Truman State University Press: 145 books

Mysterious cold spots, disembodied voices, and smoky apparitions are just a few of the ghostly goings-on gathered by journalist Jason Offutt in his trek across Missouri. Visiting public places such as Civil War battlefields, university halls, and infamous mansions, Offutt draws from hundreds of interviews...

In his private journals, Franklin Archibald Dick, a St. Louis attorney, Union officer, and provost marshal, wrote of his concerns about keeping Missouri pro-Union during the turbulent Civil War years. His firsthand perspective of important historical events includes the early Camp Jackson incident when...

With higher education coming under increasing scrutiny in today's economic climate, is a liberal-arts education still a valuable investment? Robert Bates Graber explores the historical, philosophical, and sociological origins and nature of liberal education, and draws on anthropology to show why we do,...

One of the most brilliant courtiers and military leaders in Renaissance France, Jacques de Savoie, duke of Nemours, was head of the cadet branch of the house of Savoy, a dynasty that had ruled over a collection of lands in the Western Alps since the eleventh century. Jacques cousin, Emanuel Filibert,...

In this first memoir about life in the Missouri State Penitentiary by a worker who was neither a prisoner nor a guard, Larry E. Neal reveals a portrait of prison life very different from common conceptions. As a maintenance worker, Neal led prisoner work crews, and his stories show that life inside the...

The armory buildings in most Missouri towns are the unheralded local face of the Missouri National Guard. Home to a part-time militia within communities around the state, the armories provide hallowed spaces to Guard members and serves the public in emergencies. Robert Wiegers presents a thorough...

Educator and reformer Peter Ramus (1515-72) was known for his rash assaults on the most esteemed and cherished foundations of religion and learning in France. As a leading figure in both the French Reform and the University of Paris, and author of the pedagogical system known as "Ramism," he consistently...

Poet David Livewell beckons you to follow him down the streets where he spent his childhood in North Philadelphia. This prize-winning collection guides readers through the working-class neighborhood of Kensington, not as tourists or passersby, but as open-eyed observers of the visceral and unique...

When Waltus Watkins, a successful farmer and entrepreneur, decided to open a woolen mill on his rural western Missouri property in the late 1850s, he was not just undertaking another commercial venture. By locating the factory on his farm rather than in one of the thriving nearby towns, Watkins made...

The spectacular natural wonder called Big Spring near the Current River is hidden away in Missouris Ozarks Hills. Hired to do a historical study of the state park at Big Spring, Bonnie Stepenoff also kept a personal journal and created an engaging narrative about hills, hillbillies, poverty, and the...

George Williams' monumental "The Radical Reformation" has been an essential reference work for historians of early modern Europe, narrating in rich, interpretative detail the interconnected stories of radical groups operating at the margins of the mainline Reformation. In its scope—spanning all...

Martin Luther's lectures on Genesis, delivered at the University of Wittenberg during the last decade of his life and later published by his students, allow modern readers to view a sixteenth-century professor engaging his students with the text of scripture and using that text to form them spiritually....

Diane Margolf looks at the Paris Chambre de l’Edit in this well-researched study about the special royal law court that adjudicated disputes between French Huguenots and the Catholics. Using archival records of the court’s criminal cases, Margolf analyzes the connections to three major issues...

Womens stories are noticeably absent from the master narrative of the Populist and Progressive movements, where their struggle for civil rights was more evident in the Midwest than any other region in the country. This collection of eleven biographical essays highlights women leaders in the Midwest who...