This new addition to the popular guidebook series explores women's experiences and the impact of their activities on the history and landscape of St. Louis. When the city was founded, most St. Louisans believed that "a woman's place is in the home," in the house of her father, husband, or master. Over the years, women pushed out the boundaries of their lives into the public arena, and in doing so they changed the face of St. Louis. In Her Place is a guide to the changing definition of a woman's place in St. Louis, beginning with the colonial period and ending with the 1960s. Each chapter explores the experiences of women during a specific time period and identifies the sites of some of their public activities on a map of the city created from historical sources. Along the way, readers will meet such significant St. Louis women as Harriet Scott, Susan Blow, Edna Gellhorn, and Philippine Duchesne and learn about the activities of the Ladies' Union Aid Society, the Sisters of Charity, the League of Women Voters, and the Harper Married Ladies' Club. The book also includes four tours of the St. Louis region addressing the themes of the book and identifying significant buildings, homes, and other key sites. Current photographs will help readers locate the sites on detailed maps. An up-to-date bibliography and resource listing make this an invaluable guide for anyone interested in studying the history of women in the region.

This charming autobiography captures the life story of a fascinating woman: a Missouri girl-turned-world-class soprano who remained true to her roots through it all. Born and reared in St. Louis and proud of her origins, Helen Traubel grew up in a modest German-American family. She spent her teens and twenties singing with church choirs and quartets in the city, studying under first- rate teachers. She did not leave Missouri for New York until she was in her early thirties. Although she replaced the great Kirsten Flagstad at the Metropolitan Opera, she refused to confine herself to singing before elite crowds and prided herself on reaching a larger, more general audience via nightclubs, radio, television, and theater. St. Louis Woman is filled with candid and amusing stories as full of zest as Traubel herself. One such story details her audition for the Ford Hour, during which she suffered a terrible case of poison ivy, and the booth technicians interrupted her performance with laughter. Furious, she announced she would sing no more and started to leave. Without explanation, the technicians asked her to continue. Traubel later discovered that the higher-ups had called down to the technicians demanding they stop playing the Flagstad record and let that kid sing. The qualities that made Traubel such a notable individual are captured in this entertaining book. Her strong, independent character shines through. Outspoken and at times brutally honest, Traubel recounts her experiences at the Met, as both a popular performer and a teacher. She tells of exasperating moments when she was coaching famous pupil Margaret Truman. This is not a fact-laden examination of the singer’s Wagnerian repertory or a study of high opera; rather this engaging book introduces the reader to a nationally renowned performer who, despite her unmatched talent, retained her hometown identity and lived her life as a St. Louis woman.

In Only in St. Louis!, Charlie Brennan shares the most incredible, strange and inspiring stories he has come across in his three decades talking about the Gateway City. Readers will learn: Wilt Chamberlain was traded in a St. Louis restaurant. Jesus Christ Superstar was first staged in St. Louis, not New York. A St. Louis Cardinal pitcher beat Randy Johnson while drinking vodka. A St. Louis mayor was buried three times. Supreme Court Justices laughed aloud while hearing a St. Louis case. A St. Louis woman woke up when she heard an intruder...who turned out to be a national celebrity. Kenny Wayne Shepherd's worst moment on stage was in St. Louis. A St. Louis man found $1,200 in his ceiling. J.S. Bach's personal bibles are in St. Louis. A St. Louis high school name is actually misspelled. Why Kurt Warner listed his name and address in the phone book. The Air Force's biggest weapon is made in St. louis. John Lennon's song "Imagine" has a St. Louis connection. The NFL's "lowest blow" has ties to St. Louis. Twinkies were named in St. Louis. A lost wallet led to one of the best-selling songs of the 1960s. The woman who injected John Belushi with a fatal dose hid in St. Louis. A St. Louis man swam 292 miles of the Mississippi River without stopping. Why General William Tecumseh Sharman could defeat the south but not City Hall. The only company to prepare cocaine for medicinal use is in St. Louis. A St. Louis barista became a billionaire. A man was attacked by a shark in downtown St. Louis. A St. Louis man played basketball for St. Louis Community College, football for Yale and is now a top national journalist. Brennan, host of "The Charlie Brennan Show" on KMOX and provocateur of "Donnybrook" on KETC-TV, curates these and other stories for the first time in one volume.

