This new historical overview tells the dramatic story of the American West from its prehistory to the present. A narrative history, it covers the region from the North Dakota-to-Texas states to the Pacific Coast and includes experiences and contributions of American Indians, Hispanics, and African Americans.

The New Yorker recently referred to Pat Metheny as “possibly the most influential jazz guitarist of the past five decades.” A native of Lee’s Summit, Missouri, just southeast of Kansas City, Metheny started playing in pizza parlors at age fourteen. By the time he graduated from high school he was the first-call guitarist for Kansas City jazz clubs, private clubs, and jazz festivals. Now 66, he attributes his early success to the local musical environment he was brought up in and the players and teachers who nurtured his talent and welcomed him into the jazz community. Metheny's twenty Grammys in ten categories speak to his versatility and popularity. Despite five decades of interviews, none have conveyed in detail his stories about his teenage years. Beneath Missouri Skies also reveals important details about jazz in Kansas City during the sixties and early seventies, often overlooked in histories of Kansas City jazz. Yet this time of cultural change was characterized by an outstanding level of musicianship. Author Carolyn Glenn Brewer shows how his keen sense of ensemble had its genesis in his school band under the guidance of a beloved band director. Drawn from news accounts, archival material, interviews, and remembrances, to which the author had unique access, Beneath Missouri Skies portrays a place and time from which Metheny still draws inspiration and strength.

Play Me Something Quick and Devilish explores the heritage of traditional fiddle music in Missouri. Howard Wight Marshall considers the place of homemade music in people’s lives across social and ethnic communities from the late 1700s to the World War I years and into the early 1920s. This exceptionally important and complex period provided the foundations in history and settlement for the evolution of today’s old-time fiddling. Beginning with the French villages on the Mississippi River, Marshall leads us chronologically through the settlement of the state and how these communities established our cultural heritage. Other core populations include the “Old Stock Americans” (primarily Scotch-Irish from Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia), African Americans, German-speaking immigrants, people with American Indian ancestry (focusing on Cherokee families dating from the Trail of Tears in the 1830s), and Irish railroad workers in the post–Civil War period. These are the primary communities whose fiddle and dance traditions came together on the Missouri frontier to cultivate the bounty of old-time fiddling enjoyed today. Marshall also investigates themes in the continuing evolution of fiddle traditions. These themes include the use of the violin in Westward migration, in the Civil War years, and in the railroad boom that changed history. Of course, musical tastes shift over time, and the rise of music literacy in the late Victorian period, as evidenced by the brass band movement and immigrant music teachers in small towns, affected fiddling. The contributions of music publishing as well as the surprising importance of ragtime and early jazz also had profound effects. Much of the old-time fiddlers’ repertory arises not from the inherited reels, jigs, and hornpipes from the British Isles, nor from the waltzes, schottisches, and polkas from the Continent, but from the prolific pens of Tin Pan Alley. Marshall also examines regional styles in Missouri fiddling and comments on the future of this time-honored, and changing, tradition. Documentary in nature, this social history draws on various academic disciplines and oral histories recorded in Marshall’s forty-some years of research and field experience. Historians, music aficionados, and lay people interested in Missouri folk heritage—as well as fiddlers, of course—will find Play Me Something Quick and Devilish an entertaining and enlightening read. With 39 tunes, the enclosed Voyager Records companion CD includes a historic sampler of Missouri fiddlers and styles from 1955 to 2012. A media kit is available here: press.umsystem.edu/pages/PlayMeSomethingQuickandDevilish.aspx

More standards, tests, and mandates are not the answer to improving literacy. Sparks in the Dark inspires educators in every subject area to be intentional about instilling a love of reading and writing in all students.

From popular TV correspondent and writer Rocca comes a charmingly irreverent and rigorously researched book that celebrates the dead people who made life worth living.

"Robert Adamss' sixth book of landscape/topographical photography, exploring the area west of the Missouri River, where his ancestors settled several generations ago. Printed by the Meriden Gravure Company using negatives prepared by Richard Benson."--Amazon.

(Fake Book). 147 tunes from one of the most influential and groundbreaking jazz artists of the modern generation arranged here for all C instruments in the favored Real Book style. Titles include: April Joy * Better Days Ahead * Bright Size Life * Farmer's Trust * (Go) Get It * H & H * Have You Heard * Jaco * James * Lakes * Last Train Home * Midwestern Nights Dream * Phase Dance * Question & Answer * The Red One * So May It Secretly Begin * Sueno Con Mexico * Uniquity Road * Unity Village * Whittlin' * and more!

This vol. is primarily concerned with southwest Missouri counties; especially Stone County.

Features an account of the evolution of Missouri's park system and essays on each of the state's historic sites and parks.