Missouri State Archives
Presentation Videos

Carlos Arnaldo Schwantes presents a program on Crossroads of a Continent: Missouri Railroads, 1851-1921, a 2022 book he co-authored with Peter A. Hansen and Don L. Hofsommer that tells the story of the state’s railroads and their vital role in American history. Missouri is strategically located in America’s Heartland, and by the 1920s, the state was crisscrossed with railways reaching toward all points of the compass. Schwantes will explore the history of Missouri railroads through personal, absorbing tales of the cutthroat competition between cities and between railroads that meant the difference between prosperity and obscurity, the ambitions and dreams of visionaries Fred Harvey and Arthur Stilwell and the country’s excitement for the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.

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Missouri State Archives staff member and author Michelle Brooks speaks about her 2023 book, Murder & Mayhem Jefferson City. The wilderness-born Missouri capital’s first century (1821-1921) was a tumultuous time. Villainous escapes from the state’s only prison resulted in theft, abuse and even murder, the grandest attempt ending with the city’s only triple hanging. Later during this period, the capital had entrepreneurs willing to sidestep the federal Volstead Act and its prohibition on alcohol. This attracted Ku Klux Klan activity and culminated in the election of a “law and order” sheriff, whose deputies’ broke laws of their own in their enforcement efforts. Many smaller, more personal tragedies grieved the community during these years as well. Take the South Side murder of a German immigrant by a teenaged deputy caught sleeping with the victim’s daughter. Brooks recounts these and other shocking events in Jefferson City’s turbulent first century. 

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Author and scholar Gary Scharnhorst discusses his latest book, The Life of Mark Twain: The Final Years, 1891–1910, the third volume in his Twain biography series. This entry chronicles the life of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, from his family's extended trip to Europe in 1891 to his death in 1910. Despite his worldwide fame during this period, he grappled with bankruptcy, causing him to return to the lecture circuit. These years also saw the death of two daughters and his wife, influencing some of his darkest, most critical works.

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Author Randy Pace discusses his 2022 book, Blood Feud on Bull Creek: The True and Complete Story of the Meadows-Bilyeu Feud and Events Leading Up to and After the Battle. Though the conflict is not commonly known these days, from 1898-1901 the violent feud between the Meadows and Bilyeu families captured American newspaper headlines. Cut off from much of the outside world, these early settlers to the Taney and Christian county area became well-established landowners who intermarried and worked closely with one another until a series of increasingly vicious acts led to the deaths of six people and more injured. Filled with betrayal, a brutal bombing, bullying, murders, spectacular court trials and acts of revenge, Blood Feud on Bull Creek is much more than the riveting account of feuding between Ozarks families struggling to survive. It reflects our own family bonds and loyalties—and the lengths to which we might go to defend our honor.

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Author Petra DeWitt discusses her book, The Missouri Home Guard: Protecting the Home Front during the Great War. Missouri was one of many states that established a defense organization to take over the duties of the National Guard that had been federalized for military service when the United States declared war on Germany in 1917. Service in the Home Guard was a way to show loyalty to one’s country, particularly for German Americans, who were frequently under suspicion as untrustworthy. Men too old or exempt from the draft for other reasons found meaning in helping with the war effort through the Home Guard while also garnering respect from the community. For similar reasons, women attempted to join the organization as did African Americans, some of whom formed units of a “Negro Home Guard.” DeWitt’s study of this organization examines the fluctuating definition of patriotism and the very real question of who did and who did not have the privilege of citizenship and acceptance in society.

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Former State Senator Jill Schupp and Missouri Humanities Executive Director Ashley Beard-Fosnow discuss You Can, Too! Journey to the Missouri Senate, a book for young adults presented by Missouri Humanities and published by Missouri Life, sharing the unique stories of the 36 women who have served in the legislative body. Mary Gant became the first woman elected to the Missouri Senate in 1972. And now, 50 years later, a record 12 of the 34 desks in the Senate chamber are held by women. Despite their differences, they all arrived at public service to help the greater good, wanting to make life better for all Missourians. Sen. Schupp and Beard-Fosnow tell the inspiring stories of these women and detail the creative process behind the project.

