey analyze 124 contemporary retablo texts, scrutinizing the shifting subjects and themes that constitute a running record of the migrant's unique experience. The result is a vivid work of synthesis that connects the history of an art form and a people, links two very different cultures, and allows a deeper understanding of a major twentieth-century theme—the drama of transnational migration.

In a century-old edition of a British newspaper, a quaint narrative entitled "A Visit to the Comstock" was prefaced by the following poem: Paint me, Washoe, as you see it, / Tinting with a truthful touch; / Line it with a faithful pencil, / Do not colour overmuch. Many writers through the decades have "coloured overmuch" in their descriptions of Nevada by using picturesque words and extreme language when discussing the paradoxical state. Idah Meacham Strobridge, often called "Nevada's first woman of letters", pointed out that images of Nevada frequently suggest a "mirage-land", a place where nothing is quite what it seems. Wilbur S. Shepperson's examination of such mirages--imaginary, literary, historical, real--is the subject of Mirage-Land: Images of Nevada. In the pages of this book, readers will discover ways in which a variety of men and women image-makers envisioned the Silver State, as well as ways they communicated their visions to others. Shepperson explains the process of mirage building by introducing readers to details from myriad sources--journals, diaries, historic newspapers, government reports, essays, magazines, novels, and even chamber of commerce promotional brochures. The well-known accents of John C. Fremont, Mark Twain, and Dan De Quille mingle with such little-known voices as Louise M. Palmer, Henry T. Williams, and George Wharton James among others. While the exemplary voices may express paradox, self-contradiction, antithesis, even confusion, Shepperson arranges his examples in a way that shows readers an aggregate vision. For him, Nevada history and Nevada humanity together embrace the length of Highway 395, the width of Interstates 80 and 15, and the breadthof a good many gravel roads in between. Essentially Shepperson sees few meaningful differences between the Comstock of the 1860s, other mining camps, sheep and cattle operations, Reno of the 1930s, and the present-day Las Vegas.

Did the Supreme Court's upholding of Miranda in 2000 adversely impact law enforcement, as conservatives have complained, or was it a reaffirmation of individual rights?

Welsh S. White looks at both sides of the issue, emphasizing that Miranda represents just one stage in the Court's ongoing struggle to accommodate a fundamental conflict between law enforcement and civil liberties, and assessing whether the Court's present decisions (including Miranda) strike an appropriate balance between promoting law enforcement's interest in obtaining reliable evidence and the individual's interest in being protected from overreaching police practices.

Welsh S. White is Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh School of Law. He is best known for his work on capital punishment and has published and lectured on the death penalty for the past twenty years.

One of the most significant Supreme Court cases in U.S. history has its roots in Arizona and is closely tied to the state’s leading legal figures. Miranda has become a household word; now Gary Stuart tells the inside story of this famous case, and with it the legal history of the accused’s right to counsel and silence.

Ernesto Miranda was an uneducated Hispanic man arrested in 1963 in connection with a series of sexual assaults, to which he confessed within hours. He was convicted not on the strength of eyewitness testimony or physical evidence but almost entirely because he had incriminated himself without knowing it—and without knowing that he didn’t have to. Miranda’s lawyers, John P. Frank and John F. Flynn, were among the most prominent in the state, and their work soon focused the entire country on the issue of their client’s rights. A 1966 Supreme Court decision held that Miranda’s rights had been violated and resulted in the now-famous "Miranda warnings."

Stuart personally knows many of the figures involved in Miranda, and here he unravels its complex history, revealing how the defense attorneys created the argument brought before the Court and analyzing the competing societal interests involved in the case. He considers Miranda's aftermath—not only the test cases and ongoing political and legal debate but also what happened to Ernesto Miranda. He then updates the story to the Supreme Court’s 2000 Dickerson decision upholding Miranda and considers its implications for cases in the wake of 9/11 and the rights of suspected terrorists. Interviews with 24 individuals directly concerned with the decision—lawyers, judges, and police officers, as well as suspects, scholars, and ordinary citizens—offer observations on the case’s impact on law enforcement and on the rights of the accused.

