Creating Community


Book Description

Creating Community expands the written histories of Springfield that have long overlooked this minority in the local community. It also adds to the growing study of small Jewish communities around the United States. Springfield is both Southern and Midwestern in flavor and this is reflected in the Jewish community's development that has examples of both. Jews have been part of the economic development of the town since the 1860s. Since then, they have also been involved in fraternal and social organizations, politics, and education. This is not a complete history, but its purpose is not to be encyclopedic, rather it is to exemplify how this minority group were part of the growth the Queen City of the Ozarks.




Gargoyle Country


Book Description

Gargoyle Country explores the fascinating geological history of southwestern Missouri for general readers. Gargoyles are the charming rock outcrops that flank many roads and highways in this region. Numerous colorful illustrations and useful maps and descriptions direct readers to specific places where the reader can see and touch real geology. Because the region is now heavily populated, historic buildings and various "rockworks" use rocks that once were plentiful but now hard to find in an urbanized environment.




The Engineering Geology and Hydrology of Karst Terrains


Book Description

Engineers from around the world recount in this volume their successes and failures in attempting to deal with unique and quixotic landscapes.




Confederate Girlhoods


Book Description

Confederate Girlhoods is an invaluable addition to the published literature of the Civil War, its aftermath, and consequences--and even better, it is a riveting read, well-rounded, unflinchingly honest, and full of surprises. --Thulani Davis, author of My Confederate Kinfolk: A Twenty-First Century Freedwoman Discovers Her Roots --










Gone in the Night


Book Description

Art imitates life in Springfield, Missouri, as former reporter Brian Brown visits his hometown in the early days of the pandemic to interview private investigator Booger McClain for a possible book about the area’s most famous missing person’s case. Nearly 30 years earlier, two young women who had just graduated from Kickapoo High School, along with the mother of one of the girls, disappeared without a trace. The search for the three missing women consumed the psyche of the community in the latter half of 1992 and garnered attention from the national press, but it was all for naught. The women were never found, and no one was ever charged with their disappearance. Soon after meeting Detective McClain, Brown quickly learns that this case he was familiar with has haunted the quirky private investigator for three decades. What unfolds are the unnerving details of what are known and heartbreaking speculations of what must have happened. In the end, the investigators find reasons for hope as they grapple with their own limitations in an unforgiving world. Included is an exclusive interview with Janis McCall thirty one-years after the disappearance of her daughter, Stacy.