On the surface, the Woman's Exchange of St. Louis is an exquisite gift shop with an adjacent tearoom--beloved, always packed, the chatter light and feminine, the salads and pies perfect. But the volunteers who run the Woman's Exchange have had enough grit to keep the place going through two world wars, a Great Depression, several recessions, the end of fine craftsmanship and the start of a new DIY movement. The "decayed gentlewomen" they set out to help in 1883 are now refugees from Afghanistan, battered wives and mothers of sons paralyzed in Iraq. Sample the radical changes they have made over the years, as well as the institutions they wisely left alone, like the iconic cherry dress that has charmed generations of women and mothers, including Jacqueline Kennedy and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Like most of the nation during the 1930s, St. Louis, Missouri, was caught in the stifling grip of the Great Depression. For the next thirty years, the "Gateway City" continued to experience significant urban decline as its population swelled and the area's industries stagnated. Over these decades, many African American citizens in the region found themselves struggling financially and fighting for access to profitable jobs and suitable working conditions. To combat ingrained racism, crippling levels of poverty, and sub-standard living conditions, black women worked together to form a community-based culture of resistance—fighting for employment, a living wage, dignity, representation, and political leadership. Gateway to Equality investigates black working-class women's struggle for economic justice from the rise of New Deal liberalism in the 1930s to the social upheavals of the 1960s. Author Keona K. Ervin explains that the conditions in twentieth-century St. Louis were uniquely conducive to the rise of this movement since the city's economy was based on light industries that employed women, such as textiles and food processing. As part of the Great Migration, black women migrated to the city at a higher rate than their male counterparts, and labor and black freedom movements relied less on a charismatic, male leadership model. This made it possible for women to emerge as visible and influential leaders in both formal and informal capacities. In this impressive study, Ervin presents a stunning account of the ways in which black working-class women creatively fused racial and economic justice. By illustrating that their politics played an important role in defining urban political agendas, her work sheds light on an unexplored aspect of community activism and illuminates the complexities of the overlapping civil rights and labor movements during the first half of the twentieth century.

"Meet Me in St. Louis" was written by Sally Benson in 1941. It tells the story of the Smith family in 1903, who were looking forward to the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis. It was originally published in New Yorker magazine as "The Kensington Stories" and later adapted to become the major motion picture, "Meet Me in St. Louis," starring Judy Garland in 1944.

He wasn't from St. Louis, but St. Louis changed his life. Most of his greatest experiences stemmed from the St. Louisans he married and befriended: the expatriate years in Paris, the house in Key West, his first African safari, fishing expeditions in the Gulf Stream, his Cuban estate, and so much more. His life was a raucous, creative, adventurous, and sometimes vicious series of events. Here are the five Saint Louis families that shaped the life that shaped the stories.

In this masterful play, Tennessee Williams explores the meaning of loneliness and the need for human connection through the lens of four women and the designs and desires they harbor—for themselves and for each other. It is a warm June morning in the West End of St. Louis in the mid-thirties––a lovely Sunday for a picnic at Creve Coeur Lake. But Dorothea, one of Tennessee Williams’s most engaging "marginally youthful," forever hopeful Southern belles, is home waiting for a phone call from the principal of the high school where she teaches civics––the man she expects to fulfill her deferred dreams of romance and matrimony. Williams’s unerring dialogue reveals each of the four characters of A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur with precision and clarity: Dorothea, who does even her "setting-up exercises" with poignant flutters; Bodey, her German roommate, who wants to pair Dotty with her beer-drinking twin, Buddy, thereby assuring nieces, nephews, and a family for both herself and Dotty; Helena, a fellow teacher, with the "eyes of a predatory bird," who would like to "rescue" Dotty from her vulgar, common surroundings and substitute an elegant but sterile spinster life; and Miss Gluck, a newly orphaned and distraught neighbor, whom Bodey comforts with coffee and crullers while Helena mocks them both. Focusing on one morning and one encounter of four women, Williams once again skillfully explores, with comic irony and great tenderness, the meaning of loneliness, the need for human connection, as well as the inevitable compromises one must make to get through "the long run of life."