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    Paris of the Plains: Kansas City from Doughboys to Expressways
    Unavailable
    Paris of the Plains: Kansas City from Doughboys to Expressways
    Unavailable
    Paris of the Plains: Kansas City from Doughboys to Expressways
    Ebook195 pages2 hours

    Paris of the Plains: Kansas City from Doughboys to Expressways

    By John Simonson

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    From the end of the Great War to the final years of the 1950s, Kansas Citians lived in a manner worthy of a place called Paris of the Plains. The title did more than nod to the perfumed ladies who shopped at Harzfeld's Parisian or the one-thousand-foot television antenna nicknamed the "Eye-full Tower." It spoke to the character of a town that worked for Boss Tom and danced for Count Basie but transcended both the Pendergast era and the Jazz Age. Author John Simonson introduces readers to a town of vaudeville shows and screened-in porches, where fleets of cream-and-black streetcars passed beneath a canopy of elms. This is a history that smells equally of lilacs and stockyards and bursts with the clamor of gunshots, radio baseball and the distant whistle of a night train.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe History Press
    Release dateOct 22, 2010
    ISBN9781614232766
    Unavailable
    Paris of the Plains: Kansas City from Doughboys to Expressways
    Author

    John Simonson

    John Simonson is the author of two other books published by The History Press: Paris of the Plains: Kansas City from Doughboys to Expressways (2010) and Kansas City 1940: A Watershed Year (2013). He lives in Kansas City, Missouri.

    Read more from John Simonson

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    Reviews for Paris of the Plains

    3.5/5

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    • 2/5
      Paris of the Plains is not really a history of Kansas City, but rather a collection of individual scenes in the lives of Kansas Citians. An interesting approach with concise prose, but the topic structure just doesn't work.Each chapter comprises a range of years during the 20th century, and the chapters are subdivided into sections of no more than 1-3 pages. The writer takes the reader through these momentary snapshots, as if in a dream, flitting from one small bit of personal history to the next. And on and on. Nothing connects except for the larger setting.I was born, raised and presently live in Kansas City, and this 'Paris of the Plains' feels a little foreign to me.
    • 5/5
      If you are at all interested in the history and personality of Kansas City, this book is an utter pleasure to read. Simonson's tour through the first five decades of the twentieth century provide a colorful, non-academic (but still informative), thoroughly human history that is a quick and easy read while neither being simplistic or condescending. I'm going to recommend this to everyone I know from KC, new to KC, or remotely curious about the town.