American Studies Book List · 
American Studies titles sorted by release date (or by book title):
Prosperity Far Distant
The Journal of an American Farmer, 1933–1934
By Charles M. Wiltse
Edited by Michael J. Birkner
Fresh from receiving a doctorate from Cornell University, but unable to find work, Charles Wiltse returned to his family’s 42-acre farm in southern Ohio. There, the Wiltses scratched out a living selling eggs, wood, corn, and other farm goods at prices that were barely enough to keep the farm intact.…
Available August 2012 (est.)
Asylum on the Hill
History of a Healing Landscape
Foreword by Samuel T. GladdingAsylum on the Hill is the story of a great American experiment in psychiatry, a revolution in care for those with mental illness, as seen through the example of the Athens Lunatic Asylum.…
Available February 2012 (est.)
The Jury in Lincoln’s America
In the antebellum Midwest, Americans looked to the law, and specifically to the jury, to navigate the uncertain terrain of a rapidly changing society. During this formative era of American law, the jury served as the most visible connector between law and society.…
Barn Quilts and the American Quilt Trail Movement
By Suzi Parron and Donna Sue Groves
The story of the American Quilt Trail, featuring the colorful patterns of quilt squares painted large on barns throughout North America, is the story of one of the fastest-growing grassroots public arts movements in the United States and Canada.…
Ohio Canal Era
A Case Study of Government and the Economy, 1820–1861
A new paperback edition with a foreword by Lawrence M. Friedman Ohio Canal Era, a rich analysis of state policies and their impact in directing economic change, is a classic on the subject of the pre–Civil War transportation revolution.…
Hatred at Home
al-Qaida on Trial in the American Midwest
One day in 2002, three friends — a Somali immigrant, a Pakistan–born U.S. citizen, and a hometown African American — met in a Columbus, Ohio coffee shop and vented over civilian casualties in the war in Afghanistan.…
Ohio’s Kingmaker
Mark Hanna, Man and Myth
For a decade straddling the turn of the twentieth century, Mark Hanna was one of the most famous men in America. Portrayed as the puppet master controlling the weak-willed William McKinley, Hanna was loved by most Republicans and reviled by Democrats, in large part because of the way he was portrayed by the media of the day.…
Incidental Architect
William Thornton and the Cultural Life of Early Washington, D.C., 1794–1828
While the majority of scholarship on early Washington focuses on its political and physical development, in Incidental Architect Gordon S. Brown describes the intellectual and social scene of the 1790s and early 1800s through the lives of a prominent couple whose cultural aspirations served as both model and mirror for the city’s own.…
Power in the Blood
A Family Narrative
By Linda Tate
Power in the Blood: A Family Narrative traces Linda Tate’s journey to rediscover the Cherokee-Appalachian branch of her family and provides an unflinching examination of the poverty, discrimination, and family violence that marked their lives.…
Popular Eugenics
National Efficiency and American Mass Culture in the 1930s
Edited by Susan Currell and Christina Cogdell
The motto “Eugenics is the self-direction of human evolution” was part of the logo of the Second International Congress of Eugenics, held in 1921. However, by the 1930s, the disturbing legacy of this motto had started to reveal itself in the construction of national identities in countries throughout the world.…
Traveling Women
Narrative Visions of Early America
Women's travel narratives recording journeys north and south along the eastern seaboard and west onto the Ohio frontier enhance our historical understanding of early America. Drawing extensively from primary sources, Traveling Women documents women's roles in westward settlement and emphasizes travel as a culture-building event.…
Reworlding America
Myth, History, and Narrative
John Muthyala's Reworlding America moves beyond the U.S.-centered approach of traditional American literary criticism. In this groundbreaking book, Muthyala argues for a transgeographical perspective from which to study the literary and cultural histories of the Americas.…
Knight of the Road
The Life of Highwayman Ham White
By Mark Dugan
The American public has long been fascinated by the Old West and the so–called heroes that it produced. Even before the days of Jesse James, Billy the Kid, and the dime novel, the public’s heroes have always been somewhat tainted.…
