This Place of Promise

A Historian’s Perspective on 200 Years of Missouri History

Gary R. Kremer

328 pages

Published: December 2021

49 b&w photos

ISBN: 9780826222480

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Price: $40.00

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About This Book: Conceived of as a way to commemorate Missouri's bicentennial of statehood, this unique work presents the perspective of Gary Kremer, one of the Show-Me State's foremost historians, on how history has played out in the two centuries since Missouri's admittance to the Union. In the writing of what is much more than a survey history, Kremer, himself a fifth-generation Missourian, infuses the narrative with his vast knowledge and personal experiences as he thoughtfully considers what being a Missourian has meant—across the many years and to this day—to all of the state's people, and how the forces of history—time, place, race, gender, religion, and class—shaped people and determined their opportunities and choices, in turn creating communities of collective experience that draw upon the past in order to try to make sense of the present and plan for the future.
Authors and Editors: Gary R. Kremer is a fifth-generation Missourian, born and raised in a small, homogenous German Catholic community in Osage County. Since 2004, he has served as the Executive Director of the State Historical Society of Missouri and a Senior Fellow in the Society’s Center for Missouri Studies. Among his many publications are James Milton Turner and the Promise of America: The Public Life of a Post-Civil War Black Leader; George Washington Carver: In His Own Words; Women in Missouri History: In Search of Power and Influence; George Washington Carver: A Biography; and Race and Meaning: The African American Experience in Missouri. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Missouri Historical Review.
Praise For This Book: “The breadth of coverage here is impressive and benefits handsomely from the author’s command of the state’s social and political history. His expertise in such a wide range of Missouri topics, particularly the African-American experience and the history of education, shines in the book’s key themes.”—Jeremy Neely, Missouri State University–Springfield, author of The Border between Them: Violence and Reconciliation on the Kansas-Missouri Line

“Gary Kremer’s engaging and occasionally personalized account of Missouri’s 200-year post-statehood history manifests his wide-ranging knowledge of the state’s past, the lived experiences of his multi-generational Missouri family, and his skills as a storyteller. General readers and scholars alike will find much to like in this artfully crafted book marking the bicentennial of Missouri statehood.”—William E. Foley, University of Central Missouri and author of The Genesis of Missouri: From Wilderness Outpost to Statehood

“This Place of Promise is a refreshing and enlightening journey through two centuries of Missouri statehood. Leavened with just the right amount of personal reflection from Gary R. Kremer, it is a book that could only be written by a historian from the heart of Missouri who has devoted almost half a century to the study of his home state.”—Brooks Blevins, Missouri State University, author of A History of the Ozarks, Volume 3: The Ozarkers

“This Place of Promise is everything that the best history strives to be—passionate, provocative, and powerful. In recounting his own life story and those of others, the famous and the ordinary alike, Kremer captures what it has meant to be a Missourian over the past two centuries of statehood. It’s a captivating book, sweeping in its historical scope, meticulous in its research, and masterful in its telling.”—Patrick Huber, Missouri University of Science and Technology, co-editor of The Hank Williams Reader

“Some may find Kremer’s commentary outside the bounds of what a history of the state ought to be. However, he makes clear early in this volume his overarching reason for writing this book. ’One of the great benefits of studying history,’ Kremer argues, ‘is that the process provides us with an opportunity to come to grips with why we are the way we are’ (p. 26). He has done that with a clarity and command of the material that one expects from a master historian. Gary Kremer has served his state well with this candid book.”—Missouri Historical Review