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In his book, Houses Divided: Evangelical Schisms and the Crisis of the Union in Missouri, author Lucas Volkman provides insight into the significance of early- to mid- 19th century rifts initially arising over the moral question of African American bondage. He examines such fractures in the Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian churches of Missouri, then a slaveholding border state. These ruptures forged antagonistic northern and southern evangelical worldviews that increased antebellum sectarian strife and violence, energized the notorious guerilla conflict that gripped the state through the Civil War and fueled post-war vigilantism between emancipation’s opponents and proponents. Volkman discusses how the schisms produced the interrelated religious, legal and constitutional controversies that shaped pro- and anti-slavery evangelical contention before 1861, as well as during wartime Radical rule and Reconstruction’s rise and fall.

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Author Beth Pike presents a program on her 2022 book, Show-Me a Bicentennial. Pike was part of the Missouri 2021 core team that organized, promoted and carried out more than 300 events and projects statewide for the Missouri Bicentennial in 2021. The presentation will highlight the projects and events leading up to and through Missouri’s bicentennial, including photos and stories from the My Missouri 2021 photo exhibition, Missouri Community Legacies, the Missouri Bicentennial Quilt, Missouri Explorers and the Bicentennial Poster Contest, as well as photographs submitted from the 300-plus projects and events that took place to commemorate 200 years of Missouri statehood.

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A brief telling of Cherokee history by Galen Gritts, a member of the Cherokee Nation, with reference to his own experiences as a lifelong Missouri citizen. He will relate how the United States government forcibly relocated his ancestors west of the Mississippi River, his background as a Native person living in Missouri and the need for the continued presence of indigenous people in Show-Me State history, life and culture.

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Join us as Larry E. Wood presents the story of Emma Molloy?temperance revivalist, prohibitionist and accessory to murder. In the summer of 1885, ex-convict George Graham bigamously married Cora Lee, foster daughter of nationally known temperance revivalist Emma Molloy, and the three took up residence together on the Molloy family farm near Springfield, Missouri. When the body of Graham’s first wife, Sarah, was found at the bottom of an abandoned well on the property early the next year, Graham was charged with murder, while Cora and Emma were implicated as accessories. Wood will describe how this sensational story made national headlines, threatening Mrs. Molloy’s career as a prominent evangelist and temperance revivalist.

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During the 19th century, more than 300 vessels met their end in the steamboat graveyard that was the Lower Missouri River, from Omaha to its mouth. Although derided as little more than an "orderly pile of kindling," steamboats were, in fact, technological marvels superbly adapted to the river's conditions. Their light superstructure and long, wide, flat hulls powered by high-pressure engines drew so little water that they could cruise on "a heavy dew" even when fully loaded. But these same characteristics made them susceptible to fires, explosions and snags. Author James Erwin detail the perils faced on every voyage by steamboats, their passengers and crews.

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Phil S. Dixon, author and co-founder of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, offers a program on his 2019 book, The Dizzy and Daffy Dean Barnstorming Tour: Race, Media, and America’s National Pastime. The presentation will shed light on Dizzy and Daffy Dean’s All-Stars as they traversed the country in 1934, taking the field against the greatest teams in the Negro Leagues. Dixon will examine the glory of the games as well as the disingenuous journalistic tactics that proliferated during the tour with an introspective look at its impact on race relations. Highlights will include contributions from Negro League stars – such as Satchel Paige, Chet Brewer, Charlie Beverly and Andy Cooper – that were routinely glossed over by sports writers of the day, granting them their rightful due in sports history. In Dixon’s own words, “It is more than a baseball story—it is an American story.”

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Kaitlyn McConnell is a seventh-generation Ozarker, journalist, student of the past and founder of Ozarks Alive (www.ozarksalive.com), a website dedicated to the preservation of all things Ozarks local history and culture. Since the site’s inception in 2015, she has written more than 450 stories about this captivating region and its inhabitants. In this program, McConnell describes her project’s background, mission and importance for the future, sharing a few stories about the unique people and places she's discovered along the way.

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Best known for leading Union forces to victory during the American Civil War and serving as a two-term president during the Reconstruction Era, his connection to the Show-Me State is often overlooked. Author Greg Wolk explores Grant’s military career in Missouri, including interactions with his one-time commanding officer, Gen. John C. Fremont, conflict with Gen. Jeff Thompson of the Missouri State Guard and more, shedding light on this complex 19th century figure and his remarkable legacy.

