Some Monday Readings - April 6, 2026

How ‘Tiny Shortcuts’ Are Poisoning Science – Thomas Plumper and Eric Neumayer at The MIT Press Reader. 

The Bills That Destroyed Urban America – Joseph Lawler at The New Atlantis.

 

A Truck Driver Spent 20 Years Building a Miniature Model of New York City. Then, It Went Viral – Sarah Cascone at Artnet.

 

Selma Hall, Jefferson County, Missouri – Chris Naffziger at St. Louis Patina.

 

Spies and Lies: The Rosenbergs and America’s Atomic Secrets – Jason Clark at This Is the Day.

 

Ancient Splendor: Roman Art in the Time of Trajan – St. Louis Art Museum (video).

 

Editor, Do Your Work! – Tery Whalin at The Writing Life.

Photograph: Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.

 

"John Fremont's 100 Days" by Gregory Wolk

The name John Fremont (1813-1890) evokes images of Manifest Destiny, exploration of the western United States, the first Republican candidate for President (18560, and the separation of California from Mexico. Less well-known is his very brief role in the American Civil War.  

For slightly more than three months in 1861, he was the commander of the U.S. Army’s Western Department, stretching from Illinois to the Rocky Mountains and headquartered in St. Louis. Those three months are now detailed in John Fremont’s 100 Days: Clashes and Convictions in Civil War Missouri by Gregory Wolk and published by the Missouri Historical Society.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Love Is All You Need: Motive Power of Western Civilization – Bradley Birzer at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

All the Time I Thought Was Mine – Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

Nutcracker Dreams – Jordana Rosenman at Front Porch Republic.

A Live Tweetspeak Poetry Party with Sara Teasdale, Part 2

She didn’t live here her entire life, but St. Louis claims poet Sara Teasdale (1884-1933) as one of its own. 

The Teasdale family was well-to-do. Their first home was on Lindell Boulevard, in the area we call “midtown,” the intersection of Grand and Lindell boulevards. Today, the Grand Entertainment District is on the north side of Lindell and St Louis University is on the south. The Teasdale home was located on land that is now occupied by university buildings.

The family moved farther west to Kingsbury Place, a few blocks north of Forest Park. This area was being developed as an enclave of private streets before, during, and after the St. Louis World’s Fair. Teasdale’s house still stands; Kingsbury Place is still a beautiful street with large, well-maintained homes. (Not long ago, it was sold for $1.1 million.)

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

National Book Award for Poetry: “Indecency” by Justin Phillip Reed

The 2018 National Book Award for Poetry was given to Indecency by Justin Phillip Reed. Reed is a young poet living in St. Louis. Indecency is his first published collection; he had published a chapbook, A History of Flamboyance, in 2016.

I saw the National Book Award announcement, but I didn’t realize the St. Louis connection. A couple of days after the announcement, the “good news” columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch had a brief item about Reed being a poet living in St. Louis. Later, the book editor included a short note and the Associated Press story about the winners on her book blog. 

A St. Louis poet, with strong connections to Washington University in St. Louis included an M.F.A. degree and a junior writer position wins the National Book Award for Poetry, and that’s how the local paper covers it? Go figure. At least Washington University issued two new releases, one from the university and one from its College of Arts & Sciences. This past May, St. Louis Magazine did an interview with Reed specifically about his new collection, and it’s filled with interesting ideas and discussion. (Read the interview; he explains where the title of the collection came from.)

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

“Love Songs:” Claiming Sara Teasdale for St. Louis

My town of St. Louis claims Sara Teasdale as one of its own, but you wouldn’t know it from any sign, memorial, plaque or other designation. The city does not discriminate; T.S. Eliot is treated the same way, although he does have a plaque on the sidewalk in front of where his house once stood.

Teasdale was born in St. Louis in 1884. She lived in a house on Lindell Boulevard, today the northern boundary of Forest Park. In 1902, her family moved to Kingsbury Place, a few blocks north and what in St Louis was and is known as a “private street.” The city’s Central West End is filled with these private streets, built by developers for the wealthy. Homeowners on these streets today continue to be responsible for street repair, maintenance, and snow removal, and the homes and the streets have largely survived the vicissitudes of urban decay.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph: Sara Teasdale in 1910.

Take Your Poet to School Week: Eugene Field, the Poet of Childhood

Not long after we moved to St. Louis, we visited the Eugene Field House Museum. I remember an overcast day, a not-well-lit museum, and a focus more on old toys than on Eugene Field, the man once called “the poet laureate of childhood.” And I remember a small story about the museum – it had been saved by schoolchildren.

The museum sits at what was originally known as 634 S. Fifth Street and now known as South Broadway. It is just south of Busch Stadium, on the southern edge of downtown. Built about 1845, the row house was one of 12 known as Walsh’s Row. Attorney Roswell Field, who represented his law firm’s janitor, Dred Scott, in the landmark Supreme Court case, moved his wife and baby son Eugene there in 1851. A second son, Roswell, came shortly after. When Eugene was six, his mother died, and his father sent both boys to live with a cousin in Amherst, Mass.

When Eugene was 18, his father died. He attended three colleges, including the University of Missouri at Columbia, but never graduated. At 21, he received his share of his father’s estate, went to Europe, and spent it. Two years later, he returned, got married, and went to work for a St. Louis newspaper.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

“A Shattered Peace” by Luke H. Davis

Detective Cameron Ballack of the St. Charles County police department in Missouri is assigned Special Investigative Division that serves the metropolitan St. Louis area. The division investigates major crimes, especially murders connected to religious organizations.

