Wicked Springfield Versus Wicked Joplin

About a year and a half ago, my book entitled Wicked Joplin, based on the notorious history of Joplin during its days as a booming mining town, was published. I now have a new book coming out entitled Wicked Springfield, Missouri: The Seamy Side of the Queen City. It, like the previous book, is based on the notorious history of the town in question.
Some people might find it a bit surprising that Springfield would be the subject of a book about the notorious side of its history. Most people who have lived within a hundred miles or so of Joplin for any length of time probably know that, almost from its very beginning, it had a reputation for being a wild town. By compariosn, most people, I believe, tend to think of Springfield during its early days as fairly tame. However, as I point out in the preface to my new book, even though Springfield was not founded as a raucous mining town and, therefore, was not the magnet for lawlessness in its early days that Joplin was from its very outset, Springfield was still a rough-and-tumble frontier town that had its share of shenanigans. A big part of the difference between the two towns was a merely a matter of perception. Springfield just didn't have the unruly reputation that Joplin did, even though it probably had about as much unruly behavior.
I intend to write more about the notorious side of Springfield's history next time.