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The rapid influx of 4.2 million immigrants to the United States in the 1840s and 1850s led to the country’s first anti-immigration political movement, the “nativists.” Though progressive in their support of labor rights, women’s rights and government regulation of industry, this group’s xenophobic beliefs led them to negatively target those of German and Irish origin, especially practicing Roman Catholics. By explaining the dramatic rise of the National American, or “Know Nothing,” Party in bourgeoning western cities – namely Chicago, Cincinnati, Louisville, and St. Louis – Dr. Luke Ritter of New Mexico Highlands University will illuminate the cultural, economic, and political issues that ultimately motivated (and continue to motivate) Americans’ negative reactions to foreigners.

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Census records are an essential primary source for both genealogists tracking their family over time and historians examining past events. Those in need of such records of enslaved individuals in the United States, however, often run into problems: in the federal censuses of 1850 and 1860, enumerations of enslaved individuals were recorded separately from the general population and can be difficult to use because they often lack detail. Over the last year, Missouri State Archives staff and eVolunteers have indexed the Missouri slave schedules to provide free online access to these important, underused records. Along with a major page sequencing error in the 1860 schedule that may explain anomalies that have frustrated researchers for decades, patterns and interesting details emerged during the project that provide useful historical context and genealogical insight. Missouri State Archivist John Dougan and Reference Services Manager Christina Miller go over discoveries uncovered while indexing these historically valuable records.

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Late one night in April 1891, Edward Bates Soper, a butcher in the small community of Archie, Missouri, brutally murdered his wife and their two daughters, aged four and six, before disappearing without a trace. A lucky break by California law enforcement led to Soper’s eventual capture and return to the state in 1897, where authorities discovered even more heinous crimes in his past. In this program from Michael Lear, former Missourinet bureau chief and current producer/host of Show Me Murder, a meticulously researched Missouri true crime podcast, he will guides the audience through this little known serial killers’ actions, one cold, calculating turn after another, providing forensic psychiatric details about Soper’s likely mental state.

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The admission of Missouri to the Union quickly became a constitutional crisis of the first order, inciting an intensive reexamination of the U.S. Constitution by Congress. At the heart of the matter was whether that body possessed the authority to place conditions on a territory, in this instance Missouri, regarding restrictions on slavery—before its admittance to the Union. The larger question with which the legislators grappled involved the limits of the Constitution’s provisions granting Congress the authority to affect the institution of slavery, both where it already existed and where it could expand. What would come to be known as the Missouri Crisis severely tested the still young republic and, some four decades later, would all but rend it asunder. Edited by Dr. William S. Belko, Contesting the Constitution: Congress Debates the Missouri Crisis, 1819-1821 is a collection of original essays thoughtfully engaging the intersections of history and constitutional law presented by this historic impasse. Join us for a program on this timely volume that’s certain to find eager readers among historians, legal scholars, political scientists, as well as many others who call Missouri home.

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Centuries after prehistoric Mississippian societies built mounds on the cliffs around what is now Jefferson City, the area passed into Spanish, then French hands before the United States ultimately acquired it through the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. Sparsely populated when Missouri was admitted to the Union in 1821, it may have remained free of major settlement if not for a commission established by the new state to identify the future site of its capital. Later in 1821, the commission selected the unclaimed, but now familiar, site of forested limestone hills on the south bank of the Missouri River.

The bold decision to forego an existing locale meant Jefferson City truly was the “City a Capitol Built.” Its earliest settlers were mostly of southern descent, with a few of the state’s richest men purchasing land in the new capital and many more relocating from the small nearby communities of Marion and Cote Sans Dessein. Within a decade, a second wave of influential settlers appeared: German immigrants. These groups’ collective vision took the dot on a map and built it into a capital city.   

Join us for a program about the founding of the state capital taken from the new book, Hidden History of Jefferson City, from author and Missouri State Archives staff member Michelle Brooks.

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In 1849, a steamship named after President James Monroe left St. Louis for Council Bluffs, Iowa. On board along with 50-plus crewmembers and miscellaneous passengers were 135 Latter-day Saints from Philadelphia, joined in St. Louis by a group of 35 California-bound prospectors from Jeffersonville, Indiana. Shortly after departure, on what was supposed to be a routine trip, cholera broke out among the travelers. Days later, 14-year-old James McHenry discovered the steamship after a skeleton crew landed it at Jefferson City. Observing the dead and dying victims along the riverbank, several local churches opened their doors to serve as hospitals for the afflicted. Though the exact number of deaths resulting from the outbreak is unknown, with different sources recording quite different figures, it had far-reaching effects. Join us for a presentation on Facebook Live from Gary Elliott, author of The 1849 Cholera Outbreak in Jefferson City, as he details this tragic, yet historic event.

