Missouri history book wins award

Earlier this year I blogged about an interesting new book on Missouri history, Mystery of the Irish Wilderness, by Leland and Crystal Payton of Lens and Pen Press. This is a fascinating account of an Irish Catholic community founded in the Ozarks that mysteriously disappeared during the Civil War. It's solidly researched and filled with the beautiful photos for which the Pyatons have become well known in Missouri.

Well, their hard work has finally paid off, and they've won a gold medal at the 2009 Independent Publisher Book Awards for Best Regional Non-Fiction.

Congratulations Leland and Crystal. You deserved it!

Interesting New Book On Missouri History

I've written three books on Missouri history and I'm still amazed at how many interesting stories there are still to be told about this state's fascinating past. One of them is the tale of a dedicated Irish priest who set up a colony for Irish immigrants in the rough hill country of the Ozarks. Mystery of the Irish Wilderness by Leland and Crystal Payton is the latest release from Lens & Pen Press. The Paytons are well known for their beautiful photographs of the Ozark region, and like their earlier books this volume is filled with them. The text is interesting too, telling of Father John Joseph Hogan's efforts to develop and serve two different colonies in widely separated regions of Missouri, one in the northern prairie, and the other in the Ozarks near the southern edge of the state. The first colony prospered, but the other disappeared during the chaos of the Civil War.


The Paytons meticulously reconstruct what could have happened to the colonists, and found that at least some seemed to have returned to the region after the fighting stopped. Most, however, moved away to parts unknown, so an enduring air of mystery still surrounds Hogan's Ozark colony. To complete the story, the book covers Hogan's rise to become the first bishop of Kansas City and St. Joseph's, and the successful fight by twentieth century preservationists to get the "Irish Wilderness" declared National Forest.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Missouri, Irish-American, or Catholic history. I also enjoyed the Paytons' book See the Ozarks, also from Lens & Pen Press, about the development and reinvention of the rural region into a major holiday center. It's full of images of vintage postcards, a hobby of mine, so it was an easy sell for me!

Mobile phones on planes? No thanks!

I'm so happy I could puke. It was just announced today that mobile phones (cell phones to you Yanks) have just been approved for flights within Europe. New technology means they won't interfere with navigation systems. They'll be available on Air France as early as next month, with Ryanair soon to follow.

Great. Now I can be surrounded by yakking idiots on the plane too. I used to enjoy flights because it was one of the rare times I could get some quiet reading done. Now I have to tolerate people screaming into their mobiles. Time to invest in a pair of ear plugs.