Vivian Gibson grew up in Mill Creek, a neighborhood of St. Louis razed in 1955 to build a highway. Her family, friends, church community, and neighbors were all displaced by urban renewal. In this moving memoir, Gibson recreates the every day lived experiences of her family, including her college-educated mother, who moved to St. Louis as part of the Great Migration, her friends, shop owners, teachers, and others who made Mill Creek into a warm, tight-knit, African-American community, and reflects upon what it means that Mill Creek was destroyed by racism and "urban renewal."
Since the founding of St. Louis, African Americans have lived in communities throughout the area. Although St. Louis' 1916 "Segregation of the Negro Ordinance" was ruled unconstitutional, African Americans were restricted to certain areas through real estate practices such as steering and red lining. Through legal efforts in the court cases of Shelley v. Kraemer in 1948, Jones v. Mayer in 1978, and others, more housing options became available and the population dispersed. Many of the communities began to decline, disappear, or experience urban renewal.
A story inspired by a letter from a father to his daughter about wildfire, loss, and learning that we carry our homes inside us wherever we go In the shade of ancient redwood trees, by a creek, not far from the ocean, a father builds a house for his newborn daughter, where she grows up wild and strong in their coastal canyon home. When a wildfire takes back their beloved house, a father writes his now-grown daughter a letter telling her it’s gone. Inspired by the real letter the author wrote his daughter, this poignant story—written together by father and daughter—joyfully declares that a home is more than just wood and stone; it is made of love and can never be taken away. You carry home with you wherever you go.
Channel 4's The Mill captivated viewers with the tales of the lives of the young girls and boys in a northern mill. Focusing on the lives of the apprentices at Quarry Bank Mill, David Hanson's book uses a wealth of first-person source material including letters, diaries, mill records, to tell the stories of the children who lived and worked at Quarry Bank throughout the nineteenth century. This book perfectly accompanies the television series, satisfying viewers' curiosity about the history of the children of Quarry Bank. It reveals the real lives of the television series' main characters: Esther, Daniel, Lucy and Susannah, showing how shockingly close to the truth the dramatisation is. But the book also goes far beyond this to create a full and vivid picture of factory life in the industrial revolution. David Hanson has written an accessible narrative history of Victorian working children and the conditions in which they worked.
Once a thriving metropolis on the banks of the Mississippi, St. Louis, Missouri, is now a ghostly landscape of vacant houses, boarded-up storefronts, and abandoned factories. The Gateway City is, by any measure, one of the most depopulated, deindustrialized, and deeply segregated examples of American urban decay. "Not a typical city," as one observer noted in the late 1970s, "but, like a Eugene O'Neill play, it shows a general condition in a stark and dramatic form." Mapping Decline examines the causes and consequences of St. Louis's urban crisis. It traces the complicity of private real estate restrictions, local planning and zoning, and federal housing policies in the "white flight" of people and wealth from the central city. And it traces the inadequacy—and often sheer folly—of a generation of urban renewal, in which even programs and resources aimed at eradicating blight in the city ended up encouraging flight to the suburbs. The urban crisis, as this study of St. Louis makes clear, is not just a consequence of economic and demographic change; it is also the most profound political failure of our recent history. Mapping Decline is the first history of a modern American city to combine extensive local archival research with the latest geographic information system (GIS) digital mapping techniques. More than 75 full-color maps—rendered from census data, archival sources, case law, and local planning and property records—illustrate, in often stark and dramatic ways, the still-unfolding political history of our neglected cities.
"Recipient of the 1991 PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the short story, Frederick Busch confirms his achievement in this unsettling and affecting collection of new and selected stories. Like Hansel and Gretel, the characters in The Children in the Woods are concerned with survival; in the subtle playing out of this dark fairy tale, Busch makes palpable the themes of love, loss, alienation, and disillusionment." "In "Critics," it is the hierarchy of familial relationships that isolates an only child; in "The Settlement of Mars," a young boy's first recognition of the adult world is a frightening and disorienting experience; in "My Father, Cont.," a child fantasizes he will be abandoned by his bickering parents; and in "Folk Tales," a man's reappraisal of his life is catalyzed by the discovery of old correspondence in his mother's safe-deposit box after she dies. In all of these stories Busch is a master at exposing the vulnerability that resonates in each of the characters. As Shelby Hearon proclaimed in the New York Times Book Review of Absent Friends, Busch's most recent collection, "These stories hit us where we live: alone."" "Busch's previous collections of stories and his highly acclaimed novels Closing Arguments and Long way from Home have established his reputation as a writer of powerful literary fiction. The distillation of twenty years of story collections by Frederick Busch, The Children in the Woods is further testimony to the integrity and distinction of his work. Containing eight previously uncollected stories, The Children in the Woods is an opportunity for both old fans and those newly acquainted with his work to celebrate this remarkable writer."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
This book, a blend of fact and fiction, tells of the Campbell family that built a sawmill to furnish lumber to Fort Mackinac and the people of Mackinac Island.
St. Louis was a city under siege during Prohibition. Seven different criminal gangs violently vied for control of the town's illegal enterprises. Although their names (the Green Ones, the Pillow Gang, the Russo Gang, Egan's Rats, the Hogan Gang, the Cuckoo Gang and the Shelton Gang) are familiar to many, their exploits have remained largely undocumented until now. Learn how an awkward gunshot wound gave the Pillow Gang its name, and read why Willie Russo's bizarre midnight interview with a reporter from the St. Louis Star involved an automatic pistol and a floating hunk of cheese. From daring bank robberies to cold-blooded betrayals, The Gangs of St. Louis chronicles a fierce yet juicy slice of the Gateway City's history that rivaled anything seen in New York or Chicago.
A searing portrait of the racial dynamics that lie inescapably at the heart of our nation, told through the turbulent history of the city of St. Louis. From Lewis and Clark's 1804 expedition to the 2014 uprising in Ferguson, American history has been made in St. Louis. And as Walter Johnson shows in this searing book, the city exemplifies how imperialism, racism, and capitalism have persistently entwined to corrupt the nation's past. St. Louis was a staging post for Indian removal and imperial expansion, and its wealth grew on the backs of its poor black residents, from slavery through redlining and urban renewal. But it was once also America's most radical city, home to anti-capitalist immigrants, the Civil War's first general emancipation, and the nation's first general strike—a legacy of resistance that endures. A blistering history of a city's rise and decline, The Broken Heart of America will forever change how we think about the United States.
It's a typical summer in the good-hearted mountain town of Mossy Creek, Georgia, where love, laughter and friendship make nostalgia a way of life. Creekites are always ready for a sultry romance, a funny feud or a sincere celebration, and this summer is no different. Get ready for a comical battle over pickled beets and a spy mission to recover hijacked chow-chow peppers. Meet an unforgettable parakeet named Tweedle Dee and a lovable dog named Dog. Watch Amos and Ida sidestep the usual rumors and follow Katie Bell's usual snooping. In the meantime, old-timer Opal Suggs and her long-dead sisters share a lesson on living, and apple farmer Hope Bailey faces poignant choices when an old flame returns to claim her. Your favorite authors are back along with some wonderful new storytellers--plus more recipes from Creekite chef Bubba Rice. Pull up a wicker rocker, sip some peach-flavored iced tea, and listen as the townsfolk of Mossy Creek share their lives with you once again.
