Ohio Books

This is a look at the life of a Pastor as he looks back at the life and times of his sermons, the people he has met, and the times he has endured. You will laugh, cry and understand the humbling stories contained within the small, yet very fullfilling book.

The publishing of poetry is and always should be the hallmark of the academic press. Such is the case with the Ohio University Press who has now made available to the reading public "Dear Regime", a collection of award winning verse by Roger Sedarat (Assistant Professor of English, Borough of Manhattan community College, City University of new York). Sedarat is the recipient of scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the St. Botolph Society poetry grant. His poetry has appeared in such prestigious journals as the 'New England Review', the 'Atlanta Review', and 'Poet Love'. Focusing his poetic skills upon themes and subjects associated with or arising from the culture of Iran, "Dear Regime" will aptly serve to introduce a whole new generation of readers to an articulate body of free verse and prose poetry that is as superbly crafted as it is memorable in both theme and substance. 'Picnic': Tea is to saffron as kneeling on the rug/is to a history of kings on the road/erecting tents, roasting lambs, etc.//Back in the city, who will free the prisoner/is to the guard as what is written/on papyrus is to ink.//When Haji goes to the park the ants arrive,/drawing a line from their mound/to the basket of fresh fruit and cutlet.//The ants are to analogies as cutlet/is to rhetoric. The exponential burden of laboring/bits of ground meat on tiny red bodies//thus makes a text worth eating./This is the story of Haji's hunger/read in the mountains on an April day.//It may indeed prove delightful/to put one's bare feet in a cold spring/after such an arduous climb.//Yet in the final analysis, it is only a test/of his verbal strength to view the city from the country/and try not to compare.

The way the author describes the caracters and the action in the book, made it visible to me as I read it. I could very easily see this book as a movie, it had everything you could want in a mystery book. It has a very interesing murder weapon. The main character isn't the typical PI.

The author transports the reader back in time to the beginning of one of Cincinnati's finest towns. If you like history, this is the book for you. The pictures are fabulous and the captions are thorough and interesting.

The book is dated ofcourse, but was very well done with tons of effort on the author's behalf. He deserves tons of respect.

As a decendent myself, I have a copy of this book. It is not for sale. If your want to make contact, look me up!

Best wishes
lmwold AT aol

Who could dispute David Orr's central contention that we need to continue making buildings that can sustain themselves, so called "green architecture," and that there's no better place to start than at home. His is an impassioned voice that occasionally reaches the oratorical heights of a Thoreau or a Lewis Mumford, and his account of the events leading to the opening of Adam Joseph Lewis Center at Oberlin (Ohio) is worth reading from the viewpoint of agitprop alone: it is the green equivalent of THE CRADLE WILL ROCK.

Alas, it lacks music altogether, and some of its purpler passages should have gotten the red pencil. And while they had the pencil out, they might also have marked up some of the endless and dull passages about persuading this one, selling the idea to that one, many Ohio and government worthies who seem to have stepped out of an early Sinclair Lewis novel. In most cases Orr doesn't mind giving himself the heroic role, but he's the man and we might as well acknowledge it. He's not only the hero, he's the Jeremiah of his own legend. His writing style is accessible: not for Orr the theoretical flourishes of his kinsmen. In fact he harbors a certain contempt for the jargonheads, even ones who share his preoccupation with the green. He has a telling anecdote in which a San Francisco cosmopolitan, invited to give a speech, turns place into an abstraction and bewilders a room full of hardworking Ozark peasant women who give her a grim glare of blankness. These were women who lived, as opposed to the San Francisco woman who could only speak. He quotes Lao Tzu with a certain wry approval: "One who knows does not say and one who says does not know."

In that case he knows and says everything that needs to be said. With the Lewis Center slated to open shortly, we will see the first colleege built building capable to sustaining itself since the original Oneida Foundation in upstate New York during the Transcendental years commemorated by Hawthorne in his BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. Yes, the cost of making such a building is higher than your ordinary strip mall, but in the long run it's the strip mall that's going to cost us more, and as Orr points out, costs decline geometrically as more and more buildings go green and the technology is shared by many. Plus he prevailed upon numerous foundations who were swayed by his appeal and his honesty. His book ends up paraphrasing Wendell Berry to the effect that "to live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of Creeation. When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament." I wouldn't put it that way myself, but at the heart of the matter, Orr's on the side of the Lord.

