Ohio Books

This is a charming book and serves to remind us all about our families and the experiences we had growing up. Children today might take a moment to read this and reflect on their own day-to-day experiences. Too often today we forget and take too many things for granted. I enjoyed reading this book

"Victorian Travelers" tells the story of six British travelers to China: Robert Fortune, Archibald Little, Constance Gordon Cumming, Maj. Henry Knollys, Isabella Bird, and Mrs. Archibald Little. If you have heard of any of these forgotten people, you might enjoy reading this book.

Each of the above travelers wrote one or more books about their journeys in China. The author focuses on their opinions about what they saw and experienced and how they were influenced by their own sense of Victorian and Western superiority. This is not a heavyweight subject and, as academic books go, this one is easy reading. If like me you're fascinated by dusty old travel accounts this book might introduce you to an author you will want to read -- or give you some insights into an author you have read.

Why don't the academics put their books on the web and give everyone free access to them? I mean, hey, this book is not going to be a best seller -- and the author is not going to get rich off the royalties, even at the inflated price of academic publications. Certainly more people would read this book, albeit still very few, if it were available free of charge over the web. It seems rather silly in this day and age to waste paper printing obscure academic books when low-cost and convenient alternatives exist.

Smallchief

Vigilante organizations were a popular phenomena in the West before "official" law agencies could be established (and often continued to exist long afterward). Although they dated back to pre-Revolutionary days, they seemed to manifest themselves best in the wide-open rural areas of the quickly expanding trans-Mississippi West. They existed for many different purposes - enforcing laws, overriding unpopular laws, controlling or eliminating "undesired" factions or developments (the KKK, opposing cattle interests, for example) - and as is often the case when groups take the law into their own hands, they committed as much chaos and crime as they hoped to prevent. In this book, Harold Hutton takes a microscopic look at vigilante activity as it appeared in the restricted area of Nebraska along the Niobrara River during the 1870s-1880s.

His primary focus is mainly on the activities of outlaw Kid Wade, a horse thief of the region. The canyons along the Niobrara offered excellent hiding places for such activity, and local law enforcement officials had a difficult time subduing this illegal activity. The vigilante committees took up the slack. Wade was eventually caught and hanged by the vigilantes. Hutton goes on to recount additional work by the vigilantes to bring other cattle thieves to justice. All told, 15 thieves lost their lives to the vigilantes; many others fled the country or were arrested and tried under normal means. Hutton remains nonjudgmental throughout his account and gathers much of his information from contemporary local newspaper stories, which for the most part supported the activities of the vigilantes. As with everything, some vigilante groups were honorable and decent, while others were not. The last incident of horse thievery along the Niobrara occurred in 1906, and Hutton says the man was brought to justice "according to law," and served four years in the penitentiary. The need for a vigilance committee had long passed. Though extremely narrow in scope, Hutton's history is interesting and informative. The book also contains many illustrations.

The book was hard to put down. An indepth history of what happened as people discovered sunny St. Petersburg and moved in. Greed reigned over sensible planning and now people are paying the price for uncontrolled growth and urban blight. Dr. Stephenson did excellent research and shows us that John Nolan was right. The people of St. Petersburg should have listened to him.

An author is only as good as his wife. That makes old Tom a pretty damned good autor

Not only is this book no doubt written by someone who is knowledgeable about the northeastern Ohio area and its history, but also it is very readable--yet detailed. Gave me numerous ideas on where to go. Very helpful; gave distance and estimated time of each hike, along with map.

I purchased this book several years ago and it has been my companion on many a weekend hike. In fact, a couple more weekends and I will have visited them all. Ramey includes information about each site, directions and step by step descriptions of what you'll see along the trail. The trails vary from well known and well traveled to obscure and isolated. Although most are of easy to moderate difficulty, hikers of all types will find something of interest here. I highly recommend this book to anyone living in or visiting Southwestern Ohio.

This story shares a tale of many living through hard winters in log cabins packed with mud. It shares the values of life and death, protection, and espically a mothers love. My children ask to read it over and over.

Warring Factions
Interest Groups, Money, and the New Politics of Senate Confirmation
- Lauren Cohen Bell.

Here's a partisan program that is saving taxpayers millions every year: Nearly 250 of the government's 726 most senior jobs are going unfilled.
Time Magazine, May 26, 1997

Warring Factions is a book about the constitutional process the United States Senate uses to approve or reject the President's choices to fill federal government positions. It is a book about the history, the evolution, and the downfall of the process. Most significantly, it is a book that demonstrates the extent to which interest groups and money have transformed the Senate's confirmation process into a virtual circus.

Bell's robust body of research should not only add to the collective understanding of those who study the appointment process, but also to the collective cognizance of the American public. According to Bell, the erosion of the confirmation process is generally not a salient issue to the vast majority of Americans, however, it should be! The choices a president makes in nominating persons to fill vacancies, and the process the Senate uses to determine the qualifications of the nominees have direct consequences for the quality of governance in the United States. Understanding the confirmation process can help individuals to evaluate more fully the health, stability and direction of the American system of government.

This book is a timely contribution toward the understanding of issues with far-ranging significance in American politics. Bell is to be commended for her meticulous research and for her courage in bringing these troubling concerns to the attention of the American public.

Bell's focus and extensive research results in an unusually broad analysis of the role of interest groups in the confirmation process, permitting quantitative, and generalizable conclusions to be drawn.

Marilyn Thornton Williams' 'Washing the great unwashed' is an excellently researched history of the social movements behind the public bath movement, and offers a knowledgeable background and analysis of the American social, economic and political environment at that historical moment.