Ten years after the decision in the case that bears his name, Ernesto Miranda was murdered in a knife fight at a Phoenix bar, and his suspected killer was "Mirandized" before confessing to the crime. Miranda: The Story of America’s Right to Remain Silent considers the legacy of that case and its fate in the twenty-first century as we face new challenges in the criminal justice system.

Probing the similarities and differences in the ways Americans, Australians, and Britons understood and responded to poverty, Mark Peel draws a picture of social work that is based in the sometimes fraught encounters between the poor and their interpreters. He uses dramatization to bring these encounters to life—joining Miss Cutler and that resurrected horse are Miss Lindstrom and the fried potatoes and Mr. O’Neil and the seductive client—and to give these people a voice. Adding new dimensions to the study of charity and social work, this book is essential to understanding and tackling poverty in the twenty-first century.

"Why doesn't she just open up her ears and listen?" Few physical problems are as poorly understood as hearing loss. In Missed Connections, a new kind of  self-help book that combines sociological reporting with personal reflection, sociologist Barbara Stenross examines what hearing loss feels like to those who have it and which technologies and strategies can improve communication at home and in public.

Based on seven  years of research, Stenross's book tells of how -- as she sought information and solutions to help her hard-of-hearing father -- she came  to join a community group called Village Self Help for Hard of Hearing People. Taking us along to group meetings and into the homes of members, Stenross shows us -- through the personal accounts of these individuals -- the exhaustion that comes from constantly straining to listen, the frustration of missing critical comments or the or the punchlines of jokes, and the pain that hard-of-hearing family members experience when loved ones accuse them of hearing "when they want to." Full of scenes, dialogues, and conversations, Missed Connections also discusses such practical issues as how people with impaired hearing can continues to use the phone, how assistive technologies can help in public and private, why hearing aids can't always do enough, and how bluffing and silence can hurt more than help. Understanding that when one family member is hard of hearing, the whole family can suffer from "missed connections," Stenross offers in this book a useful family resource with a broad range of practical guidance.

With chapters on belonging and acceptance, do's and don'ts in public, lip-reading, hearing aids, and television, Missed Connections will interest a range of readers including deaf and hard-of-hearing people -- as well as their families, teachers, friends, employers, and counselors -- healthcare professionals, scholars, and others interested in the experience of and solutions for disability and hearing loss.

Growing up in Ladora, Iowa, Mildred “Millie” Benson had ample time to develop her imagination and sense of adventure. While still a journalism graduate student at the University of Iowa, Millie began writing for the Stratemeyer Syndicate, which published the phenomenally popular Hardy Boys series, among others. Soon, Millie was tapped for a new series starring amateur sleuth Nancy Drew, a young, independent woman not unlike Millie herself. Under the pen name Carolyn Keene, Millie wrote the first book, The Secret of the Old Clock, and twenty-two other Nancy Drew Mystery Stories. In all, Millie wrote more than a hundred novels for young people.

Millie was also a journalist for the Toledo Times and the Toledo Blade. At sixty-two, she obtained her pilot’s license. Follow the clues throughout Missing Millie to discover the story of this ghostwriter, journalist, and adventurer.

Missing Persons is a memoir about dealing with death in a culture that gives no help. As the last of her family, Greene’s losses are stark, first her aunt, then her mother, in quick succession. She is as ill-equipped for the challenges of caring for a dying person at home as she is for the other losses, long repressed, that rise to confront her at this time: the suicide of her younger brother, the death of her father. As the professional identity on which she’s based her selfhood comes to feel brittle and trivial, she is catapulted  into questions of “who am I?” and “what have I done with my life?”