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The Arnold Research Cave, overlooking the Missouri River in southeast Callaway County, has been dry for thousands of years, making it the perfect potential location for evidence of prehistoric habitation. With these conditions, archaeological excavators in the 1950s, and later the 1980s, found remaining artifacts made of perishable materials, such as netting, twined bags and clothing, including—perhaps of the greatest popular interest—the world’s oldest open-toed sandal. In Shoes Older than the Pyramids, Dr. Candace Sall, Associate Curator of the University of Missouri’s Museum of Anthropology, will provide details on many of the artifacts found in the cave, including 35 individual shoes made of rattlesnake master, a plant native to the Show-Me State. The items unearthed at the site range in age from 800 to 9,000 years, with the earliest shoes dating back eight millennia, making them some of the oldest articles of clothing ever found in North America. Join us on Facebook Live as Dr. Sall discusses these artifacts, providing a fascinating glimpse into the lives of Missouri’s prehistoric peoples.

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Census records are a mainstay for genealogists tracking their family over time. And, while those federal population schedules open to the public are now widely available online, territorial, state and federal non-population census records can be much harder to track down. Christina Miller, Reference Services Manager for the Missouri State Archives, will discuss how to find and use Missouri’s various available census records, along with tips and tricks for using the Archives’ new Census Records and Tax Lists Database.   

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Following the passage of the 1830 Indian Removal Act, federal authorities forcibly removed approximately 60,000 Native Americans from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States to the Indian Territory in what is today Oklahoma and western Arkansas. Among those compelled to relocate were the Cherokee, many of whom began the long, perilous trek in the winter of 1837. After departing from northern Georgia and southeastern Tennessee with inadequate food and clothing, they traveled northwest overland through Kentucky and Illinois before crossing the Mississippi River into Missouri. The Missouri State Archives’ early State Road Surveys contain contemporaneous maps of the routes the Cherokee traveled through the state, also identifying the homes of Missourians that supplied them, aiding their survival during the epic tragedy. Join us on Facebook Live for a program from Bill Ambrose, member and board secretary of the Trail of Tears Association’s Missouri Chapter, in which he will detail his research using these previously overlooked records.

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From Virginia Minor’s landmark 1875 case before the United States Supreme Court, to marches and protests epitomized by the Golden Lane demonstration in St. Louis before the 1916 Democratic National Convention, to acts of civil disobedience leading to jail time, Missouri women played a pivotal role in the fight for women’s suffrage. Fittingly, after the adoption of the 19th Amendment on Aug. 26, 1920, it was also in Missouri that the League of Women Voters was born. Join us for a special program on Facebook Live from Lincoln University’s Dr. Debra Greene commemorating the 100th anniversary of the amendment’s ratification, in which she will highlight many of these important milestones in Missouri’s—and the nation’s—history.

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R.L.Y. (Lud) Peyton's journey from obscurity to the national stage and then to oblivion, is as unlikely as it is incredible. Born into the Cavalier Virginia gentry, Lud's family migrated to Oxford, Ohio, while he was still young. He there attended Miami University before earning a law degree from the University of Virginia. Peyton moved west in search of professional opportunity, for 10 years practicing frontier law in Harrisonville, Missouri. Then, inflamed by the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise, he exploded onto the political stage in 1854. Representing western Missouri in the state senate, Peyton helped trigger the secession crisis and later served as a Senator in the Confederate States Congress until 1863, when he died of malaria in Alabama. Lud Peyton's journey is uniquely American, his life magnifying both Missouri's and the country's turbulent antebellum history. Join us on Facebook Live as author Tom Rafiner details the life of this fascinating and little known politician.

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David Sapp, founder of the Boone's Lick Road Association presents the latest research on the Boone’s Lick Road, an often-overlooked part of Missouri's contribution to U.S. expansion.

The United States has looked West towards the Pacific Ocean since the Revolutionary War. After all, many thought, why stop at the Alleghenies, or even the great Mississippi? At the time of the first U.S. census in 1790, there were just 3.9 million Americans in the country, but that population had more than tripled to 12.9 million by 1830. Tides of early 19th century immigration drove the search for good land, and that land laid to the West.

