Ohio Books

I saw this book sitting on a coffee table and read through it with my 1-yr old daughter. Understandably, it was advanced for her but I greatly enjoyed it. I am purchasing it now for my home and a couple of copies to give as gifts. I am completely inspired by the vision that children have of our world. I make efforts everyday to save and protect our environment and I am excited that we have children growing up that will teach us how to increase our efforts.

In an effort of full disclosure, my niece is one of the authors. She is quite modest about this accomplishment. When I saw it on a coffee table, I had to ask her about the book before she shared the story of being an author.

Great book for genealogy research. It is not out of print. You can purchase this book directly from the publisher.

Carefully oberved and simply expressed visions of the human condition.

Written mostly in a time of war and turmiol, the language is sparse and unflinching in its portrayal of everyday life. Each poem is set within lives discreetly lived in plain veiw of the observer. Yet with each superficial glimpse of the woman next door, or the hunter, or the deaf mute on the bus, the observer contemplates the roots of human perception and motivation and the interaction between the two. "Perhaps in this way he learned the deep secret not even he must reveal."

Small gestures can have monumental signficance in human interactions. This book will remind everyone who reads it of the poetry all around us: in the people we see on the street; in the passing phrase that takes its context in accidental occurences; in the gesture of a stranger standing far away.

This poetry reaffirms life in all its shades and colorings. It never forgets death is inevitable, but it reminds us there is a lot of poetry in between.

This is a very unusual book. Reading it is like walking through a winter woods with a very knowledgeable botanist - plant lover who is willing to give you endless time to talk about plants, but without all the discomfort that involves. Black & white and color drawings by the author of hundreds of familiar and unusual wild plants of the Northeast United States, in the way they look in winter. (Usually one sees drawings only of spring, summer and fall foliage and flowers)
Detailed description and discussion of each plant are on the opposite page from each drawing.

Ohio poet David Young weaves together poetry, natural history, autobiography, and food in a wonderfully imagined and executed series of twelve monthly chapters, each rounded out with a gathering of recipes based on what's in season and influenced by an adept mingling of native ingredients and Italian technique. He'll send you out in search of wild mushrooms and inspire a hunt for his own well crafted poems and translations. Highly recommended.

It's hard to believe that Howells was a contemporary of Mark Twain. They seem to belong to different centuries: Twain to ours and Howells to Abraham Lincoln's. Howell's voice sounds necessarily a bit strange to a modern reader, but that strangeness gives him a special power.

He is inclined to narrate things from a distance. Even the agonies of a woman who has lost her lover in a war are told at a remove. In extreme cases, the narrator is telling the story as it was told by someone else who is relating events in the past. This style costs some immediacy, but it also keeps us from being totally distracted by personality. We don't root for these protagonists, but we listen to them.

And these are stories that are meant to get our ears. They demand our attention by their lack of polemic and the graceful nature of the narrative. Howells is a master.

Lynn Hoffman

This is a good book. Please buy it! (Christmas Every Day is good as a read-aloud for children)

Senates is one of the best books that I have ever read about upper chambers around the world. As I am myself employed by the Senate of Canada, I feel that the book truly reflects not only the history and workings of that particular chamber but also of the other bicameralist systems in the countries which the book examines. The issue of Senate reform is a touchy issue, particularly in Canada, but the author of the section on the Canadian Senate offers viable and excellent options for potential models of Senate reform and his theories certainly deserve further investigation- not only by Senators and their colleagues but by the electorate of Canada as well. Any one who is interested in international politics should definitely add this book to their library and I give it five stars.

I loved this book. It went into just enough detail about each of the 12 cases, not too little and not too much detail. The cases were interesting and James Renner writes in a very gifted and intriguing way. I hope he continues his writing, especially about some of the northeast Ohio cases, which is where I'm from.

This is an indispensable collection for anyone who is interested in Romanticism and its origins, or in the roots of horror literature. Jeffrey Cox brings together an admirable selection of the most exciting and influential examples of the "Gothic Horror Dramas" that took the English stage by storm at the end of the 18th Century. Readers whose acquaintance with the Gothic Horror genre extends no further than the sublime but restrained novels of Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe will find this collection a shocking revelation. These plays, which are otherwise unavailable except in expensive and out-of-print editions, are thrilling and genuinely horrific in ways that far surpass contemporary novels, and can still be read for pure, guilty pleasure, as well as for scholarly/historical interest. Most importantly, anyone who has ever wondered how the sublime but still unmistakably evil villain of the Gothic Horror Novels becomes transformed into that towering icon of English Romanticism, the Byronic Hero, will find the answer in the three indisputable masterpieces in this collection: "The Castle Spectre" by M.G. Lewis, "De Monfort" by Joanna Baillie, and "Bertram" by C.R. Maturin. In these works, the Gothic Villain gradually acquires sympathetic attributes (such as an oppressive sense of guilt for his outrages) without sacrificing his titanic stature, until ultimately (as in the case of "Bertram," the finest work in the collection), he achieves the status of a dark hero, with Nietzschean overtones. Cox also provides a useful introduction to these unjustifiably neglected works.

An interesting collection of essays about America's sexual history, covering everything from marriage in New Mexico in the 1700s to homosexuality in the Navy in WW I. Although this is more of an academic book rather than a casual read, the essays are short enough to keep one's attention and there's something new to be learned in each.