Originally part of the Louisiana Purchase, Missouri became a state in 1821. Nicknamed "The Gateway to the West" because it was as departure point for Westward-bound settlers, Missouri was also the starting point and return destination for the Lewis and Clark expedition. Interestingly, Missouri has voted for the winning candidate in twenty-five of the past twenty-six presidential elections, with the sole exception of Adlai Stevenson in 1956. The state's most famous son, the writer Mark Twain, set his classic novels, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn on the islands and in the caves around his boyhood home of Hannibal, Missouri. Other Missourians of renown include poet T. S. Eliot, dancers Ginger Rogers and Josephine Baker, film directors John Houston and Robert Altman, educators George Washington Carver and Dale Carnegie, and the outlaw Jesse James. This is a lively and thorough account of Missouri's exciting and pivotal role in history-from the first Native American inhabitants to the territorial period, from the agony of the Civil War to the freewheeling jazz and Prohibition eras, from labour and civil rights struggles to the triumph of the St. Louis Arch. Descriptions of these tumultuous and glorious times come from the diaries, newspaper articles, journals and letters of ordinary Missourians -- reporters, soldiers, merchants and wives who provide first-person testimony to the march of history. Over 50 photographs of leading figures and events, maps of territory drawn and redrawn, a timeline and illustrations of political cartoons, advertisements, and signage bring the past vividly to life in this history of the "Show-Me" state.