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Oxford was planned in 1809 when the Ohio legislature established Miami University. Sandusky was a shipping port on the Great Lakes. Permanent settlers came in 1816. Cholera struck in 1849. Previously there had been smaller outbreaks. Sandusky is noted for making wine.

Springfield is a National Pike town. It was on the route of the Great Ohio Stage Company in Cumberland, Maryland. Steubenville, Marietta and Chillicothe were the mother towns of the state. They are in proximity to West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Marietta is the oldest settlement in Ohio, the pioneer city in the Northwest Territory.

Akron became a center for rubber manufacturing in the first two decades of the 20th century. Cleveland and many of the cities in Ohio such as Youngstown were notable centers of steel, brass and iron making. Organization of the Standard Oil Company in 1870 made Cleveland a force in oil. Tom Johnson was the famous mayor of Cleveland in the Progressive Era.

The book features twenty-three automobile tours-- a thoughtful plan of the WPA Guides. Interesting black and white photographs abound. There are seventeen essays on special topics and nineteen profiles of cities. Coal is worked in the eastern and southern section of the state. Glaciers covered two thirds of the state in the late Cenozoic era.

The first people were known as mound builders. The most advanced mound builder culture is the Hopewell. Among the first historic Indians were the Erie. Others included the Miami and the Shawnee. The Wyandotte, of Iroquois stock, were the most powerful tribe in the Northwest Territory after the Revolution. Also present were the Tuscarora, Seneca, Delaware, Ottawa, Cherokee. Ohio, home of many presidents, is known as a barometer state.

Rogers Clark won the Northwest Territory for the thirteen colonies. Before the Civil War, Lane Seminary in Cincinnati and later Oberlin became centers of anti-slavery activity. Ohio-born writers include James Thurber, Sherwood Anderson and Hart Crane. Ohio has been an area of concentrated and innovative industrial development. Names such as Rockefeller, Wright, Willys, Procter, Gamble, Kroger, Olds, and Kettering are recognizable.

The book describes Finnish and Slovenian families in Ohio and many other cultures and customs of individuals and groups. In buildings Ohio has experienced the gothic style, steamboat gothic, romanesque, Greek revival. When the guide was written a contemporary painter, Charles Burchfield, saw possibilites in the main street of the small towns. A really important writer who began in Ohio is William Dean Howells. The outstanding poet was Paul Laurence Dunbar. There is a chronology at the end of the book.

Leona and Madeleine are two American girls with impeccable backgrounds in books and bookloving, dating from before the Second World War. They got together and became booksellers on the most fragile of bases - the stationery was printed a year before they ever sold a book - but their friendship was firm, their enthusiasm vast and their knowledge immense.

They started off with a tiny stock, superbly described in their first catalogue, and built up their initial success, fuelling it with trips to postwar Europe where they happily trawled through centuries of printed rummage to unearth treasures for resale.

Every year they booked a trip, at first aboard ex-troopships, more latterly on airliners, and explored the labyrinthine world of booksellers and their wares. From the third floor of Marks and Co in Charing Cross Road to a secluded chateau outside Paris and all points in between they met and described in their diaries the amazingly colourful booksellers and their shops. A stack of Renaissance folios in the toilet, a rat in the basement, an ex-movie star, Russian emigres - I can hardly begin to describe the experiences they had and the people they met and charmed.

From the very first pages I can understand why they found their way into so many hearts. The excitement at finding a rare book for a song is genuine, the affection they feel for each other and their annual friends warming, and the language in which they describe it all is witty and engaging. One can almost smell the dusty, musty bookshops, the tottering stacks, the ricketty ladders, the clutter, calfskin and cellars of old world bookshops.

If you love books at all, then go forth and hunt down this one. It is a rare treasure in itself, an authentic feelgood odyssey through the world of booksellers, their wares and their curious habitats. A tag-team effort of both partners, it is a delight from beginning to end.

Although I love "Books About Books";I ,like the majority of those who love books and reading ,know very little ,nor have had the experience of searching for,buying and selling Antiquarian books and Ephermera.While never part of that world,I found this book about it, a delightful read.
To the authors of this book,it was their whole life. They not only had the experiences they tell us about;but also made a successful career of it and made their living at it. They are no longer with us; Leona Rostenberg passed away on March 17,2005 at the age of 96,while Madeleine Stern passed away on August 18,2007 at the age of 95.They spent their entire adult lives living and working together. The world of books and their friendship were everything to them.
This book is mainly comprised of the journals they kept of their trips to England and Europe during the years after WWII ,from 1947 to 1957.
Their descriptions of what things were like after the destruction and hardships of recovery after the war are as much of what this book is about as the rare books they are able o find.Of course,as in any endeavor,the people you meet and the friendships that develop along the way,are what most enjoyments of pursuits are all about.
It is amazing ,the amount of 15th -18th Century books that were available ,for what seems today like pittance. The books they find,and talk about are virtually unknown to me,and very shortly after being found ended up in special collections in libraries,universities and with wealthy collectors. The experiences of the authors lasted for only a decade or so .That was the time when money was hard to find,collections all over Europe had been plundered,scattered about,and great rareties could be found in many bookstores.All that soon ended,when word got around and hords of dealers started to started to swarm the continent and these sorts of gems were scooped up and rapidely skyrocked in price.Where real treadures could be found for the price of a meal or less, they soon became available at a "King's Ransom";if at all.
A wonderful read ,for Bibliophiles and book buyers;from the novice to the astute Antiquarian.

