Meet the folks who slip out of history books like they're playing the Kansas City shuffle. In this fascinating collection of stories, Paul Kirkman has dug up all sorts of head-scratchers: how did Jesse James rob a bank with John F. Kennedy, and how could a Beatles concert in the 1960s fail to make money? Watch a cow explode in a kitchen, frogs rain down from the sky and dogs pay for a public library system. Learn how Harry Houdini was trapped in a phone booth, why Clark Gable haunted street corners in a clown outfit and what kept Kansas City in Missouri.

Paul Kirkman is the author of The Battle of Westport: Missouri's Great Confederate Raid and he co-authored Lockdown: Outlaws, Lawmen, and Frontier Justice in Jackson County, Missouri. Kirkman is a past speaker for the State Historical Society of Missouri Speakers' Bureau and he currently presents lectures on several regional history topics.