Neighboring Guide

Once upon a time, people knew their neighbors. They talked to them, had cook-outs with them, and went to church with them. In our time of unprecedented mobility and increasing isolationism, it's hard to make lasting connections with those who live right outside our front door. We have hundreds of "friends" through online social networking, but we often don't even know the full name of the person who lives right next door. This unique and inspiring book asks the question: What is the most loving thing I can do for the people who live on my street or in my apartment building? Through compelling true stories of lives impacted, the authors show readers how to create genuine friendships with the people who live in closest proximity to them. Discussion questions at the end of each chapter make this book perfect for small groups or individual study.

The Changing American Neighborhood argues that the physical and social spaces created by neighborhoods matter more than ever for the health and well-being of twenty-first-century Americans and their communities. Taking a long historical view, this book explores the many dimensions of today's neighborhoods, the forms they take, the forces and factors influencing them, and the people and organizations trying to change them. Challenging conventional interpretations of neighborhoods and neighborhood change, Alan Mallach and Todd Swanstrom adopt a broad, inter-disciplinary perspective that shows how neighborhoods are messy, complex systems, in which change is driven by constant feedback loops that link social, economic and physical conditions, each within distinct spatial and political contexts. The Changing American Neighborhood seeks to understand neighborhoods and neighborhood change not only for their own importance, but for the insights they offer to help guide peoples' efforts sustaining good neighborhoods and rebuilding struggling ones.

Joe Garagiola remembers playing baseball with stolen balls and bats while growing up on the Hill. Chuck Berry had run-ins with police before channeling his energy into rock and roll. But not all the boys growing up on the rough streets of St. Louis had loving families or managed to find success. This book reviews a century of history to tell the story of the "lost" boys who struggled to survive on the city's streets as it evolved from a booming late-nineteenth-century industrial center to a troubled mid-twentieth-century metropolis.Stepenoff traces the history of several efforts aimed at assisting the city's homeless boys. She discusses the prison-like St. Louis House of Refuge, where more than 80 percent of the resident children were boys, and Father Dunne's News Boys' Home and Protectorate, which stressed education and training for more than a century after its founding. She charts the growth of Skid Row and details how historical events such as industrialization, economic depression, and wars affected this vulnerable urban population. Most of these boys grew up and lived decent, unheralded lives, but that doesn't mean that their childhood experiences left them unscathed. Their lives offer a compelling glimpse into old St. Louis while reinforcing the idea that society has an obligation to create cities that will nurture and not endanger the young.

Historian J. Frederick Fausz offers a fresh interpretation of Saint Louis from 1764 to 1804, explaining how Pierre Lacl de, the early Chouteaus, Saint Ange de Bellerive and the Osage Indians established a "gateway" to an enlightened, alternative frontier of peace and prosperity before Lewis and Clark were even born. Historians, genealogists and general readers will appreciate the well-researched perspectives in this engaging story about a novel French West long ignored in American History.

Goldie Taylor's debut memoir shines a light on the strictures of race, class and gender in a post-Jim Crow America while offering a nuanced, empathetic portrait of a family in a pitched battle for its very soul. Profoundly moving, exquisitely rendered and ultimately uplifting, it is a story about hidden strength, perseverance against unimaginable odds, the beauty and pain of girlhood, and the power of the written word.

St. Louis has thrived for over two hundred and fifty years-from its beginnings as a French settlement in 1764 to its rapid growth in the mid-1800s to the modern metropolis we know today. While many great structures have been lost or demolished, much of this history still lives on. Within the pages of Oldest St. Louis, get to know the history of the Mound City's most iconic buildings and the stories that bring their walls to life. Included are some of the businesses and buildings from the city's inception through the turn of the twentieth century that are examples of St. Louis's living history like Eugene Field House (1854), Bissell Mansion (1820s), and homes in the historic Carondelet neighborhood that may date back to the late 1700s.

Many of us don't know our neighbors. Authors Chris and Elizabeth McKinney seek to provide a sustainable vision for the "low and slow" lifestyle of neighboring and supply practical tools that help people invest in their communities, value each step in the process, and build meaningful, relationships with their fellow image-bearers right next door.

Where in St. Louis can you......picnic at a radioactive waste dump'...learn what West County Center's famous dove really represents'...visit the grave of the man who burned Atlanta'...join a nudist resort'...view a cube comprised of a million dollar bills'...see a piece from New York's Twin Towers'...find out exactly what a Billiken is?Whether you are piloting a simulated barge on the Mississippi River, exploring the hidden history of Abraham Lincoln's bizarre swordfight in St. Charles County or eating a ten-pound apple-pie in Kimmswick inspired by the Great Flood of 1993, it is hard to get bored with a copy of "Gateway to the Unusual: A Guide to Obscure St. Louis." By turns wistful and whimsical, this is a book which answers the questions you never knew you had about St. Louis while taking readers on a whirlwind tour through 97 unique but often little-known spaces and places that can't be found anywhere else. A tourist handbook for people who thought they never needed one, "Gateway to the Unusual" provides a scavenger hunt of hidden gems traversing the somber, strange, surprising and silly locales which define the culture and history that make St. Louis such a diverse and amazing place to call home. From Weldon Spring to Wildwood, from Overland to O'Fallon, from Bellefontaine to Bridgeton, this is an exploration of St. Louis's odds and ends like no other.

A vibrant Midwest metropolis, St. Louis has a rich, multicultural history of art and literature--both high and low. That duality is embraced here in an anthology that spans the reaches of noir, from violent criminality to bad luck and bad attitudes. Louis Noir includes stories by many bestselling authors.

St. Louis's history is layered. Each layer, whether the French pioneers establishing St. Louis as a river trading post, or Swiss immigrants starting dairy farms and dairies, or immigrants from Europe putting on the uniforms of the American doughboy, has left an imprint on the city. This Used to Be St. Louis is a fun trip through those layers of history following the story of: the glamorous, urban lofts that had been the factory for ball turrets for World War Two Air Force bombers; the dock of the pasta plant where the Civil War ironclads were built; the elegant townhouse that once served as a Albanian Orthodox Church.