Bones of Faerie by Janni Lee Simner

Bones of Faerie by  Janni Lee Simner, 256 pages
Book 1 of the series

The war between humans and Faerie has changed the modern world. Gone are all the conveniences of life. The world is unfriendly with trees and plants that attack and kill. Any trace of magic is evil and must be destroyed, or so teen Liza has been taught by her fanatical father. She witnessed him carrying her newborn sister to the wilderness, leaving her to die, all because she was born with silver hair. Her mother left soon after -- considered tainted by magic. When magic presents itself in Liza, she flees from her home in terror knowing her father and the villagers will kill her for it. Her only hope is to find her mother. Joined by others possessing magical gifts, Liza soon comes to realize the world is not as evil as she first thought it to be. Can it the gap between faerie and humans be healed?

The Gateway Arch: A Biography by Tracy Campbell

The Gateway Arch: A Biography by Tracy Campbell - 217 pages

Part of the Icons of America series - short works written by leading scholars...who tell a new and innovative story about American history and culture through the lens of a single iconic individual, event, object or cultural phenomenon.

Growing up in St. Louis we are spoon fed the "Monument to A Dream" story of the development of the Gateway Arch but there is much much more to the history of this icon.  Campbell traces the project back to its roots at the beginning of the 1900s and examines if the Gateway Arch truly achieved any of its public objectives - memorializing westward expansion and Thomas Jefferson and revitalizing the St. Louis riverfront and downtown.  The answers he finds for the most part are no, it did not achieve those objectives.

It was interesting to see the political machinations that went on over decades to result in the monument we enjoy today.  The Arch was by no means inevitable and there were countless times when the whole project could have just disappeared.  The description of the fraud and corruption during the initial ballot measure in the 1930s to start the Arch project was particularly sobering.  This book is a thorough examination of the failures of urban planning in the first half of the 20th century and an intriguing deep look at the twisted and sometimes troubled history of the development of the Gateway Arch.