The first section of What’s Normal? presents a wide-ranging collection of essays and articles written by renowned clinicians who address clinical, ethical, and social issues related to mental illness and disorders. The second section uses fiction, poetry, and drama to portray mental and behavioral abnormalities, sometimes from “inside” the perspective of the deviant and sometimes from the experiences of family, friends, and other engaged observers. Excerpts that examine the treatment of mental health, intelligence, and sexual conduct are cited from such literary works as Equus, Of Mice and Men, Like Water for Chocolate, and Sula.

Most cultures ostracize people who do not fit within their norms. They pressure abnormal people to change their appearance, fix what bothers other, or stay out of sight—a pressure Leslie Fiedler has named “The Tyranny of the Normal.” This anthology examines the experiences of those who live outside social norms for attractiveness, size, and shape; it also explores the reactions of “normal” people to those who seem grotesque. Among the questions raised are who decided what is normal and abnormal; who has the right or authority to decide what efforts, if any, should be made to normalize someone; and who should pay for it—be it plastic surgery or the manipulation of human genes.

Carol Donley & Martin Kohn believe that “physicians stand at a unique vantage point as observers of the human condition.” In Recognitions: Doctors and Their Stories, the fourth volume in the Literature and Medicine Series, contributors such as Richard Selzer, Robert Coles, Perri Klass, and Jack Coulehan prove this assertion through their moving and enlightening prose.

Pattern of Circles is a success story, for its author and his country. John E. Dolibois was born December 4, 1918, in Luxembourg. His mother died weeks later, and he was raised by an older sister until she left for Akron, Ohio, with her American husband. In 1931, John came to Akron with his father and thus began a fascinating life journey.

Fighting the Unbeatable Foe is the first biography of Metzenbaum, a fascinating individual who, against the odds, rose from humble beginnings to become a multimillionaire businessman and one of the most effective and powerful senators in the land. By conducting interviews with Metzenbaum’s friends, foes, political scientists, and journalists and consulting primary-source materials, Tom Diemer provides new details about Metzenbaum’s business deals, his successes on Capitol Hill, and also his embarrassing failures and miscalculations. Metzenbaum remains among the most interesting and paradoxical figures in the history of Ohio politics. His story will be enjoyed by anyone interested in Ohio history and politics.

Sure to place this case among the classics of crime literature, The Murder of Mary Bean and Other Stories features two reprinted accounts of Caswell’s death, both fictional and originally printed in the 1850s, as well as an introduction that places these salacious accounts in a historical context. This book serves not simply as true crime but, rather, presents a seamy side of rapid industrial growth and the public anxiety over the emerging economic roles of women.

Raymond DeCapite’s second published novel, A Lost King, has been described by Kirkus Reviews as a “small masterpiece, so unique in spirit and style.” If the mood of The Coming of Fabrizze is joyous, that of A Lost King is somber. Each of DeCapite’s novels is original in its own way, perhaps inspired by different moods. Writing in the New York Times in 1961, Orville Prescott described Fabrizze as “an engaging modern folk tale so full of love and laughter and the joy of life that it charmed critics and numerous readers and was generally considered one of the most promising first novels of 1960.” He found DeCapite’s second novel, A Lost King, was a different sort of book than Fabrizze: “Fabrizze is an apologia for heroes; A Lost King is an apologia for dreamers. A more mature book, it deals with a more serious theme—the relationship of a father and son…a pathetic and perhaps tragic conflict of personalities.”

First published in 1960, The Coming of Fabrizze has been called by the New York Herald Tribune a “comic folklore festival about an Italian American colony in Cleveland, Ohio, back in the 1920s when all the land was a little slaphappy—and no one more so than these transplanted countrymen of the Medicis, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Christopher Columbus… and others whose hearts have belonged to Italia.” More a myth or a legend than a realistic novel or sociological novel, Fabrizze is a celebration of the working class and a heroic tale of an immigrant who succeeds by virtue of hard work and honesty. Author Raymond DeCapite’s characterizations of Italian Americans in Cleveland have been compared to the depictions of Armenian Americans in the early writing of William Saroyan, and Ann Ross of the New York Herald Tribune said that DeCapite’s “greatest achievement is his ability to achieve tenderness without sentimentality.”

Dr. Sam Sheppard on Trial presents a comprehensive and final analysis of this controversial case from the perspective of the prosecutors. Jack P. DeSario, together with co-author William D. Mason, chief attorney for Cuyahoga County, Ohio, provides all the facts, evidence, expert testimony, both old and new, and sworn statements of the principals in this case, which concluded in April 2000. The jury unanimously found that Dr. Sheppard was not innocent.

Dialogue on the Frontier is a remarkable departure from previous scholarship, which emphasized the negative aspects of the relationship between Protestants and Catholics in the early American republic. Author Margaret C. DePalma argues that Catholic-Protestant relations took on a different tone and character in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. She focuses on the western frontier territory and explores the positive interaction of the two religions and the internal dynamics of Catholicism.