Christopher Phillips provides the reader with a fascinting insight into the character of Nathaniel Lyon. Rarely in reading a biography has the reader come away with such a clear and precise understanding as to what the central character's personality was really like.
By providing this insight into Lyon's character the reader can clearly understand what motivated Lyon to take the actions he took in the troubled 1860's in Missouri. Lyon was a not very likable individual, He brought a zealot's zeal to virtually everything he believed in or did regardless of the conseqences. In the end this zeal brought about his own death. A great read...two thumbs up.

Biographies of 700+ individuals who have contributed significantly to the development of the state of Missouri with many achieving national fame as well. The book draws from all fields of activities--politics, business, science, religion, art, etc. without regard to race, gender, etc. Although the book seems a little pricy at first glance, I wasn't disappointed--the thoroughness and quality makes it well worth the price.

Befroe the time of tabiod news, there was a man who felt that journalism should be taught in college so that the people who entered the field knew what they were doing. From that beginning at the University of Missouri, many other colleges have gone on to teach journalism. But it took the work of one man who believed that journalism was a respeceted profession to make the rest of the world to believe that too. A fascinating read about Walter Williams and how the School of Journalism came to be at one university and changed the way journalist were thought of.

Driving in Jefferson City, Missouri a few years ago, I saw a man selling Confederate flags by the side of the road. In the St. Louis area, where I live, this man would probably have been beaten to within an inch of his life, but to most Missourians, St. Louis might as well be New York City. In out-state Missouri, publicly displaying a Confederate flag does not seem to be an unofficial felony.

Why? Why did a state which began life and perceived itself as Western become the most Confederate state in America(as some of us like to point out, WE didn't surrender until 1882, when Frank James turned himself in after Jesse's murder)? In this biography of Claiborne Jackson, the Missouri governor who tried to take his state out of the Union, Christopher Phillips argues that Missouri's transformation from Western to Southern basically boiled down to the protection of slavery. Central Missourians, the people around whom this book mostly revolves, did not see owning slaves as contrary to democracy but central to it. Their families had owned slaves since emigrating to the West from Kentucky or Virginia. Threats, or perceived threats, to slavery finally drove segments of Missouri's leadership to a full-fledged Southern identity and led to Missouri's exceptionally violent civil war, which in turn fueled Missouri's fierce postwar attachment to the Confederate States.

This is both a good biography of Jackson and a good study of antebellum Missouri. But I do have a few problems with it. Phillips spends the bulk of his time in the Boon's Lick(now called Little Dixie another result of the war)among the slaveholding aristocracy there. Natural, one assumes, because that's where Jackson was from, but the rest of the state is neglected. St. Louis is paid attention to, but other areas of the state, like the fiercely Unionist regions of the Ozarks, are barely mentioned. And once the war starts, Phillips seems in a hurry to wrap things up; I wish he'd spent more time on the war itself.

Nonetheless, if you're interested in antebellum American history, this book is well worth your time.

This book gives only a few new insights into Laura Ingalls Wilders life. You learn she was a private person and she must have been because most of the information about her life seems to be from records of what organizations she belonged to. I did not like the way that the book seemed to turn into a bio about her daughter Rose Wilder Lane about halfway through. Not only did the author talk more about her than Laura he painted a picture in my opinion of a depressed unhappy woman who did not really care for her mother deep down. I also felt that since most of us "know" Lauras' family from the Little House books the author could have given the readers some more detailed information about how their lives turned out. That would have interested me more then hearing about Roses' depressed and seemingly unhappy life.

I have devoloped something of a Laura Ingalls Wilder fixation over the years. I have read many biographies, mostly ones for children that focus on her childhood and apparently describe it pretty much as she described it in her books. This is the first one to try and gain some real insight into her adult years. It is interesting enough, but alas, while we get paragraph upon paragraph about the economic situations of the various towns Laura lived in and other information of that sort, there isn't a whole lot there where the person is concerned. I guess that's understandable, since she didn't leave a whole lot of revealing writings behind like her daughter Rose, and since the book gives the impression that she was very introverted, she apparently didn't open herself up that much, either. So, I guess John Miller had only a limited amount of resources to work with, but still, her character could have been fleshed out more. There are some interesting tidbits, particularly about how she once ran for election of head of her town's township, but about the person, we get very little, which is only to be expected, I guess, but unfotunate nevertheless.

The book only really gets good when it talks about the creation of Laura's novels, and the collaboration between her and her daughter in seeing them to fruition. Curiously, I have never actually read any of the "Little House" books, or any of Rose's and Laura' other writings, and therefore, cannot give my opinion on who I think really wrote them, an issue that's been hotly debated in recent years. While some have claimed that Rose, a very successful writer in her own right, edited and polished them to such an extent that she was essentially the ghost writer of the novels, Miller begs to differ. He claims that Laura did know more than a little about how to write, having honed her skills for more than a decade in writing columns for a Missouri newspaper about farming. Rose did edit and polish the manuscripts, and there was much back-and-forth discusion between mother and daughter about how they should be structured, etc, but her work on them was really nothing out of the ordinary. I can't say if this is true or not, but I really enjoyed reading about it. I also enjoyed the parts in which the book tried to answer the question of whether the novels are true to life. (It says that the minute details about farm life were thoroughly reaserached and as accurate as possible, and that the family realtionships were probably not any differtn from the books, but that the facts were changed around some time, either to make the story more beleiveable or understandable or because Laura couldn't really remember them.) There appears to have been a very complex realtionship between mother and daughter, but it is yet another thing in the book that isn't really throughly documented.

This is indeed a great book for history and research projects, and for fans of the Little House books. There is some intersting information, but on the whole it's too sketchy to reveal much about the real Laura, the person, which is a shame, but can't really be helped, it would seem.

This book gives a much more balanced account of Laura Ingalls Wilder's life than other recent biographies. John E. Miller creates a richly detailed portrait of the real Laura Ingalls Wilder, one that is well supported by his documentation. The relationship between LIW and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, is examined in great detail. Miller's assertions about the relationship between mother and daughter ring true. His statements are clearly supported by his research. He does not attempt to negate Rose Wilder Lane's contribution to the Little House Series. This book gives a good picture of the complexities of the mother/daughter literary collaboration. One comes away with a better understanding of and an appreciation for both women. "Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder" is an interesting, well written, and highly readable biography. A most welcome addition to the shelf of any admirer of Laura Ingalls Wilder's books!