Ohio and Regional Book List ·

Stories from the Anne Grimes Collection of American Folk Music

Stories from the Anne Grimes Collection of American Folk Music is a treasury of American traditional music and Ohio’s folklife heritage. Traveling along the highways and byways of Ohio in the 1950s as a folksinger and collector of traditional music, Anne Grimes encountered people from many different backgrounds who opened up their homes to her to share their most precious family heirlooms—their songs.…

The World of a Wayward Comic Book Artist

The Private Sketchbooks of S. Plunkett

The World of a Wayward Comic Book Artist: The Private Sketchbooks of S. Plunkett is a fascinating look at the creative processes of Sandy Plunkett. A self-taught illustrator and comic book artist, Plunkett came of age in New York City during the ‘60s and ‘70s and began drawing for Marvel Comics at eighteen.…

Philena’s Friendship Quilt

A Quaker Farewell to Ohio

Chenoweth’s research to discover the story behind a Quaker signature quilt made in Columbiana County, Ohio, in 1853 revealed not only the identity of the quilt recipient and details of her life and community, but also a striking feature of the quilt itself—a “hidden” design element created by the deliberate placement of names on the quilt’s surface. In Philena’s Friendship Quilt, Lynda Salter Chenoweth reveals the value of signature quilts as historic and social documents waiting to be read.

Miami University, 1809–2009

Bicentennial Perspectives

From its start in the nineteenth century as a small midwestern college to its transformation into a twenty-first-century international university, Miami University has stood for two centuries as a model of public higher education.…

Democracy in Session

A History of the Ohio General Assembly

For more than 200 years no institution has been more important to the development of the American democratic polity than the state legislature, yet no political institution has been so neglected by historians.…

Power in the Blood

A Family Narrative

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.…

Album Quilts of Ohio’s Miami Valley

From 1888 to 1918, a community of Miami Valley neighbors and relatives made album presentation quilts to celebrate life passages. Their sharing of designs and construction techniques led to the development of a distinctive regional quilt style that has never been duplicated in any other region of the state or country. Album Quilts of Ohio’s Miami Valley presents more than two dozen never-before-published color photographs of these folk art album quilts. Sue C. Cummings’s documentation and collection of this remarkable grouping is a landmark moment in quilting history.

Our First Family’s Home

The Ohio Governor's Residence and Heritage Garden

This richly illustrated volume tells the story of the home that has served as Ohio’s executive residence since 1957, and of the nine governors and their families who have lived in the house. Our First Family’s Home offers the first complete history of the residence and garden that represent Ohio to visiting dignitaries and the citizens of the state alike.…

Under Ohio

The Story of Ohio’s Rocks and Fossils

There is much more for children to discover about Ohio than first meets the eye. Under Ohio: The Story of Ohio’s Rocks and Fossils, by geologist Charles Ferguson Barker, takes young readers underground to reveal the fascinating story of Ohio’s geology.…

Teller Tales

Histories

“All my work fits in my mouth,” Jo Carson says. “I write performance material no matter what else the pieces get called, and whether they are for my voice or other characters’ voices … they are first to be spoken aloud.…

The Hocking Valley Railway

The Hocking Valley Railway was once Ohio's longest intrastate rail line, filled with a seemingly endless string of coal trains. Although coal was the main business, the railroad also carried iron and salt.…

Sarah’s Girls

A Chronicle of Big Ugly Creek

Situated in a remote outpost in West Virginia at the turn of the last century, the story that Lenore McComas Coberly tells in Sarah's Girls is one of place, people, and unquenchable spirit. In this fictionalized account of her recent ancestors, Coberly masterfully traces the journeys of their lives, their dreams, and their hardships over the course of the twentieth century.…

Loving Mountains, Loving Men

Loving Mountains, Loving Men is the first book-length treatment of a topic rarely discussed or examined: gay life in Appalachia. Appalachians are known for their love of place, yet many gays and lesbians from the mountains flee to urban areas. Jeff Mann tells the story of one who left and then returned, who insists on claiming and celebrating both regional and erotic identities.

Quilts of the Ohio Western Reserve

Quilts of the Ohio Western Reserve includes early quilts brought from Connecticut to the Western Reserve in northeastern Ohio and contemporary quilts, including one by a conservative Amish woman and another inspired by Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Ricky Clark, one of Ohio’s foremost quilt historians, has assembled exquisite examples of calamanco, T-shaped, and borderless pieced quilts to show the influence of Connecticut aesthetics and history on the making of early quilts in this region. Rich in color, detail, and inventiveness, the quilts of this region commemorate community history.

Ohio Volunteer

The Childhood and Civil War Memoirs of Captain John Calvin Hartzell, OVI

When his captain was killed during the Battle of Perryville, John Calvin Hartzell was made commander of Company H, 105th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. He led his men during the Battle of Chickamauga, the siege of Chattanooga, and the Battle of Missionary Ridge.…

Bringing Modernism Home

Ohio Decorative Arts, 1890–1960

Ohio enjoys a rich artistic heritage: its inhabitants have made significant contributions in the arts; its schools have produced artists of international acclaim; and its companies have employed progressive manufacturing techniques and pioneering materials in the production of their wares.…

An American Vein

Critical Readings in Appalachian Literature

The blossoming of Appalachian studies began some thirty years ago. Thousands of young people from the hills have since been made aware of their region's rich literary tradition through high school and college courses.…

Beyond Hill and Hollow

Original Readings in Appalachian Women’s Studies

Women’s studies unites with Appalachian studies in Beyond Hill and Hollow, the first book to focus exclusively on studies of Appalachia’s women. Featuring the work of historians, linguists, sociologists, performance artists, literary critics, theater scholars, and others, the collection portrays the diverse cultures of Appalachian women.…

The Center of a Great Empire

The Ohio Country in the Early Republic

Nowhere did the revolutions in politics, commerce, and society in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries occur more quickly or more thoroughly than in the Ohio country. A forested borderland dominated by American Indians in 1780, Ohio was a landscape of farms and towns inhabited by people from all over the world by 1830.…

Coal and Culture

Opera Houses in Appalachia

Opera houses were fixtures of Appalachian life from the end of the Civil War through the 1920s. Most towns and cities had at least one opera house during this golden age. Coal mining and railroads brought travelers, money, and change to the region.…