In 1803, the Louisiana Purchase more than doubled the size of the country, extending the western border beyond the Mississippi River and opening approximately 828,000 square miles to U.S. settlement. The following year, Nathan Boone—son of famous pioneer and explorer Daniel Boone—and Matthias Van Bibber discovered a salt lick 150 miles into the new American wilderness, in modern day Howard County, Missouri, bestowing it with the Boone family name. Their chance find led to the blazing of a new road that served as a key link to the trans-Mississippi west.

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In her book Osage Women and Empire: Gender and Power, Dr. Tai Edwards explores how men and women built the Osage Empire together, dispelling the traditional belief that it was through male prowess at hunting and war alone. Confronted with encroaching European settlers, Osage men and women increasingly focused on hunting and trade to protect their culture, and their traditional social structures—including complementary gender roles. Among the Osage, these functioned to maintain societal order and served as a means to experience, adapt to and resist the monumental change brought on by colonization. Join us as Edwards offers a fresh and nuanced picture of the critical role played by both men and women at the height of Osage dominance in the western Mississippi Valley and the later decline of power on their Kansas reservation.

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In his book, The Rural Cemetery Movement: Places of Paradox in Nineteenth Century America, Dr. Jeffrey Smith explores the growth of garden cemeteries in the United States during the three decades before the Civil War. As church and municipal burial grounds in urban centers became overcrowded, new cemeteries were established in lower population density areas. These new “rural” cemeteries fulfilled the sacred function of burial, while providing green spaces and respites from urban life, establishing institutions where people could craft their roles in collective memory and serving as prototypes for both urban planning and city parks. They were also paradoxical in nature: “rural” yet urban, natural yet designed, artistic yet industrial, commemorating the dead yet used by the living. Unlike their predecessors, founders of these burial grounds intended them to be used in many ways that reflected their views and values about nature, life and death and relationships. Join us as Smith details his research on the history of cemeteries in the 19th century and how they can help us better understand the values, attitudes and culture of urban America from mid-century through the Progressive Era.

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Who in Missouri hasn’t heard the call of the open road and felt the desire to get out of the city and see the beauty of the Show-Me State? In his latest book, Historic Missouri Roadsides, Second Edition, author and executive director of the Missouri Alliance for Historic Preservation, Bill Hart, offers all the history, recommendations and itineraries you need for a picturesque trip down a two-lane road or highway. Whether you’re a first-time visitor or an area local, Hart’s descriptions, photographs and illustrations will make you want to check out tours like Route 79 along the Mississippi River, El Camino Real leading down to the Missouri Bootheel or Route 24 spanning the width of the state from Kansas City to West Quincy. Along the way, he identifies locally owned businesses, restaurants and lodging with character and a hometown feel. Join us as Bill Hart takes the wheel to showcase the very best that small town Missouri has to offer.

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In her book, Slavery on the Periphery: The Kansas-Missouri Border in the Antebellum and Civil War Eras, Dr. Kristen Epps traces the rise and fall of chattel slavery on the Kansas-Missouri border, exploring how its presence shaped life on this critical geographical, political and social fault line. Epps explores how this dynamic, small-scale system—characterized by slaves' diverse occupations, close contact between slaves and slaveholders, a robust hiring market and the prevalence of marriage between slaves of different owners or “abroad marriages”—emerged from an established Upper South slaveholding culture. Drawing on extensive archival research, Epps makes clear that slavery's expansion into Kansas was more than a theoretical, ideological debate. She demonstrates that although the enslaved people of the Kansas-Missouri borderland may have been living on the periphery of the nation, they were in no way peripheral to discussions over slavery's expansion. Join us as Epps describes how slavery’s presence on this geographic boundary set the stage for the Civil War and emancipation on the Kansas-Missouri border, as it did elsewhere in the United States.

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The Gateway Arch is one of America’s most distinctive and beloved national monuments, receiving more than two million visitors each year to revere its symbolic meaning and physical beauty. In his book, The Making of an Icon: The Dreamers, the Schemers, and the Hard Hats Who Built the Gateway Arch, Jim Merkel captures the legend, lore and spirit behind its conception and construction. Using interviews with the visionaries, finaglers, protesters and the intrepid workers who built the arch while one misstep away from peril, Merkel brings to light the stories that shaped the planning and the construction of one of the world’s most iconic structures. Merkel will share new information about the Arch grounds and museum and give insight to the relentless pursuit, innovation and toil that raised the Arch to the sky.

