This feels like an especially weird review to write—what can I say about this book that is not uniquely personal to me, who grew up in West County and has spent all of adulthood in DC?

It's a sweeping history that will be especially familiar to many Missourians, who were fed a steady diet of the Voyage of Discovery and 1904 Exhibition growing up. Here, the early bits are told breezily, mostly expanding the context on the deeds these men were known for with who they were elsewhere.

As the book moves forward in time the familiarity in it moved from being about men I learned about to places I had lived. Increasingly the names are ones that I was less likely to have learned much about or even heard, but the streets that cut through their lives and the neighborhood names situated things in a way that brought new light to much of my time in St. Louis as I learned about the people, riots, workers and projects that shaped the area.

In short, a hard read, but a good one. Perhaps a bit wide in breadth for someone not from the area, but a good survey for anyone who grew up there.