Red Legs and Black Sox

Dellinger, Susan. Red Legs and Black Sox: Edd Roush and the Untold Story of the 1919 World Series.  Cincinnati, Ohio; Emmis Books, 2006. The Cincinnati Reds have won five World Series Championships.  For most modern fans, the Big Red Machine (1975, 1976) and the Nasty Boys (1990) probably come to mind first among the championship [...]

Small, Gritty, and Green and Beyond the Metropolis

Tumber, Catherine. Small, Gritty, and Green: The Promise of America’s Industrial Cities in a Low-Carbon World. Cambridge, Massachusetts; The MIT Press, 2012. Ofori-Amoah, Benjamin, ed.  Beyond the Metropolis: Urban Geography as if Small Cities Mattered. Lanham, Md.; University Press of America, 2007. In Richard Florida’s recession book, The Great Reset, he makes the observation that [...]

Dollarapalooza

Sapp, Gregg. Dollarapalooza: or the Day Peace Broke out in Columbus. DeKalb, Illinois: Switchgrass Books, 2011.   “When the sun rises over Ohio, it casts a the whole nation’s shadow.” “Say what?” “What I’m saying is that you can take the boy out of Ohio…” “But you can’t take Ohio out of the boy. Oh, [...]

Industrial Sunset

High, Steven. Industrial Sunset: The Making of North America’s Rust Belt, 1969-1984. Toronto; University of Toronto Press, 2003. The emptying of the mythical heart of the United States — and the birth of the Rust Belt and Rust Belt labels — signalled the decrepitude of the heavily industrialized states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, [...]

Breweries of Dayton

Dalton, Curt. Breweries of Dayton: A Toast to Brewers from the Gem City: 1810-1961. 2nd Edition. Dayton, Ohio, 2002. There has been increased interest in the 1920s and Prohibition.  So much so, that if it has not already happened, the major networks will start bringing out historic dramas set in the 1920s, similar to HBO’s Boardwalk [...]

Builders of Ohio

Van Tine, Warren and Michael Pierce. Builders of Ohio: A Biographical History. Columbus, Ohio; The Ohio State University Press, 2003. As the subtitle says, Builders of Ohio is a history of Ohio told through short biographies of 25 Ohioans from early settlers to Dave Thomas.  As the editors state in the introduction, “history is not [...]

Why the Garden Club Couldn’t Save Youngstown

Safford, Sean. Why the Garden Club Couldn’t Save Youngstown: The Transformation of the Rust Belt. Cambridge, Massachusetts; Harvard University Press, 2009. The title of Sean Safford’s Why your Garden Club Could not save Youngstown is not in jest.  This book truly is an attack on the Garden Club of Youngstown.  It is commonly believed that [...]

Guided by Voices

Greer, James. Guided by Voices: A Brief History: Twenty-one Years of Hunting Accidents in the Forests of Rock and Roll.  New York; Black Cat, 2005. “They are just making music I would make, if I could make music” – Steven Sodenbergh, from “In Lieu of an Actual Introduction”   One of the best bands to [...]

Under Glass

Hirt, Jen. Under Glass: The Girl with a Thousand Christmas Trees. Akron, Ohio: Ringtaw Books, 2010. Stongsville is a rapidly growing western suburb of Cleveland; a town of less than 10,000 residents in 1960 and now a city of over 44,000.  I have driven through Stongsville on several occasions and it feels much more like [...]

In the Fullness of Time

Nicolosi, Vincent.  In the Fullness of Time.  New York; Fonthill Press, 2009.  You stayed home, so you don’t know what it’s like out there, do you? Amongst all those wolves. You don’t know how they are or what we’re up against. The only thing you know is Marion. Out there, they’ll take any little thing [...]