Good evening.

Thanks for joining us for another expanded edition of Inside the Cover.

I certainly appreciate and enjoy these opportunities for a longer and more focused conversation with all of the readers and book lovers out there.

It is always a pleasure to share and inform.

However, before we get into the main course, I have a few preliminary matters I want to address.

On January 18th, 2025, we did a show about C.J.

Box.

Unfortunately, I had a typo in my script and I stated on air that Mr.

Box first book, Open Season, debuted in 2021.

Wrong.

It was 2001.

I offer my sincere apologies to Mr.

Box, his fans, and you my loyal and trusting viewers.

My bad.

Next, I want to give a shout out to viewer Richard Sinnett in Wichita.

His second book, When November Falls, which is set in and around Wichita, was recentl published by Hays and Jenkins.

Congratulations to Mr.

Sinnett.

I read the book and found it quite interesting.

In this regard, I also want to share that my director, Phil Searle and I were recently invited to attend the April 5th, 2025 monthly meeting of the Kansas Writers Association, some of whom are fans of our show.

We had a lovely visi and we enjoyed the opportunity to talk about Inside the Cover and to visit about books, reading and writing.

This group takes the creative process very seriously, and we were impressed with their dedication to their artistry.

I also want to thank Cathy Feemster, Louise Z. Pelzl, Jessie K. Fishel, Brian K Balzer Sonny Collins and Jana Dahmen all of whom generously shared copie of their published work with me.

I loo forward to reading their work.

I next want to acknowledge the recent death of Doctor Jim Hoy.

Jim was a longtime educator at Emporia State University and the author of man significant and wonderful books relating to Kansas and the Tallgrass Prairie.

We reviewed his 2020 book, M Flint Hills, here on the show.

Most importantly, Jim was a colleague, a fellow graduat of the University of Missouri, and a friend.

He will be and is missed by many in Kansas and beyond.

Finally, I want to say hello to our loyal viewers at Cold Turkey Creek Farm, Joe and Susan, and extend congratulations o their marriage of 54 plus years.

Joe and Susan were also admirers and friends of Doctor Hoy.

All right.

Our show tonight is all about connectivity, serendipity and synchronicity.

As we taped this episode on September 11th, 2025, I have read 107 books so far in 2025.

At some stage, I noticed tha there was a clear and definite but unintended thread connecting my reading, present and past.

You know how I enjoy connections.

That unintended thread was the state of Mississippi.

I want to share this reading adventure with you.

In doing so, I'm going to be talking about a great number of books that I determined to be related and or connected in some way.

So get out your pencils and paper.

It is now time to go inside the cover.

I enjoy adding authors from the olden days in my reading, and when I discovered Mar Twain's Life on the Mississippi on a library shelf, I decided to read it.

The book wa originally copyrighted in 1883, and I finished my copy on January 25th, 2025.

Of course, i reflects Twain's humor and also has language reference that were common in those days.

I was amazed at Twain's knowledge of and respect for the Mississippi River.

Likewise, his great appreciation and admiration for steamboats and those that steered them.

The copy I read was also wonderfully and heavily illustrated, and that was fun.

Of course, I automatically thought of the book of the same name by Rinker Buck.

Life on the Mississippi.

This book was copyrighted in 2022, and I finished my read on March 6th, 2023.

In this book, Buck tells of his adventures in taking his own riverboat down the modern day river.

I reviewed this book on a prior episode of Inside the Cover.

I had been working on Twain's boo when I decided to turn to James by Percival Everett.

What remarkable serendipity.

James was copyrighted in 2024, and I finished the book on January 24th, 2025.

I found it a thought provoking counterpoint to Twain's work.

As you may know, Everett tells the story of Huck Finn and his slave Jim, but from the perspective of Jim or James, this book had been highly recommended to me by reading friends, and I can see why.

An important read for multiple reasons.

Returning to Twain, I finished his PuddnHead Wilson on April 19th, 2025.

Copyrighted back in 1894, this book tells a tale of two babies, one black and one white, switched at birth, with remarkable consequences for both and the lawye who finally wins his first case defending his client against a murder charge.

Using his previously marked hobby of collecting images from fingers.

