One miserable spring night, a tired, bitter, despairing old lighthouse keeper prepares to jump off the top of Lake Superior's Devils Island Lighthouse. It seems the end for Owen McClatchy, but it's the beginning, during a wondrous summer of 1928. The instrument of McClatchy's redemption is most unexpected: new first assistant keeper Sam Brown and his family, just up from St. Louis. McClatchy sees Brown as incompetent, his wife as impertinent and his two kids as the devil underfoot. But by summer's end, the Browns help McClatchy realize he hasn't wasted his life on a lighthouse and enable him to jump into whatever life has for him. Based on the real Devils Island Lighthouse in Lake Superior’s Apostle Islands archipelago, The Lighthouse on Devils Island is full of carefully-researched details about the drudgery, loneliness, beauty and heroism of a time and place when everything depended on keeping the light burning.

The Lighthouse on Devils Island

Merkel, Jim

Literature & Fiction

JCMPress

Imagine you are first in line at a potluck buffet. The spread includes not just food and water, but all the materials needed for shelter, clothing, healthcare, and education. How do you know how much to take? How much is enough to leave for your neighbors behind you—not just the six billion people, but the wildlife, and the as-yet-unborn?
In the face of looming ecological disaster, many people feel the need to change their own lifestyles as a tangible way of transforming our unsustainable culture. Radical Simplicity is the first book that guides the reader to a personal sustainability goal, then offers a process to monitor progress to a lifestyle that is equitable amongst all people, species, and generations. It employs three tools to help readers begin their customized journey to simplicity:
&gt;It builds on steps from Your Money or Your Life so readers can design their own personal economics to save money, get free of debt, and align their work with their values. It uses refined tools from Our Ecological Footprint so readers can measure how much nature is needed to supply all they consume and absorb their waste. Combining lyrical narrative, compassionate advocacy, and absorbing science, Radical Simplicity is a practical, personal answer to twenty-first century challenges that will appeal as much to Cultural Creatives and students as to spiritual seekers, policy makers, and sustainability professionals.
Jim Merkel quit his job as a military engineer following the Exxon Valdez disaster and has since worked to develop tools for personal and societal sustainability. He founded the Global Living Project to further this work and conducts workshops around North America on this topic.

Radical Simplicity: Small Footprints on a Finite Earth

Business & Money

Economics

New Society Publishers

A contractor exactingly builds a lighthouse, on the wrong island. On a night of vicious storms, lighthouse keepers within a few miles of each other witness two shipwrecks that together leave a dozen people dead. And a child of a keeper declares life on an island never was boring. "Mother Nature provided me with many entertainments and toys," she says, recalling those days. 
Such are the stories of lightkeepers and their families in the Apostle Islands of Lake Superior, just off the northern Wisconsin shoreline. Readers of Majestic Lights: The Apostle Islands Lighthouses will learn of the people who made those lights what they are and of those who are working to preserve them today. 
Written by a journalist and lighthouse enthusiast, Majestic Lights includes chapters on each of the six historic light stations of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, plus the nearby Ashland Harbor Breakwater Light. There also are chapters on a local theatrical production on the area's lights, a keeper's logbook, the longest-serving Apostle Islands lighthouse keeper and an annual gathering to celebrate the area's lighthouses. 
Balancing it out are an afterword on why people like lighthouses and a short story from a yet-to-be published novel by the author based on the Devils Island Light Station. The title for the book comes from that novel, to be called Black Island. In the novel, the Majestic Islands is the name given for an archipelago in Lake Superior along the Wisconsin shoreline. 
The book also includes photographs by the author, historic pictures, drawings of lighthouses and one artist's representations of four of the Apostle Islands light stations. 
First-time visitors, lighthouse buffs, seasoned locals and others will find in Majestic Lights a comprehensive look at the best collection of lighthouses in the National Park System.

Majestic Lights: The Apostle Islands Lighthouses

History

Jcm Press

Hidden among the streets of St. Louis's south side are stories that span centuries. In the wake of COVID-19, author and journalist Jim Merkel set out on a walk that would take him block-by-block through the tales of history and community in South City. Completing the walk incrementally, Merkel ponders the ways in which the area has changed over time. Along the way, he interviews some of the unique characters and leaders who help maintain the city, encounters quirky stores and restaurants, and enjoys beautiful scenery in parks and on restored streets. Most of all, he finds hope in the underdogs, in the neighborhoods that have come back to life after decades of decline, and in the people whose love for their homes and their neighbors remains steadfast despite everything. The South Side is many things, but most importantly, it is a place where neighbors gather often, where people come together in hardship, and where small businesses and authenticity thrive. In Walking South City, Merkel crafts a thorough depiction of the area, with respect for the past and hope for the future. Grab your walking shoes, follow along, and get ready to look at South City in a way you never have before.

Walking South City: A Journey Through Historic St. Louis Neighborhoods

Americas

Reedy Pr

St. Louis is, as much as anything, a German city. Beer, Brats, and Baseball: St. Louis Germans examines the often-serious, sometimes funny, and truly amazing story of Germans in the Gateway City from the arrival of the first German priest right after the city's founding to the present. Hoping for freedom and a better life, Germans started coming en masse in the 1830s and put their stamp on the frontier outpost. By 1860, native-born Germans amounted to more than a quarter of the city's population, with their own newspapers, theaters, clubs, and churches. Less than a month after Confederates attacked Fort Sumter, thousands of German volunteers provided the troops for the assault that guaranteed Missouri would stay in the Union. After the Civil War ended, Germans brewed the beer, named the streets, ran the local baseball team, and were a force in city politics. In their drive for success, which some might call Teutonic stubbornness, Germans formed industries, communities, and institutions that remain vibrant today.

Beer, Brats, and Baseball: St. Louis Germans