He was appointed to this team because of his crime-solving work at a Greek Orthodox seminary (detailed in Litany of Secrets). His first major case with the special unit, recounted in The Broken Cross, involved the Roman Catholic Church. Ballack is something unusual among policemen – he’s wheelchair-bound because of congenital health issues. He’s also an agnostic, which makes for interesting conversation with his minister father and Christian mother and sister, not to mention his teammates in the division.

First it was the Orthodox, and then the Catholics. Now it’s the Protestants’ turn, in A Shattered Peace by Luke H. Davis.

Ballack and his team are called to Dayspring Community Church, a large Protestant evangelical church in a well-heeled suburb of west St. Louis County. A counselor, the assistant director at the counseling center associated with the church, has been found dead in her office. It doesn’t take the medical examiner long to learn she’s been murdered, with crushed ribs and fatal internal injuries from being punched in her back.

Suspects abound. The counselor was at odds with both the center director and the senior pastor at the church, who were maneuvering to remove her. Some of her fellow counselors can’t provide solid alibis for the time of the murder. And then the detectives have to consider her clients and former clients, some of whom might have their own reasons for disliking the counselor.

The detectives’ personal issues keep intruding into the case. Ballack’s girlfriend seems to be pushing away from him. His partner, Tori Vaughn, has a family crisis. Another team member will recognize someone whom she thinks murdered her father. Ballack’s sister has been dating one of the counselors at the center. The personal issues swirl around the team, and Ballack has to work hard to keep the team, and himself, on track.

And then there’s a second murder.

Luke H. Davis

Davis teaches at Westminster Christian Academy in St. Louis, and is chair of the Bible Department there. He’s also taught at schools in Louisiana, Florida, and Virginia. He describes himself as “Presbyterian body, Lutheran heart, Anglican blood, Orthodox spirit,” all of which have served him well in writing the Cameron Ballack mysteries. He has published two previous Ballack mysteries, Litany of Secrets (2013) and The Broken Cross (2015), and the first book of a new series, Joel: The Merivalkan Chronicles Book 1 (2017).

As in his earlier mysteries, A Shattered Peace is more than a simple mystery story or police procedural. The reader gains insights into how a large Protestant church (one with a dominating senior pastor) actually functions. And the characters regularly discuss theological and faith issues, and how faith applies to life. Ballack, as an agnostic, provides a counterpoint to the more faith-enthusiastic characters.

And it wouldn’t be a Ballack mystery without a rather thrilling conclusion – and A Shattered Peace clearly has that. In all of these mysteries, Davis maintains a high level of pace, narrative development, and reader interest. This third installment in the Detective Cameron Ballack series is the best yet.

Related:

Reading a Novel that Stars Your Hometown.

My review of Litany of Secrets.

My review of The Broken Cross.

Top photograph by Nik MacMillan via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“Little Boy Lost” by J.D. Trafford

Not many adult American read fiction these days, and that includes Christians of all varieties. The Washington Post reported on a study recently that says people who read fiction are more empathetic than those who do not. Buffer explored the same study and found nine benefits in reading fiction, of which increased empathy was only one.

Little Boy Lost by J.D. Trafford may go a step further. It’s a mystery novel, and specifically a legal mystery novel. The hero is a lawyer in St. Louis who has a struggling practice, despite his being a member of one of the city’s powerful political families. Justin Glass’s father is a congressman; his older brother is a state senator. Justin is another kind of man, however; he cares about the people of his city, and he represents all comers, including those who can’t afford to pay, which is most of his client base.

Justin lives with his daughter Sammy in a carriage house of a home owned by his grandfather. His mother lives in the house. The grandfather and the mother are white. Justin’s father is black. The reader knows going into the story that a major theme will be race, relationships with police, political power structures, and the poor who are too often caught in a system they can’t, and sometimes won’t, escape.

A little girl shows up with a jar of change and asks Justin to find her missing teenaged brother. There’s nothing new in a missing inner-city kid; it happens so much that it’s an accepted part of “the system.” But Justin decides to accept the request. He checks with his contacts at the police department. He starts reading files. And then the boy’s body is found in a county park’ along with the bodies of eight other boys, their hands in plastic hand ties behind their backs.

Suspicions center on a parole officer who happens to be a white supremacist and neo-Confederate. The news about the suspect goes public, and the city erupts in protest and violence. And if that had been the basic story, Trafford would have drawn just another race relations cartoon stereotype. But stereotypes are not where this story goes.

J.D. Trafford

Instead, we see race through Justin’s biracial eyes. There’s no question he considers himself a black man, but he doesn’t look at life, how own or that of others, in black and white or even shades of gray. Instead, he looks at life in terms of people, and he sees people who have value and people who matter, no matter their race, income and education level, or arrest record.

Trafford is the author of three legal mystery novels, No Time to Die, No Time to Run, and No Time to Hide. Graduated with honors in law, he’s been a civil and criminal prosecutor, worked at a large national law firm, and as a non-profit attorney. He’s lived in Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, and currently lives in the Midwest. He knows his St. Louis; this story is so well anchored in St. Louis streets, neighborhoods, landmarks, and people that it could almost serve as a reality tour guide.

Little Boy Lost is indeed a mystery story, but it’s far more than that. It’s a story of a city, a story about race, and a story that reaches for understanding in a way that newspaper articles and editorials never could. And it stands as a good reminder about why it’s important to read fiction.

Photograph of downtown St. Louis from the Arch by Kelly Sikkema via Unsplash. Used with permission.