Dialogue On The Frontier: Catholic And Protestant Relations, 1793-1883 explores the historiography of relations between early Catholic and Protestant settlers of the United States of America. Far more than simply a dry recounting of historical events, Dialogue On The Frontier strives to offer historical perspective and insight on modern Catholic-Protestant issues that cause confusion to this day: the controversy regarding the choice of a Catholic chaplain for the U.S. House of Representatives, background issues pertaining to the removal of the Bible and prayer from the school classroom, the debate over vouchers for private religious schools, and more. Chapters focus upon specific notable religious figures and divides the ongoing debate between Catholics and Protestants into discrete eras, such as "Archbishop John Carroll: The New World and the Opening Dialogue, 1634-1793" and "Archbishop John Baptist Purcell: The Debate Turns into a Monologue 1855-1872". A scholarly, sober, and exhaustively researched and annotated scrutiny, especially recommended for religious history shelves.

The outcome has been written. But for those that really enjoy college football, and The Ohio State University Buckeyes, specifically, this is the book for you.

Contents:
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter 1: Hope Springs Eternal
Chapter 2: Outside the Lines
Chapter 3: Great Expectations
Chapter 4: The Journey Begins
Chapter 5: Eyes on the Prize
Chapter 6: The Game
Chapter 7: Waiting for an Opponent
Chapter 8: The Long Layoff
Chapter 9: The Heisman Trophy
Chapter 10: The BCS Championship Game
Chapter 11: Moving Forward
Appendix

Diary of an Unforgettable Season, by Steve Snapp, takes you inside big time college football. Snapp, the Associate Director of Athletics for Broadcasting for The Ohio State Buckeyes, kept a diary during the 2006 season which has been turned into this 166 page book. He brings you right inside the coaches and player meetings, the preparations for the season, the awards season, and the BCS Championship Game. It is a wonderful insiders look at big time college football told in a very personal manner.

Even if you are not a fan of the Buckeyes, the entries on the season ending awards (Lombardi, Heisman, etc.) are eye opening as to the amount of travel, meetings, dinners, and interviews that the winners and finalists go through. That they are able to play a game after all of that travel is incredible. Snapp spends time on most of the major players from that team, allowing the reader to learn more about their development and the highlights of their season. He also writes about the coaching staff, giving you another perspective of the season, one that was probably not in any media outlet.

While a good, fast read, it needed a little tighter editing. My only complaint with the book is that some of the word choices were curious, causing me to pause on some entries to try to figure out what Snapp meant. On the plus side, he adds pictures to the diary, giving a nice visual from select games and events. Even though this is a diary of a specific season, Snapp infuses some of the entries with the history of the Buckeyes to give you a look at the past and how it is used to motivate the current team. If you are fan of The Ohio State University Buckeye football team and you would like a remembrance of the 2006 season from someone that had inside access to the coaches and team, this is a great addition to your library. If the Buckeyes aren't the team for you, you will appreciate Snapp's insights of the awards ceremonies and mainstream media.

Go Bucks!

Volume 4 of The Dent Uniform Edition Of Dickens' Journalism, The Uncommercial Traveller And Other Papers 1859-70 is a significant literary event for Dickensian studies. Like the earlier volumes of Charles Dicken's work, the articles and writings of thise literary compendium of Dicken's writings is enhanced for academia and Dickensian scholarship by a list of abbreviations, a prefance, introduction, acknowledgements, as well as "Note on the Text and Illustrations", select bibliography, "Dicken's Life and Times 1859-70", a list of illustrations, glossary, index, and four appendices: The Great International Walking-Match; Prefaces; Descriptive headlines added by Dickens to articles in the volume which were included in UT1; and Complete listing of Dickens' known journalism, December 1833-August 1869. Highly recommended.

Great Photography in this book