I'm grateful to find a "readable", yet authentic version of the King James Old Testament. Now one goes from adventuresome story to spiritual insights without "begats" and repetitions to slow one's eager comsumption of the true "meat" of the Old Testament in all it's glory. A MUST read...time and again.

Possibly a greater work of art than Uncle Tom's Cabin, Oldtown Folks gives a penetrating and panornamic view of life in a New England village in the years following the Revolutionary War, and before the coming of the railroad and the steam engine. This book is beautiful, filled with rich insights about people and very humorous. In gives a vivid portrait of the social life and thinking of the people in the era. Stowe wrote the book in an effort to preserve for future generations the life, which she had known growing up as a child and which she saw passing away under the force of industrialization. She succeeded marvelously. This work along with perhaps five or six other novels by Stowe are a neglected national treasure. America would not be the society it is today, if Harriet Beecher Stowe were widely read and discussed. The society which did so at the time this work was written was capable of electing Abraham Lincoln to be President. One can only hope that such a day might come again.

`Orphans of the storm' is a collection of short stories dealing with the horror of the forgotten holocaust that followed the partition of the Indian subcontinent. With contributions from such noted writers as Khushwant Singh, Bapsi Sidhwa, Mulk Raj Anand and Khwaja Ahmed Abbas from both sides of the border it gives a terrifying but cathartic glimpse into the lives of people who suffered during the communal riots that reached a civil war like crescendo after India's independence. While some of the authors represented graphically describe the atrocities committed in a way that conveys the disgust they feel, others focus on the emotional and philosophical crisis reached when neighbor turns against neighbor. There is no political debate attempted, just the record of one of the greatest human tragedies of the 20th century. Most of the stories are simple but heart wrenching in their portrayal of a nation at war with itself. Even occasional touches of melodrama cannot spoil what is essentially a very poignant account of a people's madness and subsequent desolation. Some readers may find the graphic brutality of the narratives of rape, murder, and abduction unnerving but this, together with a look into the minds of the victims and perpetrators of this violence is the best way to express the anguish and the misery of the Partition. Even such violent themes are largely handled well and make for some of the most moving stories I have ever read. A fine book with carefully selected stories that cannot fail to both disturb and arouse the pacifist feelings of a reader.

The power of the words Dr. Rossiter uses to describe his emotions as he goes through the struggle to understand himself as a gay man, a Christian, and a pastor, go beyond my ability to describe them. He uses words and phrases that convey the depth of his pain, his anger, and his joys loudly and clearly. He pulls no punches in his growing anger toward the contradictory stance of the United Methodist church on the issue of homosexuality, and in the spirit-filled language he uses to describe his relationships with his family, his friends, his lover, and with God. Although I am not a gay person, I can nonetheless appreciate and learn from his struggle to be authentic with himself, to embrace every part of his being, and to realize that he can and should be everything God created him to be. It's a lesson for all of us struggling to be honest with our true selves and worry that our true selves will not be "good enough" for other people and for God. The reality, though, is God's love and grace is all sufficient and is not withheld from any of God's children. And ALL of us are God's children. Thank you, Dr. Rossiter, for reminding us of the fullness of God's love!

This book is a nice blend of personal experience and sound scientific information, by two pwoplw who are well known in South Africa for their delight in owling!

This set of essays by the master Shakespeare critic A.C. Bradley contains essays on :Poetry for Poetry's Sake, The Sublime, Hegel's Theory of Tragedy, Wordsworth, Shelley's View of Poetry, The Long Poem in the Age of Wordsworth, The Letters of Keats, The Rejection of Falstaff, Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare the Man, Shakespeare's Theatre and Audience.
I especially enjoyed the essay on Keats where Bradley focuses on the meaning of Beauty in Keats' letters. His appreciation of the remarkable character of Keats and how this is reflected both in the Letters and the Poems is instructive. The essay on Shakespeare the Man I found a bit speculative , yet another attempt to say something about the character of the character who mastered and made so many different characters. It is interesting that Bradley believes that Shakespeare is the poet who best exemplified Keats' prescription for what a poet ideally should be, one whose negative capability means he is within and without all the characters he creates. The essay on Wordsworth focuses on his originality especially in finding in the simplicities of daily life, and in simple characters the deepest expressions of human soul.
But there is much more than I have indicated here . This is a classic set of essays by one of the English literary traditions, most important critics.

This was a great high-tech science thriller. The best thing I liked about this novel by JoAnn Arnold, was the family working together as one to bring a traitor to justice. These family members utilized their occupations in a very unique way. One of the main characters was this very intelligent and clever Golden Retriever by the name of Dorado. Dorado is quite the sleuth!!!! I'm just starting the sequel, The Silent Patriots, which should be just as good. If you enjoy delving into the background of our American Flag, with suspense and high tech mixed in, you'll love this novel!!!