Bøger af Jim Merkel

One miserable spring night, a tired, bitter, despairing old lighthouse keeper prepares to jump off the top of Lake Superior's Devils Island Lighthouse. It seems the end for Owen McClatchy, but it's the beginning, during a wondrous summer of 1928. The instrument of McClatchy's redemption is most unexpected: new first assistant keeper Sam Brown and his family, just up from St. Louis. McClatchy sees Brown as incompetent, his wife as impertinent and his two kids as the devil underfoot. But by summer's end, the Browns help McClatchy realize he hasn't wasted his life on a lighthouse and enable him to jump into whatever life has for him. Based on the real Devils Island Lighthouse in Lake Superior's Apostle Islands archipelago, The Lighthouse on Devils Island is full of carefully-researched details about the drudgery, loneliness, beauty and heroism of a time and place when everything depended on keeping the light burning.

Hidden among the streets of St. Louis's south side are stories that span centuries. In the wake of COVID-19, author and journalist Jim Merkel set out on a walk that would take him block-by-block through the tales of history and community in South City. Completing the walk incrementally, Merkel ponders the ways in which the area has changed over time. Along the way, he interviews some of the unique characters and leaders who help maintain the city, encounters quirky stores and restaurants, and enjoys beautiful scenery in parks and on restored streets. Most of all, he finds hope in the underdogs, in the neighborhoods that have come back to life after decades of decline, and in the people whose love for their homes and their neighbors remains steadfast despite everything. The South Side is many things, but most importantly, it is a place where neighbors gather often, where people come together in hardship, and where small businesses and authenticity thrive. In Walking South City, Merkel crafts a thorough depiction of the area, with respect for the past and hope for the future. Grab your walking shoes, follow along, and get ready to look at South City in a way you never have before.

No matter when or where we grow up, the stories, people, and places that populate our memories leave an indelible mark on the manuscript that becomes our life story. A day at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904, meatless meals and hard times during the Great Depression, or knowing Mark McGwire's precise homerun count that summer of 1998 become galvanized in our own timelines, while other details fade into the background. In Growing Up St. Louis, hear the stories that stuck with more than 110 native St. Louisans over the last century told by the very people who lived through them. Ranging from joyous to humdrum, and even to grim, these childhood memories offer a glimpse of life in still frame, from the start of the twentieth century to the present day. A woman speaks lovingly of the elephant ears she bought in University City in the 1950s while a future local sportscaster falls in love with sports as he and his dad watch the 1968 World Series. With new and old photographs to accompany the essays, join veteran author Jim Merkel on a journey through ten decades of coming of age in St. Louis. Whether they spark nostalgia or empathy, they'll surely provoke commentary about how deeply our tender years impact us for the rest of our lives.

With his fourth book from Reedy Press, The Making of an Icon, Jim Merkel captured the spirit behind the conception and construction of one of America's most distinctive and beloved national monuments. More than two million visitors stand in awe at The Gateway Arch each year, and the stories behind it were unearthed in breathless detail in the first edition. Back with even more lore, Merkel brings new updates on the Arch grounds and museum to the updated and revised second edition. Now expanded, his book includes more stories, compiled from hundreds of interviews with the visionaries, finaglers, protesters, and intrepid workers who built the arch while one misstep away from a fatal fall. Merkel's book will help us appreciate the relentless pursuit, innovation, and toil that raised the Arch to the sky.

The Germans are back in the Second Edition of Beer, Brats, and Baseball: St. Louis Germans, with more oom-pah-pah, gemutlichkeit, and prosit than ever. In the First Edition, author Jim Merkel told how Germans saved the city for the Union, brewed the beer, ran the baseball team, and helped make St. Louis a place like nowhere else. The second edition adds new stories to the first. Here is the tale of the German immigrant restaurant owner who went home before World War II because people suspected him of being a Nazi sympathizer. Here as well is the story of the local craft brewer that bought a German brewery so St. Louisans could drink the most authentic European beer available. And herein readers will learn how a statue commemorating a Civil War engagement in which German immigrant volunteers ensured the victory was moved from the site where it happened. Did the daughter of the losing secessionist general play a part?