The memoir is structured as an account of her mother's and aunt’s final days and the year that follows, a year in which she reconstructs her life. This is a  powerful story about family, what it means to have one, to lose one, never to have made one, and what, if anything, might take its place. It’s the story of a vexed mother-daughter relationship that mellows with age. It is also a search for home, as the very landscape shifts around her and the vast orchards are dug up and paved over for tract housing, strip malls, freeways, and the Santa Clara Valley, once known as the Valley of Heart’s Delight, is transformed to “Silicon.”

The personal odyssey of a man with a disability, this passionate book tries to tell as well as analyze what it is like to have a disability in a world that values vigor and health. Zola writes, "Missing Pieces is an unraveling of a social problem in the manner of Black Like Me. Like its author, I, too, am a trained social observer, but for me 'passing' was not an issue. For I already have the stigmata of the disabled—the braces, the limp, the cane—though I have spent much of my life denying their existence." The author started out in the role of a social scientist on a seven-day excursion to acquaint himself with an extraordinary experiment in living—Het Dorp, one of the few places in the world designed to promote "the optimum happiness" of those with severe physical disabilities. Neither a medial center nor a nursing home, Het Dorp is a village in the western-most part of the Netherlands. What began as a sociological attempt to describe this unusual setting became, through the author's growing awareness, what can only be called a socio-autobiography. Resuming his prior dependence on a wheelchair, the author experienced his own transformation from someone who is "normal" and "valid" to someone who is "invalid." The routine of Het Dorp became his: he lived in an architecturally modified home, visited the workshops, and shared meals, social events, conversation, and perceptions with the remarkably diverse residents. The author confronts some rarely discussed issues—the self-image of a person with a chronic disability, how one fills one's time, how one deals with authority and dependence, and love and sex. Missing Pieces offers striking insights into an aspect of the human condition shared by nearly 30 million Americans. It is must-read for the general reader, as well as for the rehabilitation counselor, social worker, or social scientist.

Utah's ethnic diversity is often overlooked. In a society sometimes presumed to be homogeneous, there is a danger that the varied experiences of its members will be lost to history. Missing Stories, available here for the first time in paperback, effectively counters such misconceptions and explores the rich history of ethnic and minority groups in the state. Several representatives from each of eight such groups tell in their own voices stories of themselves, their families, and their communities. The groups represented are Utes, African-Americans, Jews, Chinese, Italians, Japanese, Greeks, and Hispanics. In a preface to each section of oral history interviews, a respected historian of the community introduces background and heritage, setting the context for the personal recollections that follow. Also included are striking photographs by Kent Miles and George Janecek that capture much of the personality and character of the interviewees.

These oral histories recount migrations to new homes in Utah or adjustment to white settlement of traditional homelands in the state. They bring to light the struggles of individuals and families to survive and the formation and maintenance of communities in frequently adverse conditions, whether on reservations or farms, in small towns or large cities. The histories are enriched by accounts of challenges met and overcome and enlivened by stories of events and persons who sometimes achieved legendary status within and outside the groups. Missing Stories reveals the many ways that ethnic and minority groups have contributed to Utah's history and fills in missing pieces necessary to a complete portrayal of the state's society and culture.

In Missing, Sunaina Marr Maira explores how young South Asian Muslim immigrants living in the United States experienced and understood national belonging (or exclusion) at a particular moment in the history of U.S. imperialism: in the years immediately following September 11, 2001. Drawing on ethnographic research in a New England high school, Maira investigates the cultural dimensions of citizenship for South Asian Muslim students and their relationship to the state in the everyday contexts of education, labor, leisure, dissent, betrayal, and loss. The narratives of the mostly working-class youth she focuses on demonstrate how cultural citizenship is produced in school, at home, at work, and in popular culture. Maira examines how young South Asian Muslims made sense of the political and historical forces shaping their lives and developed their own forms of political critique and modes of dissent, which she links both to their experiences following September 11, 2001, and to a longer history of regimes of surveillance and repression in the United States.