I now want to reference Th Statesman and the Storyteller.

Marx Zwonitzers 2016 book about John Hay and Mark Twain.

I finished my copy on October 11th, 2019, and we did an episode on Inside the Cover.

Note this quote from page five.

‘John Hay was a Westerne who had entered adulthood like Samuel Clemens, with Mississippi mud caked on his trousers.

In additio to serving as Secretary of State to presidents McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, Hay was also one of two private secretaries to Abraham Lincoln.

This connection took me to April 1865 by Jay Winik.

Fabulous book copyrighted in 2001, and which I finished on June 21st, 2024.

This book, which tells about a tumultuous month in American history, was reviewed on Inside the Cover on February 15th, 2025.

I Then Thought of Presidential Greatness by Marc Landy and Sidney M. Milkis.

This book came out in 2000 and I finished my copy on May 31st, 2024.

Two of the president ranked as great by the authors were Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Jackson.

My review of this book aired on February 8th, 2025.

Well Twain made his personal opinion about Jackso known in Life on the Mississippi and for yet another viewpoint on Jackson, see Sailing the Graveyard Sea by Richard Snow.

This book was copyrighted in 2023, and I finished my copy on February 28th, 2025.

The book tells the story of the USS Somers and the only mutiny in the history of the U.S.

Navy.

Our review of this book ran on April 26th, 2025.

For yet another viewpoint on Jackson, see The Republic of Violence by J.D.

Dickey.

My review of this book aired on Inside the Cover on February 22nd, 2025.

Leaving Twain and President Jackson, let's get back to Mississippi.

On February 12th, 2025, I finished Mother of Pearl by Melinda Haynes.

This was in a little free public library find, and it was complete serendipity that I took it home.

This book was chosen as an Oprah's Book Club selection in June of 1999.

The story is set in 1950s and in the small town of Petal, Mississippi.

This novel tells the story of Even Grade, a black man who grew up as an orphan and Valuable Corner, a 15 year old white girl who is the daughter of the town prostitute and an unknown father.

As the two of them seek love, family and affection, their lives crossed paths in very interesting and surprising ways.

This was a surprisingly good read.

Shortl after finishing Mother of Pearl, I read The Quiet Game by Greg Iles.

This was another little free public library find and yet another author I had never heard of.

It was copyrighted in 1999 and I finished the book on March 28th, 2025.

The protagonist of the book is Penn Cage, a lawyer turned successful novelist.

Here I have to stop and refer you to Their Word is Law by Stephen M Murphy.

This book was copyrighted in 2002, and I finished it on August 27 of 2024.

Our program on this book aired on November 2nd, 2024.

Remember, tonight' show is all about connections.

Back to Penn Cage.

With the death of his wife and faced with the reality of being a single fathe to his four year old daughter, Cage returns to his hometown of Natchez, Mississippi, a jewel of the antebellum South, a city of old money and older sins where passion, power, and racial tensions seethe beneath its elegant facade.

Cage soo finds himself trapped in a web of intrigue and danger.

I really enjoyed Iles writing, and I want to read more of his work.

For purposes of moving the show forward, Let me offer these two quotations, which I think are relevant to our purposes tonight.

‘He [Faulkner], being from Mississippi, understood the matter differently.

He said the past is never dead.

It's not even past.

All of us labor in web spun long before we were born.

Webs of heredity and environment.

Of desire and consequence of history and eternity.

And another quote ‘Peyton survived Chosin Reservoir, only to get blown to bits by some gutless rednecks in his hometown.

I suggest that this graphic quotation is an apt, appropriate, and chilling lead into our featured book, The Barn by Wright Thompson.

Thompson is a fellow alu of the University of Missouri, and I read and enjoyed his book, Pappyland, which came out in 2020 and which I finished on June 16th, 2022.

Let me here offer that I found the barn to be a truly remarkabl and important book that I know will find a place on my top ten list for 2025.

For purposes of this expanded edition of Inside the Cover, I'm not able to give the boo the full attention it deserves, and we may do a show totally devoted to it.

In this book, Thompso tells the sad and tragic story of Emmett Till, the young 14 year old boy from Chicago who was tortured and murdered in Money, Mississippi in 1955.

