Jim Merkel

A revolutionary guide to living up to your own personal, and measurable, sustainability goal

Small Footprints on a Finite Earth

Radical Simplicity

The Gateway Arch is one of America's most distinctive and beloved national monuments. Much has been written about the Arch, but no book has captured the legend, lore, and spirit behind its conception and construction, until now. The Making of an Icon:The Dreamers, the Schemers, and the Hard Hats Who Built the Gateway Arch compiles well-known, and rare, stories about the visionaries, finaglers, protesters, and fearless-but-skilled hands involved in an incredible undertaking that courted as much controversy as it did enthusiasm. The dreamers included the architect Eero Saarinen, who spent fourteen years tweaking his design for a Gateway Arch but never lived to see it built. Topping the list of schemers was Democratic Mayor Bernard Dickmann, who threatened to throw Missouri to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Republican opponent if the president wouldn't provide money for Smith's memorial. That was left to intrepid workers who walked without lanyards hundreds of feet above the ground. Today, 2.5 million visit the Gateway Arch every year, and more than 100,000 motorists view the 63-story monument daily from miles away and up close. Many already comprehend its symbolic meaning and physical beauty. The Making of An Icon helps us appreciate the relentless pursuit, innovation, and toil that made the Arch happen.

The Dreamers, the Schemers, and the Hard Hats Who Built the Gateway Arch

The Making of an Icon

In the South Side, there lived a tactless TV guy who had a way of getting tossed out of everything on camera, from the old VP Fair to Bill Clinton’s 1996 local re-election victory party. On the South Side, there dwelt a collector of ancient vacuum cleaners, none of which worked when he demonstrated them before millions of guffawing viewers watching on national television. And on the South Side, a beer baron tried to fight off Prohibition with a high-class, three-sided beer hall. It’s all in the second edition of Hoosiers and Scrubby Dutch: St. Louis’s South Side. The first edition captured the essence of the South St. Louis, with its tales of women scrubbing steps ever Saturday, the yummy brain sandwich, and a nationally known gospel performer who ran a furniture store in the Cherokee neighborhood. These stories, along with the new ones that fill the second edition, convey what gives a truly unique place its rough but charming personality. The result—Holy Hoosiers!—is an edition that’s even better than the first!

Hoosiers and Scrubby Dutch, Second Edition: St. Louis's South Side

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 and the addition of beautiful color images, Merkel brings new information on the Arch grounds and museum to this updated and revised second edition. Now expanded, his book includes more stories compiled from 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 Making of an Icon: The Dreamers, the Schemers, and the Hard Hats Who Built the Gateway Arch, Second Edition

Clive Hamilton

Juliet B. Schor

Henry David Thoreau

Duane Elgin

Richard Denniss

John de Graaf

Philip Cafaro

Mark Alan Burch

Amatai Etzioni

Jerome Segal

Alan Durning

Richard Gregg

Arnold Mitchell

Eric Freyfogle

Mary Grigsby

David Shi

Intended as an invitation to an alternative way of life, this anthology, released by Wanganui publishers Stead and Daughters, brings together some of the most important literature on the post-consumerist living strategy known as 'voluntary simplicity.' By examining afresh our relationship with money, material possessions, the planet, ourselves and each other, the simple life of voluntary simplicity is about discovering the freedom and contentment that comes with knowing how much consumption is truly enough. And this might be a theme that has something to say to everyone, especially those of us who are everyday bombarded with thousands of cultural messages insisting that 'more is always better.' Voluntary simplicity is an art of living that is aglow with the insight that 'just enough is plenty.' The contributors to this anthology - all leading figures in the voluntary simplicity movement - are highly distinguished scholars, activists, educators, and artists. Brought together so comprehensively for the first time, the result is a collection of the very best writing on one of today's most important but neglected ideas. This progressive book is essential reading for the thoughtful non-conformist.

The Poetic Alternative to Consumer Culture

Voluntary Simplicity

Jim Merkel

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