About Ohio University Press

Incorporated in 1947 and formally organized in 1964 by Ohio University president Vernon Alden, Ohio University Press is the oldest scholarly publisher in Ohio. Since its founding, the press (including its trade imprint, Swallow Press) has developed into a leading publisher of books about Africa, Appalachia, Southeast Asia, and the Midwest, as well as on many other topics. From academic monographs to regional guides to internationally acclaimed literary works, its books have established the press as an essential member of its many communities: scholarly, literary, and geographic.

The press publishes between forty-five and fifty books a year. Distributed worldwide, its books are regularly covered by prominent national and international news and review media; in countless academic journals; and in a wide variety of literary and cultural outlets.

The press regularly partners with other scholarly and cultural institutions. In recent years, these have included the State Library of Ohio, the U.S. Capitol Historical Society, the Ohio University Center for International Studies, the Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland museums of art, and the Polish American Historical Association.

Swallow Press

What began as a publishing partnership with the distinguished literary publisher Swallow Press has continued with Ohio University Press’s acquisition in 2008 of Swallow. Under the Swallow Press imprint, the Press continues to publish its esteemed literary list—including reissues of the works of such iconic authors as Anaïs Nin, Janet Lewis, Frank Waters, and Anna Akhmatova—as well as guidebooks, regional interest titles, and general nonfiction.

New Titles

Kwame Nkrumah
Visions of Liberation
This new biography of Kwame Nkrumah (1909–72), Ghana’s first president, demonstrates how his accomplishments extend well beyond his role in Ghanaian decolonization, state-building, and the promotion of pan-Africanism to include his broader anticolonialist work toward an independent, unified Africa.

Ubuntu
George M. Houser and the Struggle for Peace and Freedom on Two Continents
George M. Houser’s moral integrity and influential advocacy for nonviolent protest helped shape the American Civil Rights Movement, anticolonial independence victories across Africa, and the overthrow of the South African apartheid regime.

An Empty Grave
An Andy Hayes Mystery
Private eye Andy Hayes’ mission seems clear: locate a man who shot a Columbus police officer forty years earlier, then disappeared without a trace. But soon, Hayes discovers a years-long string of murders that lead him down a harrowing path of conspiracy and deception.

Militarizing Marriage
West African Soldiers’ Conjugal Traditions in Modern French Empire
By prioritizing women and conjugality in the historiography of African colonial soldiers, Militarizing Marriage historicizes how the subjugation of women was indispensable to military conquest and colonial rule across French Empire.

All about Flowers
James Vick's Nineteenth-Century Seed Company
Avid flower man James Vick ingrained a nationwide conviction that no home was complete without flowers and transformed the ordinary, nineteenth-century American mail-order seed business with an unprecedented marketing strategy.