Bringing grounded ethnographic analysis to the critique of U.S. empire, Maira teases out the ways that imperial power affects the everyday lives of young immigrants in the United States. She illuminates the paradoxes of national belonging, exclusion, alienation, and political expression facing a generation of Muslim youth coming of age at this particular moment. She also sheds new light on larger questions about civil rights, globalization, and U.S. foreign policy. Maira demonstrates that a particular subjectivity, the “imperial feeling” of the present historical moment, is linked not just to issues of war and terrorism but also to migration and work, popular culture and global media, family and belonging.

The history of the study of popular culture in American academic since its (re)introduction in 1967 is filled with misunderstanding and opposition. From the first, proponents of the study of this major portion of american culture made clear that they were interested in making popular culture a supplement to the usual courses in such fields as literature, sociology, history, philosophy, and the other humanities and social sciences; nobody proposed that study of popular culture replace the other disciplines, but many suggested that it was time to reexamine the accepted courses and see if they were still viable. Opposition to the status quo always causes anxiety and oppostion, but when the issues are clarified, often oppoosition and anxiety melt away, as they are now doing.

A Mission for Development tells the remarkable story of faculty from three Utah universities who lived and worked in Iran as part of the Point Four Program. Using the experience of these advisors, the book reexamines the rise and fall of the US-Iranian alliance and explores the roles that American universities played in international development during the Cold War.
 
The Point Four Program sponsored American technical assistance for developing countries during the 1950s—an American Cold War strategy to cultivate friendly governments and economic development in countries purportedly susceptible to Communist influence. Between 1951 and 1964, advisors from Brigham Young University sought to modernize Iranian public education, experts from Utah State University worked to improve agricultural production, and doctors and nurses from the University of Utah helped with the Iranian government’s rural health initiatives. In A Mission for Development, author Richard Garlitz offers a critical and clear-eyed assessment of the challenges the Utahns faced and the contributions they made to Iranian development.
 
The book also reexamines the Iranian political crisis of the early 1950s and the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh through the eyes of the Utah advisors. A Mission for Development provides rare insight into the university role in international development and will be of interest to historians and policy makers.
 

Mission of Change is an oral history describing various types of change—political, social, cultural, and religious—as seen through the eyes of Father Astruc and Paul Dixon, non-Natives who dedicated their lives to working with the Yup’ik people. Their stories are framed by the an analytic history of regional changes, together with current anthropological theory on the nature of cultural change and the formation of cultural identity. The book presents a subtle and emotionally moving account of the region and the roles of two men, both of whom view issues from a Catholic perspective yet are closely attuned to and involved with changes in the Yup’ik community.

The Mission of Guevavi on the Santa Cruz River in what is now southern Arizona served as a focal point of Jesuit missionary endeavor among the Pima Indians on New Spain's far northwestern frontier.

For three-quarters of a century, from the first visit by the renowned Eusebio Francisco Kino in 1691 until the Jesuit Expulsion in 1767, the difficult process of replacing one culture with another—the heart of the Spanish mission system—went on at Guevavi. Yet all but the initial years presided over by Father Kino have been forgotten.

Drawing upon archival materials in Mexico, Spain, and the United States—including accounts by the missionaries themselves and the surviving pages of the Guevavi record books—Kessell brings to life those forgotten years and forgotten men who struggled to transform a native ranchería into an ordered mission community.

Of the eleven Black Robes who resided at Guevavi between 1701 and 1767, only a few are well known to history. Others—such as Joseph Garrucho, who presided more years at Guevavi than any other Padre; Alexandro Rapicani, son of a favorite of Sweden's Queen Christina; Custodio Zimeno, Guevavi's last Jesuit—have the details of their roles filled in here for the first time.

In this in-depth study of a single missionary center, Kessell describes in detail the daily round of the Padres in their activities as missionaries, educators, governors, and intercessors among the often-indifferent and occassionally hostile Pimas. He discusses the Pima uprising of 1751 and the events that led up to it, concluding that it actually continued sporadically for some ten years.

The growing ferocity of the Apache, the disastrous results of certain government policies—especially the removal of the Sobaípuri Indians from the San Pedro Valley—and the declining native population due to a combination of enforced culture change and epidemics of European diseases are also carefully explored.

