The Civil War's First Blood: Missouri, 1854-1861 Paperback - 2007

Jim Denny was a historian with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources for thirty-three years before retiring in November 2009. He received his education at the University of Missouri, where he earned a Masters Degree in American history.

Jim Denny has been active in many aspects of Missouri history. He began his career in the Historic Preservation Program where he worked for eleven years. Then he became the first manager of the KATY Trail. Denny was also the manager of the Civil War Marker Program, designed to place interpretive waysides at the locations of significant Civil War events. During the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Commemoration, Denny directed an interpretive wayside program that ultimately placed 68 interpretive waysides along the Mississippi and Missouri River routes of the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail. He has traveled the entire Lewis and Clark route through Missouri, by both automobile and by boat, and has visited every county in the state. Denny has given numerous public presentations to all kinds of audiences on a wide variety of topics.

In 2000, Jim produced Lewis and Clark in the Manitou Bluffs Region, which was jointly published by the Boonslick Historical Society and the Missouri River Communities Network. Jim Denny is co-author, with James D. Harlan, of the Atlas of Lewis and Clark in Missouri, which was published by the University of Missouri Press in the fall of 2003. He has published numerous articles on a variety of topics including historic architecture, Missouri's Civil War, and the Lewis and Clark Expedition in Missouri. Denny's latest book, co-authored with John Bradbury, The Civil War's First Blood: Missouri 1854 - 1861, was released in the summer of 2007. Since June 2011, Jim has written a series of 22 articles on the Civil War in Missouri for Rural Missouri Magazine. Three articles on the War of 1812 in Missouri also appeared in Rural Missouri.

Jim and his wife, Sue, live beside the Missouri River in Lupus, MO. For nine years, Jim served as town mayor. Presently, he holds the office of city clerk.