Ohio Books

"Pinehaven" by William G. Schmidt

William Schmidt and his parents bought an old home in 1986. During the next year, they named it Pinehaven. This is the story of life in rural Ohio, just west of Dayton, in the town of Farmersville. Old homes need work, tender loving care, are interesting to explore, and Pinehaven is no exception.

The book has two interesting photos of Pinehaven, the first from near 1900, the second (an aerial photo) from 1990. Nearly 300 pages long, there are 12 chapters telling of life at Pinehaven during each month of the year. You will find this to be more than a story about Pinehaven, though.

Pinehaven is a collection of short stories and one can read about Montgomery County and of William Schmidt and his family. You will find out how the name "Pinehaven" came about. Don't miss the first New Year's Eve, the daily walks down a country road with dad, the "Pipe Brigade", the "Bottle Farm", Schmidt's love of Michigan, diaries and journals, Comet Hale Bopp, the milkman, and William Schmidt's account of each season of the year as they come and go. William Schmidt is quite observant and shares his findings and opinions about mother nature, religion, government, and of life, too.

William Schmidt's writing is very descriptive and closely resembles that of Laura Ingalls Wilder in her "Little House on the Prairie" series. Those of you who are Laura Ingalls Wilder fans will find the "A Little House Sampler" to be quite similar as Laura and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, wrote similar stories of an earlier time.

Without waiting until the end to write an autobiography, I find "Pinehaven" a great way to describe life presently, tell your personal history, and share your thoughts and feelings. It is like visiting the author and listening to him talk to you.

"Pinehaven" is one of the best books that I have ever read. I strongly recommend "Pinehaven" for your reading pleasure.

This gorgeously rendered world of the grim and deadly Insane Asylum of the Fifties is a testament to the survival of its author.

Thank you Perry Aayr for finding and preserving this priceless treasure.

Dr. Wood is the quintessence of the philosopher who thinks the thoughts comtemporaneous to his own era and his personal "appearance" in history. At the same time, Wood engages the entire philosophic tradition, thereby exposing his Hegelian sensibility while concurrently flushing out the aesthetic perspective of the mainstays of that tradition. To one not tuned in to the aesthetic, Dr. Wood's "Placing Aesthetics" enlivens it and forces it into one's psyche. For those already aesthetically inclined, Wood's treatise repositions the aesthetic to its rightful place of centrality relative to Western speculative thought and to man's very existence. Wood's identification of the "heart" as the ground of the aesthetic, as that space between the Now of sensation and the inextricable reference to the Whole thru the notion of Being, cleanses the doors of one's aesthetic perception from Plato to Heidegger, and major thinkers in between. Wood's insistence that one attend to the Whole, while not neglecting the nature of each within the Whole, is a clarion call to all of us to strive harder, to pursue longer, to delve deeper into the meaning of It All. In the concluding section of "Placing Aesthetics", Wood surpasses Nietzsche's "woman's aesthetics" by incorporating an intriguing presentation and analysis of his own sculptural efforts in a critical yet illuminating fashion. Dr. Wood's "Placing Aesthetics" is a must read and re-read for both the professional Philosopher and the novice thinker.

Blessed with fertile and well-watered soil, East Africa's kingdom of Buganda supported a relatively dense population and became a major regional power by the mid-nineteenth century. This complex and fascinating state has also long been in need of a thorough study that cuts through the image of autocracy and military might. Most studies of the kingdom have focused on the political power of central institutions and the ruling elite.

Most political studies have emphasized that the strength of the Buganda kingdom has its roots in the way it was reformed by Sekabaka Kintu in the fifteenth century when he defeated Sekabaka Bbemba and established the current dynasty. Kintu decided to make the monarchy an all-inclusive pro-people institution. By establishing it along a clan system in terms of culture and creating administrative pillars for political governance. Unlike the neighboring kingdoms where there was a single ruling clan, in Buganda all the clans are eligible to producing a Kabaka. This is because the Kabaka honors the totem (omuziro) of his mother's clan, since the royal clan does not have have any totems. The Kabaka belongs to the clan of the Royals (called Abalangira n'Abambeija) and this clan does not have any totems. In Buganda it is taboo for one to marry from one's clan. Hence the sharing of the throne by all clans. Kintu also allocated specific duties to clans in the palace and all clans are considered equal before the throne. The administration was based on counties, sub-counties, parishes, and down to the villages. The occupants of those offices had to be of impeccable character. It was because of that, that the kingdom became stronger and popular because the people looked at the Kabakaship as their own culturally, socially and politically. Culturally because the Kabaka is the head of all clan, and custodian of all the customs and traditional keeper, politically because he is the pinnacle of the pyramid.