The story of Guevavi is one of continuing adversity and triumph. It is the story, finally, of explusion for the Jesuits and, a few short years later, the end of Mission Guevavi at the hands of the Apaches.

In Mission of Sorrows Kessell has projected meticulous research into a highly readable narrative to produce an important contribution to the history of the Spanish Borderlands. 

During the Mississippian period (approximately A.D. 1000-1600) in the midwestern and southeastern United States a variety of greater and lesser chiefdoms took shape. Archaeologists have for many years explored the nature of these chiefdoms from the perspective common in archaeological investigations—from the top down, investigating ceremonial elite mound structures and predicting the basic domestic unit from that data. Because of the increased number of field investigations at the community level in recent years, this volume is able to move the scale of investigation down to the level of community and household, and it contributes to major revisions of settlement hierarchy concepts.

Archaeologists and architects draw upon theoretical perspectives from their fields to provide valuable insights into the structure, development, and meaning of prehistoric communities.

 

Architecture is the most visible physical manifestation of human culture. The built environment envelops our lives and projects our distinctive regional and ethnic identities to the world around us. Archaeology and architecture find common theoretical ground in their perspectives of the homes, spaces, and communities that people create for themselves. Although archaeologists and architects may ask different questions and apply different methods, the results are the same—a deeper understanding of what it means to be human.

 

In this volume, prominent archaeologists examine the architectural design spaces of Mississippian towns and mound centers of the eastern United States. The diverse Mississippian societies, which existed between A.D. 900 and 1700, created some of the largest and most complex Native American archaeological sites in the United States. The dominant architectural feature shared by these communities was one or more large plazas, each of which was often flanked by buildings set on platform mounds. The authors describe the major dimensions of an architectural grammar, centered on the design of the plaza and mound complex that was shared by different societies across the Mississippian world. They then explore these shared architectural features as physical representations or metaphors for Mississippian world views and culture.

 

 

 

Missouri has been likened to a “cave factory” because its limestone bedrock can be slowly dissolved by groundwater to form caverns, and the state boasts more than six thousand caves in an unbelievable variety of sizes, lengths, and shapes. Dwight Weaver has been fascinated by Missouri’s caves since boyhood and now distills a lifetime of exploration and research in a book that will equally fascinate readers of all ages.

Missouri Caves in History and Legend records a cultural heritage stretching from the end of the ice age to the twenty-first century.  In a grand tour of the state’s darkest places, Weaver takes readers deep underground to shed light on the historical significance of caves, correct misinformation about them, and describe the ways in which people have used and abused these resources.

Weaver tells how these underground places have enriched our knowledge of extinct animals and early Native Americans. He explores the early uses of caves: for the mining of saltpeter, onyx, and guano; as sources of water; for cold storage; and as livestock shelters. And he tells how caves were used for burial sites and moonshine stills, as hideouts for Civil War soldiers and outlaws—revealing how Jesse James became associated with Missouri caves—and even as venues for underground dance parties in the late nineteenth century.

Bringing caves into the modern era, Weaver relates the history of Missouri’s “show caves” over a hundred years—from the opening of Mark Twain Cave in 1886 to that of Onyx Mountain Caverns in 1990—and tells of the men and women who played a major role in expanding the state’s tourism industry. He also tracks the hunt for the buried treasure and uranium ore that have captivated cave explorers, documents the emergence of organized caving, and explains how caves now play a role in wildlife management by providing a sanctuary for endangered bats and other creatures.

Included in the book is an overview of cave resources in twelve regions, covering all the counties that currently have recorded caves, as well as a superb selection of photos from the author’s extensive collection, depicting the history and natural features of these underground wonders. Missouri Caves in History and Legend is a riveting account that marks an important contribution to the state’s heritage and brings this world of darkness into the light of day.