Thompson's family farm is 23 miles from the barn where this heinous crime took place.

And I think this gives his words great meaning, credence and value.

I learned so very much from this book, and it gave me so much to think about.

My copy of the book, which was another little free Public Library treasure, by the way, is heavily underlined with words from Thompson's research, perspectives and knowledge as he writes: ‘This book is my attempt to g beyond what is known and explore the unknown registers of a killing that, when seen, clearly illuminates the true history of our country.

I truly cannot recommend this book too strongly.

We are getting close to the finish line.

I will offer the following to demonstrate many of the topics that The Barn connected up for me.

On page 144, Thompson writes: ‘The Delta Blues emerged as evidence of the enduring violenc that birthed it.

A left behind record of lives buil and broken, buried and erased.

This connected me to Wichita Blues by Patrick Joseph O'Connor.

This book came out in 2024 and I finished it on October 25th, 2024.

See our show about this boo that aired on Inside the Cover on January 25th, 2025.

On page 152, Thompson writes: ‘This peak of white wealth and economic power from 1918 to 1919 coincided with the first mass exodus of black families from the Delta and from over the state and the South.

This connected me to The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, which was copyrighted in 2010 and which I finished on September 17th, 2019.

On page 192, Thompson writes: ‘White Mississippi reacted to the Supreme Court ruling in Brown versu Board like an endangered species facing extinction.

This connected me to A Girl Stands at the Door by Rachel Devlin, which was copyrighted in 2018 and which I finished on September 17th, 2019, and A Time to Lose by Paul E. Wilson, copyrighted in 1995 and which I finished on August 20th, 1995.

On page 122, Thompson writes: ‘In the 1930s, a Nazi law student came to study segregatio at the University of Arkansas, looking for inspiration for Germany's own race laws.

This connected me to Caste, also by Isabel Wilkerson.

This book came out in 2020.

I finished my copy in October of 2021.

On page 121, Thompson writes, ‘The violence and repression of Jim Crow segregation emerged from laws written by a Mississippi congressman named James Robert Binford, who owned land a few miles from the barn where Till was killed.

This connected me to The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, which came out in 2010 and which I finished on February 23rd, 2025.

See also.

The Color of La by Richard Rothstein, copyright in 2017 and read on February 1st of 2021.

And The Book of Charlie by David von Drehle, which tells how real estate mogul J.C.

Nichols used restrictive covenants in developing the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City and the suburbia of Johnson County.

Von Drehle's book was copyrighted in 2023, and I finished my copy on February 2nd, 2024.

Phew.

Thanks for staying with me.

And finally, just for fun, I want you to refer to Good Vibrations by Mike Love with James S. Hirsch, subtitled My Life as a Beach Boy.

The book, yet Another Little Free Public Library gem, was copyrighted in 2016, and I finished it on April 1st of 2025.

And talking about his soon to be wife, Love wrote on page 319: ‘In the summer, the family would go to Mississippi, where her mother was from, and attend a Baptist church.

Clearly, Mississippi has bee a part of my reading experience thus far in 2025.

I now want to move away from the Mississippi theme and make yet another connection for you.

Earlier in the show, I referenced Wichita Blues by Patrick Joseph O'Connor.

On August 3rd, 2025, I finished Blues People by Leroy Jones, subtitled Negro Music in White America.

I found it to be one of the most powerful, profound, and thought provoking books that I have read in quite some time.

Our son Joe had read the book for a class he took at Wichita State, and he passed the book on to me, and I am so glad that he did.

Jones, also known as Amanu Amear Baraka and Amiri Baraka, is as complex and interesting as his writing.

He died on January 9th, 2014, at the age of 79.

Baraka was an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and music criticism.

He was the author of numerous books of poetry, and he taught at several universities, including the University of Buffalo and Stony Brook University.

He is sometimes compared to James Baldwin, and he is recognized as one of the most respected and widely publishe black writers of his generation.

Blues people was published in 1963, and it was his account of the development of black music from slavery to contemporary jazz.

