This seasoned newspaperman has been soaking up stray facts and vanishing information for more than five decades. Condon’s voracious appetite for facts and a nose for where to find them bring alive this Cleveland history, engaging the reader with his authentic stories, humorous anecdotes, and fond perspective. West of the Cuyahoga fills a gap in the history of Cleveland, Ohio, and reveals the gleanings of a lifetime for a local journalist and raconteur.

“Provides new information and fresh insights into a number of important and poorly understood aspects of West Virginia’s early constitutional, legal, and political history.”
—Brent Tarter, Library of Virginia

While men and women physicians face different challenges and bring different historical experiences to the examination table, the history of medicine has been primarily told by men. Doctors Kimberly Greene-Liebowitz and Dana Corriel compile the pieces in this collection to highlight the many topics of concern for women physicians––some of which may be unknown to medical field outsiders. Topics include the physician-patient relationship, mastery of clinical practice, barriers to career advancement and success, and the challenge of balancing a demanding professional life with domestic responsibilities, an issue brought to the fore by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Conventional medical narratives often fail to capture the incoherent, surreal, and logic-twisting reality of the contemporary healthcare experience, where mystery, absurdity, and even cruelty are disguised as logic, reason, and compassion. In this new collection of stories by physician and writer Jay Baruch, characters struggle in their quest for meaning and a more hopeful tomorrow in a strange landscape where motivations are complex and convoluted and what is considered good and just operates as a perpetually shifting proposition.

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.

Known for being a pragmatic problem solver and for putting Ohio’s interests ahead of regionalism and politics, Riffe counted among his major accomplishments his making the General Assembly a coequal of the executive branch, believing Ohioans expected the General Assembly to be an equal partner with the governor in controlling the state. He also played an important role in the rise of black Democratic legislators in the Statehouse, due to a strong partnership with Rep. C. J. McLin, a Democrat from Dayton. He fought hard to develop his native, impoverished southeast Ohio, which led to the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, the uranium enrichment facility in Piketon, and Shawnee State University.

A young law graduate of the University of Pennsylvania assumed the unpaid position as coach of Oberlin College’s football squad in October 1892. This “bespectacled, stoop-shouldered” young-man, as he was described by one player who saw him on his first day of coaching, was John Heisman. Brandt traces the origins of football at this renowned academic institution and the success of its students on and off the playing field, regaling readers with the stories of the fans, the players, the heroes, the rivals.

In the summer of 2013, Cortney Davis, a nurse practitioner and author who often writes about her interactions with patients, underwent routine one-day surgery. A surgical mishap led to a series of life-altering and life-threatening complications, resulting in two prolonged hospital stays and a lengthy recovery. During twenty-six days in the hospital, Davis experienced how suddenly a caregiver can become a care receiver and what it’s like to be “on the other side of the sickbed.” As a nurse, she was accustomed to suffering and to the empathy such witnessing can evoke, but as a patient she learned new and transforming lessons in pain, fear, loneliness, abandonment, and dependency; in the fragility of health and life; in the necessity of family support; and, ultimately, in the importance of gratitude.

Somewhere west of the Appalachians and north of the Ohio River, the Midwest begins. Just where exactly, and how, and why are the questions explored in Where East Meets (Mid)West. Bringing together a range of perspectives, the volume argues that while cultural boundaries remain difficult to define, Ohio has been central to regional transitions throughout history. To Native Americans, Ohio was the meeting place of two major drainage basins: the Ohio River and the Great Lakes Basin, which resulted in large amounts of trade activity, cultural exchange, and conflict. During America’s westward expansion, Ohio was an essential pathway, the first of the new Northwest territories to gain statehood, and a battleground over the issue of enslavement. 

“Energy, dynamic energy emanates from Mary Weems’ careful, observing eyes into her language. These poems offer immediacy, intelligent response, and rich repartee with the difficult urban world of a gentle warrior.”—Diane Wakoski