Chapters start with historical information about a county or places within the county followed by biographies of people from those localities.

Incorporated in 1887, South St. Paul grew rapidly as the blue-collar counterpart to the bright lights and sophistication of its cosmopolitan neighbors Minneapolis and St. Paul. Its prosperous stockyards and slaughterhouses ranked the city among America's largest meatpacking centers. The proud city fell on hard economic times in the second half of the twentieth century. Broad swaths of empty buildings were razed as an enticement to promised redevelopment programs that never happened. In 1990, South St. Paul began to chart out its own successful path to renewal with a pristine riverfront park, a trail system and a business park where the stockyards once stood. Author and historian Lois A. Glewwe brings the story of the city's revival to life in this history of a remarkable community.

During the 1970s housing and social welfare policy as it affected the elderly was changing throughout Western society. Conventional high-rise apartments and institutionalized nursing or residential homes were no longer the sole public responses to housing the elderly. In place of these two extremes on the housing continuum was a variety of intermediate supportive systems that aided independent living. Assisted Independent Living (AIL) programmes were designed to keep the elderly in as independent a living environment as possible despite increasing functioning disabilities and frailties that often accompany advancing age. Originally published in 1982, this book defines sheltered housing, traces its development in Western society and analyses its success under several variations in Great Britain. The British analysis focuses on those aspects of the sheltered housing programme that had wider relevance to the development of AIL housing policy in Europe and North America.