Midwest

Access with Attitude
An Advocate’s Guide to Freedom of Information in Ohio
By David Marburger and Karl Idsvoog

For those who find themselves in a battle for public records, Access with Attitude: An Advocate’s Guide to Freedom of Information in Ohio is an indispensable weapon. First Amendment lawyer David Marburger and investigative journalist Karl Idsvoog have written a simply worded, practical guide on how to take full advantage of Ohio’s so-called Sunshine Laws.Journalists,

Kansas’s War
The Civil War in Documents
Edited by Pearl T. Ponce

When the Civil War broke out in April 1861, Kansas was in a unique position. Although it had been a state for mere weeks, its residents were already intimately acquainted with civil strife. Since its organization as a territory in 1854, Kansas had been the focus of a national debate over the place of slavery in the Republic. By 1856, the ideological conflict developed into actual violence, earning the territory the sobriquet “Bleeding Kansas.”

Do They Miss Me at Home?
The Civil War Letters of William McKnight, Seventh Ohio Volunteer Cavalry
Edited by Donald C. Maness and H. Jason Combs

William McKnight was a member of the Seventh Ohio Volunteer Cavalry from September 1862 until his death in June of 1864. During his time of service, McKnight penned dozens of emotion-filled letters, primarily to his wife, Samaria, revealing the struggles of an entire family both before and during the war.This

Thirsty
A Novel
By Kristin Bair O’Keeffe

It is 1883, and all of Klara Bozic’s girlish dreams have come crashing down as she arrives in Thirsty, a gritty steel town carved into the slopes above the Monongahela River just outside of Pittsburgh. She has made a heartbreaking discovery. Her new husband Drago is as abusive as the father she left behind in Croatia.In

Indiana’s War
The Civil War in Documents
Edited by Richard F. Nation and Stephen E. Towne

Indiana’s War is a primary source collection featuring the writings of Indiana’s citizens during the Civil War era. Using private letters, official records, newspaper articles, and other original sources, the volume presents the varied experiences of Indiana’s participants in the war both on the battlefield and on the home front.

Philena’s Friendship Quilt
A Quaker Farewell to Ohio
By Lynda Salter Chenoweth

Lynda Salter Chenoweth reveals the value of signature quilts as historic and social documents waiting to be read. Her research to discover the story behind an 1853 Ohio Quaker signature quilt uncovers the identity of the quilt’s recipient, her life and community, and a striking feature of the quilt itself—a “hidden” design element.

Album Quilts of Ohio’s Miami Valley
By Sue C. Cummings

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.

The AIA Guide to Columbus
By Jeffrey T. Darbee and Nancy A. Recchie

Columbus, the largest city in Ohio, has, since its founding in 1812, been home to many impressive architectural landmarks. The AIA Guide to Columbus, produced by the Columbus Architecture Foundation, highlights the significant buildings and neighborhoods in the Columbus metropolitan area. Skillfully blending architectural interest with historic significance, The AIA Guide to Columbus documents approximately 160 buildings and building groups and is organized geographically.

American Pogrom
The East St. Louis Race Riot and Black Politics
By Charles L. Lumpkins

On July 2 and 3, 1917, a mob of white men and women looted and torched the homes and businesses of African Americans in the small industrial city of East St. Louis, Illinois. When the terror ended, the attackers had destroyed property worth millions of dollars, razed several neighborhoods, injured hundreds, and forced at least seven thousand black townspeople to seek refuge across the Mississippi River in St. Louis, Missouri.

One Day for Democracy
Independence Day and the Americanization of Iron Range Immigrants
By Mary Lou Nemanic

Just before the turn of the twentieth century, immigrants from eastern and southern Europe who had settled in mining regions of Minnesota formed a subculture that combined elements of Old World traditions and American culture. Their unique pluralistic version of Americanism was expressed in Fourth of July celebrations rooted in European carnival traditions that included rough games, cross-dressing, and rowdiness.In

Ohio’s War
The Civil War in Documents
Edited by Christine Dee

In 1860, Ohio was among the most influential states in the nation. As the third-most-populous state and the largest in the middle west, it embraced those elements that were in concert-but also at odds-in American society during the Civil War era. Ohio’s War uses documents from that vibrant and tumultuous time to reveal how Ohio’s soldiers and civilians experienced the Civil War.

