American Biographies - History Books

Name: Murder & Mayhem in Southeast Kansas
Brand: Larry Wood
SKU: 9781467141406
Price: 21.99 USD
Availability: InStock

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Murder & Mayhem in Southeast Kansas

The Ghostly Tales of Lawrence

Paperback

$12.99

Wichita's Lebanese Heritage

Paperback

$24.99

Kansas Tycoon Emerson Carey

Kenneth & Helen Spencer of Kansas

Murder & Mayhem in Southeast Kansas

9781467141406

$21.99

From railroad towns like Ladore to cow towns like Newton and Wichita, southeast Kansas pulsed with rowdy activity during the late nineteenth century.

The unruly atmosphere drew outlaws, including the Dalton Gang, and even crazed serial killers the likes of the Bender clan. Violent incidents, from gunfights to lynchings, punctuated the region’s Wild West era, and the allure of the frontier also attracted the everyday people whose passions sometimes spawned bloodshed as well. Award-winning author Larry E. Wood explores thirteen of these remarkable episodes in the criminal history of southeast Kansas.

Leavenworth Seven

9781467140409

$21.99

On December 11, 1931, chaos erupted behind Leavenworth’s limestone penitentiary walls as seven desperate men put months of planning into action. Aided by notorious gangsters Frank Nash, George “Machine Gun” Kelly and Thomas James Holden, they blazed a path to freedom with stolen cars and terrorized hostages. Anyone who could carry a gun and knew the terrain quickly picked up the pursuit. Kenneth LaMaster wades into the flying bullets of first-person accounts, news reports and official FBI files for the full story of the frenzied prison break.

The Ghostly Tales of Lawrence

9781467198837

$12.99

Ghost stories from Lawrence, Kansas have never been so creepy, fun, and full of mystery!

The haunted history of Lawrence comes to life—even when the main players are dead. Wander into Lawrence Cordley Elementary School, but keep your eye out for the ghost of little Tommy. Or stop into the Eldridge Hotel for a glimpse of guests who checked in but never checked out. Dive into this spooky chapter book for suspenseful tales of bumps in the night, paranormal investigations, and the unexplained; just be sure to keep the light on.

Wichita's Lebanese Heritage

9780738577173

$24.99

Wichita, a city of entrepreneurs, offered an ideal home for Middle Eastern Christians who started arriving in the 1890s. Initially identifying themselves as Syrians, they operated as peddlers across southern Kansas and northern Oklahoma. Peddling rapidly gave way to wholesale, grocery, and dry goods companies. Patriarchs such as N. F. Farha and E. G. Stevens established themselves in local business and civic circles. Primarily Eastern Orthodox, the Lebanese established two churches, St. George Orthodox Church and St. Mary Orthodox Christian Church, that became focal points of community life. After World War II, entrepreneurs responded to new opportunities, from real estate to supermarkets to the professions. In recent decades, an additional wave of immigrants from war-torn Lebanon has continued the entrepreneurial tradition.

Kansas Tycoon Emerson Carey

9781467140799

$21.99

Emerson Carey, the powerful salt magnate of Hutchinson, Kansas, was the architect of his own rags-to-riches story on the prairie.

“I’ve seen a fly make a bull switch his tail” is a homespun quip attributed to Emerson Carey. True or not, the quote epitomizes the fearless and tenacious character of the legend who became Reno County’s benefactor. Young, awestruck Carey arrived in boomtown 1880s Hutchinson and went on to create an immense empire. Coal, ice, salt, strawboard, egg cases, bags, soda ash and streetcars—he presided over it all. From Carey’s sleeping in a coal yard with a quarter in his pocket to the founding of the exclusive Willowbrook community and attaining a net worth of more than $15 million, authors Lynn Ledeboer and Myron Marcotte relate the epic story.

Wicked Kansas

9781467143882

$23.99

Kansans like to think of their state as a land of industrious, law-abiding and friendly people, and for the most part they are correct.

Kansas history has many tales of murders, cons, extrajudicial killings and other crimes. Its restive frontier attracted menacing characters, such as a cowboy who murdered a man for snoring, the serial-killing Bender family and the train-robbing James-Younger Gang. Although the area was eventually settled, the scandals did not cease. Learn about how a quack doctor nearly won the governorship, a decommissioned nuclear missile silo housed the largest LSD manufacturing operation in American history and more. Author Adrian Zink explores the salacious side of Kansas history in these wild and degenerate stories.

Kenneth & Helen Spencer of Kansas

9781626193895

$24.99

Born on opposite sides of the Kansas/Missouri border in 1902, Kenneth Aldred Spencer and his wife, Helen Foresman Spencer, were transformative figures in the Midwest during the twentieth century. Kenneth grew up in the small town of Pittsburg, Kansas, but by the 1950s, his innovation in the chemical and coal industries had earned him mention in Forbes magazine for his role as one of the nation's great industrialists. But it is the couple's remarkable philanthropic work that stands as their true legacy, preserved in places like the Kenneth Spencer Research Library and the Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art..

Kansas Oddities

9781467139229

$23.99

Touch down at Dead Cow International Airport and sample the state's bumper crop of bizarre history. The most commonplace sights contain unlikely stories, from the bulldozer's Morrowsville origins to the sunflower's journey from outlawed weed to state symbol. Some of this heritage lies submerged or buried, like the world's only saltwater spring, which now sits at the bottom of a man-made lake. Rumored caches of the Fleagle Gang's loot still draw treasure hunters in spades. From mariachi legends to rodeo roundups, Roger Ringer gathers in a vast and varied harvest of Kansas lore.