When the work was reissued in 1999, Baraka wrote in the introduction that he wished to sho that ‘The music was the score, the actually express creative orchestration, a reflection of Afro-American life, that the music was explaining the history as the history was explaining the music, and that both were expression and reflections of the people.

This book is so much more than a study of the history and development of music.

I found this book to be an erudite and thoughtful study of American life and American history.

As Langston Hughes wrote, ‘The book is a must for all who would more knowledgeably appreciate and better comprehen America's most popular music.

I need not seek to improve or supplement the words of this patriarc of the Harlem Renaissance, who got acquainted with literature and the power of words as a young boy living in Lawrence, Kansas, and going to the Carnegi Library that was built in 1904, where he was permitted to go because Andrew Carnegie mandated no segregation in libraries constructed with his financial support.

I felt that Baraka's words were so beautiful and so meaningful tha I want to read you some quotes and take some time to read some quotes from the book itself.

‘But if th blues was a music that developed because of the Negroes adaptation to and adoption of America, it was also a music that developed because of the Negroes particular position in this country.

Because of this, blues could remain for a long time a very fresh and singular form of expression.

Though certain techniques and verses came to be standardized among blues singers.

The singing itself remained as arbitrary and personal as the shout.

Each man sang a different blues, the wheat straw blues, the Blind Lemon Blues, the Blind Willie Johnson blues, etc.

the music remained that personal because it began with the performers themselves and not with formalized notions of how it was to be performed.

During the depression, even though the commercial aggrandizement of the blues had been halted, Blues, naturally enough, continued.

Classic blues suffered irreparably, because, to a certain extent, its popularity was based on an economic principle.

As is all popular theater.

Not that Bessie Smith or the others sang strictly to make money, but their immense popularity was the result of their ability to make money.

And the purest fabric of the blues, that part of blues that is the purest expression of Negro life in America, was connecte to the idea of professionalism at the time of the classic singers, rather gratuitously.

Suffice it to say that when the artificial catalyst of the commercial theater was temporarily destroyed, the classic singers were no longer popular and the legitimate blues of the next period, Urban blues and Boogie Woogie, emerged and continued to grow with the vitality that could only be diluted by the twin menaces of acceptance by the general public, and loss of contact with the most honestly contemporary expression of the Negro soul.

Kansas City, a wide open town that featured gambling and as many nightclubs as possible, became the headquarters of these big blues bands and their shouting vocalists.

There was plenty of work for the bands there until the late 30s, when some measure of respectability finally came to Kansas City, and many of the best musicians in the area left to go to Chicago or New York.

The idea of the Negroes having roots, and that they are a valuable possession rather than the source of ineradicable shame, is perhaps the profoundest chang within the Negro consciousness since the early part of the century.

It is a reevaluatio that could only be made possible by the conclusions and redress of attitude that took place in the 40s.

The feelings of inferiority which most Negroes had and still have to a certain extent, were brought to their lowest valence upon the present time in the 40s.

Again, these words resonate.

They are powerful.

They are meaningful.

And as I said earlier, they are much more than a revie of a particular kind of music.

They are certainly a statement about American life.

Thanks for watching.

I hope you have enjoyed this potpourri of reading experiences.

I have certainly enjoyed looking back and making connections.

In closing, let me again remind you about the accessibility of our prior shows by going to the KPTS website, Hitting the Inside the Cover icon.

And also, we love hearing from you with comments, questions, or suggestions.

Just write to us at the address on your screen.

Finally, I want to leave you with these thoughts, which I had written for a prior script but had to cut because of time limitations.

I know you all know tha every author has a perspective, a point of view, and an intention.

Particularly writers of nonfiction, the victors write history.

However, just because an author might be labeled as a conservative, a liberal a troublemaker, or a firebrand should not mean that we don't rea and consider that person's work.

I believe that we individually and collectively gain something from every exposure to information and points of view.

Read, learn, ponder, consider and formulate your own opinions.

I suggest that this is a joy and responsibility for all readers.

While we can disagre about the talent of the writer or the importance and veracity of the subject matter, we should all agree abou the value of thoughtful reading.

And we certainly hope to encourage, support, and facilitate thoughtful reading by our efforts on Inside the Cover.

Good night and see you next time.