The Fairer Death
Executing Women in Ohio
By Victor L. Streib

Women on death row are such a rarity that, once condemned, they may be ignored and forgotten. Ohio, a typical, middle-of-the-road death penalty state, provides a telling example of this phenomenon. The Fairer Death: Executing Women in Ohio explores Ohio’s experience with the death penalty for women and reflects on what this experience reveals about the death penalty for women throughout the nation.Victor

The Black Laws
Race and the Legal Process in Early Ohio
By Stephen Middleton

Beginning in 1803, the Ohio legislature enacted what came to be known as the Black Laws. These laws instituted barriers against blacks entering the state and placed limits on black testimony against whites.

Quilts of the Ohio Western Reserve
By Ricky Clark

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.

Quilts of the Ohio Western Reserve
By Ricky Clark

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.

Ohio Volunteer
The Childhood and Civil War Memoirs of Captain John Calvin Hartzell, OVI
Edited by Charles I. Switzer

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.

Religion in Ohio
Profiles of Faith Communities
Edited by Tarunjit Singh Butalia and Dianne P. Small

Religion in Ohio tells the story of Ohio’s religious and spiritual heritage going back to the state’s ancient and historic native populations, the development of a wide variety of faith traditions in the years preceding the mid-twentieth century, and the arrival of many newer immigrants in the last fifty years.

Profiles of Ohio Women, 1803–2003
By Jacqueline Jones Royster

Developed by the Ohio Bicentennial Commission’s Advisory Council on Women, this collection profiles a few of the many women who have left their imprint on the state, nation, world, and even outer space.

Art As Image
Prints and Promotion in Cincinnati, Ohio
Edited by Alice M. Cornell

Illustrates the spectacular technological and artistic developments in the nineteenth-century printing trade from the earliest days of the Old Northwest Territory.

Set the Ploughshare Deep
A Prairie Memoir
By Timothy Murphy

Fifteen years in the making, Set the Ploughshare Deep is a memoir in prose, verse, and woodcuts. It depicts the consequences of Warren’s advice for a writer who turned his back on cities and the academic world, who bought and sold, farmed and failed like his forebears, all the while distilling what he saw, heard, or felt into his tall tales and short verses. Timothy Murphy has harvested pheasants and ducks as well as wheat and apples.

The Heritage
A Daughter’s Memories of Louis Bromfield
By Ellen Bromfield Geld
· Foreword by Lucy Dos Passos Coggin

Louis Bromfield, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, established one of the most significant homesteads in Ohio on his Malabar Farm. Today it receives thousands of visitors a year from all over the world; once the site of the wedding of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, it was a successful prototype of experimental and conservation farming.This lively, outspoken, and affectionate memoir preserves all things Louis Bromfield fought for or against in a life marked by surging vitality and gusto.

Mountain People in a Flat Land
A Popular History of Appalachian Migration to Northeast Ohio, 1940–1965
By Carl E. Feather

First popular history of Appalachian migration to one community—Ashtabula County, an industrial center in the fabled “best location in the nation.”

Barns of the Midwest
Edited by Allen G. Noble and Hubert G. H. Wilhelm

For many, the barn is the symbol of the Midwestern United States. It represents tangible wealth, solid citizenship, industry, stability, and other agrarian values associated with its conservative, Anglo-Saxon settlers.Editors Noble and Wilhelm set out to examine these stereotypes. European settlement of the Midwest, though primarily English and German, was never homogenous and the character of the Midwest barn reflects this.

Early Prose Writings of William Dean Howells, 1852–1861
By W. D. Howells
· Edited by Thomas Wortham

While William Dean Howells is today best remembered as Mark Twain’s staunchest defender, Howells was, at his peak, the unrivaled man of letters in America: he had no contemporary equal. The achievements of both Twain and Henry James have since surpassed those of Howells in the literary hierarchy, but the work of Howells still remains an important part of American letters.In

The Mound Builders
By Robert Silverberg

The Mound Builders traces the speculation surrounding the thousands of earthen mounds built across the Midwest some time between 1000 B.C. and 1000 A.D. and the scientific excavations which uncovered the history and culture of the ancient Americans who built them.

Shawnee!
The Ceremonialism of a Native Indian Tribe and Its Cultural Background
By James H. Howard

Comprehensive account of Shawnee culture including musical notations of Shawnee songs, maps, and heirloom photographs.