Well-written Contemporary Nonfiction or Biographies about the Midwest and Gulf States

Try these books if you're looking for:

• Nonfiction
• Biographies
• Midwest or Gulf States setting

Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America
By Erik Larson
364.1523 LAR 2003
An account of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 relates the stories of two men who shaped the history of the event--architect Daniel H. Burnham, who coordinated its construction, and serial killer Herman Mudgett.

A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana
By Haven Kimmel
BIO KIMMEL 2002
The author offers a chronicle of growing up in a small town in America's heartland, offering portraits of her family and her encounters with the complexities of the adult world, romance, and small-town life during the 1960s and 1970s.

Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression
By Mildred Armstrong Kalish
BIO KALISH 2007
A memoir from a schoolteacher of growing up in the heart of the Midwest during the Great Depression describes life on an Iowa farm during a time of endless work, resourcefulness, no tolerance for idleness or waste, family, and kinship.

The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less
By Terry Ryan
BIO RYAN 2005
The author describes her mother Evelyn's struggles with poverty in the 1950s as she tried to build a happy home for her ten children, with the help of wit, poetry, and prose during the contest era of the 1950s and 1960s.

The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square
By Ned Sublette
976.335 SUB 2008
Tells the story of one of America's most complex cities, with an emphasis on New Orleans's musical heritage and its first century filled with war, religious conflicts, slavery, and its struggles with France, Spain, and England.