Ohio Books

Reynolds is my medical anthropology professor at UC Berkeley. The book, like Reynolds, is engaging and interesting. Reynolds is compassionate and very intelligent. These qualities are clearly evident in her book. It is a wonderful resource for both laymen and anthropologists, for anybody interested in healing systems outside of the Western tradition. Read the book.

"If America holds a collective portrait of the Polish immigrant landing at Ellis Island, exhausted, bewildered, clutching bundles and children, surrounded by queerly lettered trunks, what, in the popular imagination, do those trunks contain? The featherbed, embroidered linens, a treasured family photograph . . . a fistful of village soil . . . . Rarely, however, do we imagine a book among the carefully packed belongings . . . " (p. 15).
Popular stereotypes may envisage the Polish immigrant of the late 19th/early 20th century as an illiterate peasant who provided only brawn to the American Industrial Revolution. But the emigracja za chlebem also had a voracious appetite for reading. Karen Majewski, associate professor of Polish & East Central European Studies at Michigan's St. Mary's College, documents a lost page in immigrant history: the large book publishing industry that grew up in Polonian centers to serve the first and second generations of Polish immigrants.
The demand for books was great, evidenced by the number of titles that appeared. Writing their history is itself a challenge, because much of the primary source material has disappeared. Being in Polish, the books often didn't catch the attention of American libraries. Since book publishing was a sideline of the Polonian newspaper publishers, they kept costs down by printing on acidic paper that crumbled over time. Few of these books were sent to deposit collections like the Library of Congress. Few were copyrighted: some even couldn't be, because-as today-Polish "entrepreneurs" had no qualms about pirating books published elsewhere, calculating that an author in the old country was unlikely to fight for his intellectual property rights in Wisconsin.
Majewski devotes her book to a special niche of those writings: fiction published by Polonian authors for the Polonian market. She examines four different genres: crime and detective novels, sagas about immigration, short stories and novels containing social critiques, and romances. She also devotes an epilogue to Polish-language novels being published today by writers like Zofia Mierzyñska, recounting the lives and experiences of today's economic immigrants who overstay tourist visas and disappear into the underground economy.
The author advances a provocative thesis: that Polonian fiction was often a metaphor for intra-community debates about what it meant to be Polish in America. The emigracja za chlebem had come to America from a Poland that did not appear on anybody's maps. In many ways, the most open and public debate about Polish identity occurred not in Austrian-, Russian-, or Prussian-dominated Poland but in the "fourth partition," American Polonia. Majewski argues that many of the images of family, love, marriage, betrayal, and usurpation were also extended metaphors for what was taking place on the political level in Poland. As later under communism, Poles learned how to communicate effectively through a "'conspiracy of understanding'" invoking certain words, symbols, and associations. It was not mere coincidence that Pope John Paul II often spoke about the virtue of solidarity after the suppression of SolidarnoϾ. Majewski argues that the same phenomenon was operative in that early Polonian fiction.
Majewski's recovered a fascinating and forgotten page of American Polonian history. While not minimizing its scholarly value, it reads well and can be of benefit to general readers interested in matters Polish. Highly recommended.

This book is wondrous. For openers, it is written so well that it is a marvel of English usage and will shame most of us that think we know the language. Secondly, it strikes a marvelous balance between pedagogy - for fundamentally this is a serious scholastic work - and the delight that the author takes in his subject.

Dealing with Thoreau to great degree, it shows how punning was a significant part of romantic literature, and should not be dealt with contempt, but rather as a serious and significant part of our literary heritage.

Plus the humor in both the the subject matter and Professor West's treatment thereof are incomparable. Highly recommended to both the scholar and the interested dilletante atracted to our language and its associated history.

This book is easy to read and it is fun to review all the old photos of buildings (some of which no longer exist). Most of the buildings are familiar to those of us who live in Sandusky or visit regularly. After reading this book, you will find out the little known facts of the buildings that are so familiar. I would recommend this book to any age. It is a great way to learn how interesting Sandusky, Ohio is. I learned after reading this book that it has one of the largest collction of limestone buildings in Ohio, crayons were invented here, and it was part of the "underground railroad", which aided slaves in their quest for freedom.

As a native buckeye with no plant knowledge and a black thumb, this book is great! It is an alphabetical reference to all the native trees & shrubs. It tells you their good points, bad points, tips for success, etc in a very practical format. It also has TONS of photos of how the plant looks in different seasons. We moved out of the city & onto an acre, and this book has been used a lot!

Brilliant! This book is eye-opening about antebellum politics and it is amazing the way Maizlish is able to reveal so much from focusing on Ohio. This book will settle all those questions you had about the rise of sectionalism that kept you up at night. The writing is also excellent. Makes you want to meet Maizlish and talk to him.

An amazing first book, Ric Jahna's True Kin is a remarkable collection featuring narrative versatility and authentic emotional resonance. The linked stories are compelling, well-written and worthy of the highest praise.

The style of this poetry is unique to this author; the poems use few words to interpret vast feelings. While much poetry describes the writer's perception of things, this poet has an uncanny ability to actually illustrate, in verse, the intense feelings we all experience in life.

I purchased this book for my father, who grew up in Mineral City in the 40s and 50s. He is in his 70s now. He said it was like looking through an old school yearbook. He could tell a story about each picture in the book. And everytime he looked through it, he found something new. It has been a better gift than I could have imagined as it has brought back so many good memories for my father.

This book is very interesting and well written. It has pictures which is a good plus. The thing that makes this a good, spooky book is that the stories are local. They are stories that could be similiar right in your own home town. What also makes it a good book is that it was written by someone who lives in the area where the stories take place and he is also the county historian, so the stories come pretty much straight from the source. This is a great book I very much reccomend it.