“Grow Up St. Louis” by Jim Merkel. This is the definitive look at what it was like to be a kid in St. Louis from 1990 to the present. Jim Merkel, who previously wrote four books about St. Louis, started by interviewing more than 100 people who grew up in the area – rich and poor, black and white, know and unknown. To this, he added many dozens of pictures, first-person stories by others about the early 1900s, commentaries about how kids lived in ten different periods since 1900, along with illuminating facts about each of those periods. Merkel’s presentation will clearly show how much the events of our childhood shaped the rest of our lives. Please join us in the Monroe County History Museum’s Allsheid-Metzger Gallery loacated at Elaine Dr., Waterloo, Illinois 62298.