The Plants of Middle-earth draws on biography, literary sources, and cultural history and is unique in using botany as the focal point for examining the complex network of elements that comprise Tolkien’s creation. Each chapter includes the plants’ description, uses, history, and lore, which frequently lead to their thematic and interpretive implications. The book will appeal to general readers, students, and teachers of Tolkien as well as to those with an interest in plant lore and botanical illustration.

John Vacha is the first to write a comprehensive, in-depth account of Playhouse Square’s history, beginning with the Square’s 1921 opening and describing how the COVID-19 pandemic once again left its theaters temporarily empty before their triumphant reopenings in 2022. Richly illustrated and featuring interviews with the central figures involved in saving the Square, Playhouse Square and the Cleveland Renaissance is a powerful story that will appeal to theater history buffs and preservationists alike—reminding readers of the significant role the performing arts serve in shaping a city’s culture.

“Written years before celebrated authors like Wendell Berry and Barbara Kingsolver popularized agriculture writing, Pleasant Valley . . . unveils the romantic qualities of farm labor, without romanticizing it. It celebrates hard work, without being patronizing. It makes you want to get dirt under your nails. Pleasant Valley is charmingly nostalgic, yet offers environmental commentary that is timely and urgent. Bromfield’s writing will appeal to lovers of regional writing, unconventional memoirs, and mid-century modernity in literature. Most of all, it is a book to read when you miss home, whatever and wherever that may be.”

—Public Books

For nearly two decades, Stewart infiltrated poaching rings throughout Ohio, the Midwest, and beyond. Poachers Were My Prey chronicles his many exciting undercover adventures, detailing the techniques he used in putting poachers behind bars. It also reveals, for the first time, the secrets employed by undercover wildlife officers in catching the bad guys.

Unlike his fiction, which has been popular and often reprinted, Melville’s poetry remains obscure. The last “collected poems” appeared in 1947 and “selected poems” in the 1970s, and only two books dealing exclusively with Melville’s poetry have appeared, both published in the 1970s. In this revised edition of his Poems of Herman Melville, Douglas Robillard updates the scholarship on the poetry through his introduction and notes and makes a case for revised estimate of the importance of Melville as a poet.

Judy Schaefer has compiled this anthology of contemporary nurse-poets’ work, which is accompanied by their commentaries about their poetry, their work, and their lives. She has gathered contributions from some of the best-known nurse-poets as well as from those who deserve to be. The Poetry of Nursing will add significantly to the ever-growing body of literature that connects medicine, nursing, and the humanities.

Michael J. McManus’s study of political abolitionism in Wisconsin demonstrates the overriding importance of slavery-related issues in bringing on the political crisis of the 1850s and the American Civil War. In the years prior to the war, the political struggle to free enslaved blacks and block the “peculiar institution’s” spread into the western territories became intertwined with concerns over the future of republican institutions in America and the liberties of northern Whites.

Before his election to the state’s executive office in 1861, David Tod was widely regarded as Ohio’s most popular Democrat. Tod rose to prominence in the old Western Reserve, rejecting the political influence of his well-known father, a former associate justice of Ohio’s Supreme Court, a previous member of the Federalist Party, and a new, devoted Whig. As a fierce Democratic Party lion, the younger Tod thrilled followers with his fearless political attacks on Whig adversaries and was considered an unlikely figure in the battle to keep the Union intact.

This carefully researched and engagingly written political biography marks the first full treatment of Ohio native and politician Martin L. Davey. An important figure on the local, state, and national political scene in the early decades of the twentieth century, Davey served as mayor of Kent, Ohio, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and completed two terms as Ohio governor.

A Politician Turned General offers a critical examination of the turbulent early political career and the controversial military service of Stephen Augustus Hurlbut, an Illinois Whig, Republican politician, and Northern political general who rose to distinction as a prominent member of the Union high command in the West during the Civil War.