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ADVENTURES OF A MAVERICK ST. LOUIS STATESMAN  IN WW I RUSSIA WINS BEST BOOK AWARD AT  THE MISSOURI CONFERENCE ON HISTORY   Standing on a Volcano: The Life and Times of David Rowland Francis was singled out for the annual Best Book Award given by the Missouri Historical Society at the recent Missouri Conference on History. The book is published by the Missouri Historical Society Press and distributed by Southern Illinois University Press.   Once the most photographed man in America and the nation’s youngest governor, David R. Francis served as both mayor of St. Louis and governor of Missouri before being appointed by President Woodrow Wilson as ambassador to Russia from 1916 to 1918. In Standing on a Volcano: The Life and Times of David Rowland Francis (464 pages, $49.95 cloth, $19.95 paper), accomplished St. Louis journalist Harper Barnes provides a riveting portrait of a straight-talking quick-acting Missourian, of a nineteenth-century figure who was able to adjust to the dramatic changes of the twentieth century, of a diplomat whose bold actions have traditionally been dismissed or harshly criticized by historians.   Possessing a background in agricultural trade and banking, Francis wooed heads of state as president of the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Expedition. That same year, he was the triumphant chief intellectual architect of the St. Louis World’s Fair. Francis was making himself known in the arena of national politics, and was for a time considered as a potential presidential candidate, when the Tsar was overthrown in 1917 and the 66-year-old Missourian was thrust into U.S.-Soviet relations.   Barnes brings history to life and recounts the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution. When President Wilson named Francis as ambassador to Russia, he confronted the impossible task of hammering out a trade treaty with Russia while revolutions and World War I raged. “Much of what Francis did in Russia has been shrouded in myth—some of it heroic, more of it comic and tragic,” explains Barnes. Battling Russia’s internal volatility frustrated the diplomatic efforts of Francis, who sympathized with Russia’s poor and sought to stall the Bolshevik uprising.   Aided by seventy-five photographs and the previously unpublished extraordinary letters of Philip Jordan—Francis’s courageously loyal and insatiably curious African American valet—Harper Barnes accurately and poignantly recounts Francis’s mixed legacy and offers new insights into an often unsung figure of great historical significance locally, nationally, and internationally.    Harper Barnes is a longtime editor and cultural critic for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He edited the Boston Phoenix, has written for the Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone, and other publications, and served in the U.S. Army as a Russian linguist.    Standing on a Volcano: The Life and Times of David Rowland Francis is available through Southern Illinois University Press (800-346-2680, www.siu.edu/~siupress). More marketing news