Until recently, many of Missouri’s legal records were inaccessible and the existence of many influential, historic cases was unknown. The ten essays in this volume showcase Missouri as both maker and microcosm of American history. Some of the topics are famous: Dred Scott’s slave freedom suit, Virginia Minor’s women’s suffrage case, Curt Flood’s suit against professional baseball, and the Nancy Cruzan “right to die” case. Other essays cover court cases concerning the uneasy incorporation of ethnic and cultural populations into the United States; political loyalty tests during the Civil War; the alleviation of cruelty to poor and criminally institutionalized children; the barring of women to serve on juries decades after they could vote; and the creation of the “Missouri Court Plan,” a national model for judicial selection.

Originally written in 1980 by the late Lorenzo J. Greene, Gary R. Kremer, and Antonio F. Holland, Missouri's Black Heritage remains the only book-length account of the rich and inspiring history of the state's African American population. It has now been revised and updated by Kremer and Holland, incorporating the latest scholarship into its pages. This edition describes in detail the struggles faced by many courageous African Americans in their efforts to achieve full civil and political rights against the greatest of odds.

Documenting the African American experience from the horrors of slavery through present-day victories, the book touches on the lives of people such as John Berry Meachum, a St. Louis slave who purchased his own freedom and then helped countless other slaves gain emancipation; Hiram Young, a Jackson County free black whose manufacturing of wagons for Sante Fe Trail travelers made him a legendary figure; James Milton Turner, who, after rising from slavery to become one of the best-educated blacks in Missouri, worked with the Freedmen's Bureau and the State Department of Education to establish schools for blacks all over the state after the Civil War; and Annie Turnbo Malone, a St. Louis entrepreneur whose business skills made her one of the state's wealthiest African Americans in the early twentieth century.

A personal reminiscence by the late Lorenzo J. Greene, a distinguished African American historian whom many regard as one of the fathers of black history, offers a unique view of Missouri's racial history and heritage.

Claiborne Fox Jackson (1806-1862) remains one of Missouri's most controversial historical figures. Elected Missouri's governor in 1860 after serving as a state legislator and Democratic party chief, Jackson was the force behind a movement for the neutral state's secession before a federal sortie exiled him from office. Although Jackson's administration was replaced by a temporary government that maintained allegiance to the Union, he led a rump assembly that drafted an ordinance of secession in October 1861 and spearheaded its acceptance by the Confederate Congress. Despite the fact that the majority of the state's populace refused to recognize the act, the Confederacy named Missouri its twelfth state the following month. A year later Jackson died in exile in Arkansas, an apparent footnote to the war that engulfed his region and that consumed him.

In this first full-length study of Claiborne Fox Jackson, Christopher Phillips offers much more than a traditional biography. His extensive analysis of Jackson's rise to power through the tangle that was Missouri's antebellum politics and of Jackson's complex actions in pursuit of his state's secession complete the deeper and broader story of regional identity--one that began with a growing defense of the institution of slavery and which crystallized during and after the bitter, internecine struggle in the neutral border state during the American Civil War. Placing slavery within the realm of western democratic expansion rather than of plantation agriculture in border slave states such as Missouri, Philips argues that southern identity in the region was not born, but created. While most rural Missourians were proslavery, their "southernization" transcended such boundaries, with southern identity becoming a means by which residents sought to reestablish local jurisdiction in defiance of federal authority during and after the war. This identification, intrinsically political and thus ideological, centered—and still centers—upon the events surrounding the Civil War, whether in Missouri or elsewhere. By positioning personal and political struggles and triumphs within Missourians' shifting identity and the redefinition of their collective memory, Phillips reveals the complex process by which these once Missouri westerners became and remain Missouri southerners.

Missouri's Confederate not only provides a fascinating depiction of Jackson and his world but also offers the most complete scholarly analysis of Missouri's maturing antebellum identity. Anyone with an interest in the Civil War, the American West, or the American South will find this important new biography a powerful contribution to our understanding of nineteenth-century America and the origins—as well as the legacy—of the Civil War.