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As Americans moved west into new lands opened to settlement following the Louisiana Purchase, establishing communication channels with the rest of the country became increasingly important. Postal service was crucial to linking new settlers on the frontier to their family, friends and business interests back east, as well as emerging markets along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. In his book, Postal Service in Territorial Missouri, 1804–1821, author Robert G. Schultz examines the growth and development of such service operating across the intervening miles of wilderness in the area that was to become the state of Missouri. In addition to the innumerable service problems these services faced, he offers an in depth look at their postal routes, post offices and postmasters. Join us as Schultz, for the first time, shares his research on this fascinating and little-examined subject.

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Before Lanford Wilson was a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, he wrote dozens of short stories and poems, many of which are set in the 1950s small-town Missouri where he grew up. When Wilson died in 2011 at age 73, he left his entire manuscript collection to the University of Missouri. His early work, written between 1955 and 1964, when he was between the ages of 18 and 27, provides a rare look at a young writer developing his style. Dr. David Crespy, professor of playwriting, acting, dramatic literature and theatre history with the University of Missouri, edited the compilation of these discoveries in Lanford Wilson: Early Stories, Sketches, and Poems. The compositions explore many of the themes Wilson later took up in the theatre, including sexual identity and the rupture of society and families. Join us as Dr. Crespy shares these poignant, never-before-published works providing insight into the origins of some of America's best-loved plays.

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In her groundbreaking work, In the Shadow of Dred Scott: St. Louis Freedom Suits and the Legal Culture of Slavery in Antebellum America, Dr. Kelly M. Kennington draws on the casefiles of more than 300 enslaved individuals who, like Dred Scott and his family, sued for freedom in St. Louis. As a gateway to the American west, a major port on both the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers and a focal point in the bitter national debate over slavery’s expansion, the city was an ideal place for enslaved individuals to challenge the legal systems and, by extension, the social systems that held them in forced servitude. Kennington offers an in-depth look at how daily interactions, webs of relationships and arguments presented in court shaped and reshaped legal debates and attitudes over slavery and freedom in St. Louis. Join us as Kennington discusses these historic suits, placing them in a broader national context and shedding light on the ways in which they influenced the national conversation on slavery.

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In 1849, St. Louis was little more than a frontier town straining under the pressure of rapid population growth and poor infrastructure, often trapped within the confines of ignorance and prejudice. A cholera epidemic and the Great Fire that year were both a consequence of those problems and—despite the devastation they brought—a chance for the city to evolve. In his book, Fire, Pestilence, and Death: St. Louis 1849, author Christopher Alan Gordon offers a detailed study of these calamities. Drawing upon the archives of the Missouri Historical Society, including newspaper accounts, city and county records, letters, diaries and contemporary publications, Gordon reveals the story of 1849 St. Louis as it was experienced by people who lived through that incredible year. Join us as Gordon not only provides an in-depth look at the city during one of the most turbulent years in its history, but also a glimpse into the struggles of a growing nation and the determination of its people.

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Following the passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830, government authorities forcibly relocated Native American peoples from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States far to the west. Between 1836 and 1839, this included the Cherokee who were compelled to leave their homes and follow the Trail of Tears to the Indian Territory in present day Oklahoma. Harsh trail conditions, weather and disease resulted in the deaths of an estimated 4,000 along the way. Professor Joseph Erb, member of the Cherokee Nation, will retrace the steps his ancestors were forced to march nearly 200 years ago, sharing stories of their trek across Missouri.

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In The History of Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, author Paul W. Bass documents decade-by-decade the 76-year history of the renowned U.S. Army installation. Built as one of the first training camps in American response to World War II, the fort continues to play an important role in the training of U.S. military personnel. Bass provides a detailed account of its construction; biographical information on the fort’s namesake, General Leonard Wood; and its contribution to the American war efforts from World War II to the ongoing War on Terror. Join us as Bass recounts the compelling history of Fort Leonard Wood and its influence on the surrounding region.

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In her latest book, Savor Missouri: River Hill Country Food and Wine, author Nina Mukerjee Furstenau explores the state’s back roads in search of homegrown regional foods, wines and more. Following the Mississippi, Missouri and Meramec rivers, she visits roadside restaurants, wineries, orchards, bakeries, farms and other agricultural attractions, discovering a tasteful array of Missouri flavors, beverages and cuisine. Not just a guidebook, it is also packed with more than 50 recipes she gathered from farmers, winemakers and restaurant chefs around the state. Join us as Furstenau describes her travels and discover—or rediscover—the culinary delights of Missouri’s river hill country.

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