Political Power in Pre-Colonial Buganda explores the material basis of Ganda political power, examining in particular land, labor, commerce, and military change. The book gives us a new understanding of what Ganda power meant in real terms, and relates the story of how the kingdom used the resources at its disposal to meet the challenges that confronted it. Reid further explains how these same challenges ultimately limited Buganda's dominance of the East African Great Lakes region.

Buganda was one of the largest, most powerful polities in pre-colonial East Africa. It is also one of the most studied, although mainly a generation ago, and with an overwhelmingly political focus. Reid offers a welcome, ambitious break from this norm in this book on the material and military bases of political power in 19th-century Buganda, especially post-1850.

Emphasizing abundance and diversity, Part 1 examines the overall Ganda economy and the kinds of raw materials and economic resources which nineteenth century Buganda had at its disposal, and how the control and utilization of these led to political, social and cultural development. Reid describes how the evolution of Buganda owed much to the individual's relative economic freedom, in terms of both commercial activity and production. Its textile and metal working industries placed Buganda at the center of a thriving commercial system.

Part 2 focuses on the organization of public labor in the construction of roads and buildings, the development of state taxation, and relationship between particular professional and social groups within the labor system. The utilization of human beings compelled Ganda society to consider such concepts as liberty and slavery. However, Reid emphasizes that the Ganda system was never inflexible, and that individuals, free and otherwise, might aspire to higher status whatever their starting point.

Part 3 highlights the central importance of domestic, regional and long-distance trade to Buganda's material wealth and power. First, long-established domestic and regional trade, then 19th-century long-distance commerce connected with the East African coast, transformed Buganda's economy and foreign relations, both augmenting and undermining the wealth and power of the kingdom and its central authority. Reid points out that the Ganda were vigorous traders and that the kingdom to some extent owed it regional dominance in the nineteenth century to its commercial strength.

Finally, in Part 4, Reid turns to military organization, including the constitution of the army, the development of weaponry and the impact of firearms. Reid argues that the development of a naval fleet of enormous canoes in the nineteenth century, which had its origins in Buganda's ancient fishing communities, was created in order to compensate for military failure on land and to control long-distance trade, which had become vital to the kingdom. The Ganda army seems to have become excessively organized burdened by hierarchy and obsessed with structural detail.

Reid's book is well researched and he effectively demonstrates the influence the economy had on the type of state that pre-colonial Buganda became. Buganda still has much to offer the interested historian. Hopefully Reid's interpretation of reasons for the pre-colonial phenomena of Ganda organization, expansion and decline will kindle new interest and further debate concerning what exactly was special about Buganda in the nineteenth century.

Donald Duck is lost, and trying to read the Egyptian hieroglyphs in order to escape back to Duckberg. Orphan Annie and her dog, "in their bubble," happily pass by a line of long faced, skinny Okies in a growing soup kitchen line. One stamp of the Buddha, used one thousand times, never produces an identical image. Everything speaks its own language: "What we always are is a new vocabulary strangers need to learn, to be less strange, and fluency is a sign of one love or another." Goldbarth's language is incredibly original, formed around the myths and dreams of American regalia, space ships and angels. His language forces us to look again at the icons of popular culture and he redefines the symbolic representations by juxtaposing them shockingly against real life: the death of his father, a woman beaten deaf, a child seeing his parents having sex, war, and other powerfully convincing images and facts.

I loved it! Goldbarth is one contemporary poet who knows what he is doing, without wasting a word.

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This is a great book for the memories and also all the facts and whys of the Portage Lakes. It is a very good book to know and understand everything about the Portage Lakes Area. I enjoy this book and with many great pictures also it is wonderful book.

"Portrait of America" was a popular video documentary series in the mid-eighties, a product of collaboration between Superstation/Turner Broadcasting Corporation and Ambrose Home Video. Well-researched, each video is divided into 5 segments covering most unique historical, social, and cultural aspects of each state. Watching such an interesting documentary, each being roughly about 50 minutes long, without advertisements and other interruptions seems to be a privilege in these days!

This extraordinary collection of essays brings vividly to life the process of crafting the first constitution of post-apartheid South Africa. Writers include many participants in that careful process, as well as legal and constitutional scholars. What is described is a profoundly democratic process intended to capture the genuine will of a people who had been entirely disenfranchised, and now found their aspirations were to be reflected in a founding document. Strikingly, womens rights, economic security, and the protection of the environment receive the explicit protections missing in our own constitution. This book is essential reading for students of democracy, law, rights, and race.

Dr. Halperin's work on the East End of Cincinnati,Ohio is an easy read for everyone,you do not have to be a Phd.to appreciate this book.The author obviously lived this book and knew not only the neighborhood but the East Enders themselves on a very personal level,only then could she write about this community and the changes it has gone through in the last decade with such knowledge and insight.This should be a must read for anyone undergoing changes in their life or their community.Thank you Dr.Halperin for a book that everyone can understand and learn from.

A great book to help track down your Preble county family