In the Ohio counties of the Allegheny Plateau, 19th-century barns hewn from old-growth wood rest near remnant forests, reminders of the state’s deep agricultural roots and rich ecological past. Through 14 linked, meditative essays, Deborah Fleming, author of the award-winning Resurrection of the Wild: Meditations on Ohio’s Natural Landscape, persuasively and passionately argues for protecting these vestiges of the region’s natural and rural history.

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. 

From the time James was a high school sophomore, former Cleveland Plain Dealer sports columnist Bill Livingston covered every step of his journey from the teenager who flouted high school league rules to a basketball icon and activist, one who even founded a school in his hometown.

LeBron James has been a polarizing yet beloved figure for sports fans around the world, possibly nowhere more so than in northeast Ohio, where he grew up. He began his basketball career hailed as “the chosen one,” a beacon of hope for a Cleveland team that had never won an NBA championship. He was then denounced for “the Decision” to leave and pursue his trophy dreams with the Miami Heat. The prodigal son subsequently returned to the Cavaliers, fulfilling “the Promise” to bring ultimate victory to Cleveland in 2016.

An anthology celebrating the biodiversity and staggering beauty of Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Light Enters the Grove collects 42 poems, each of which reflects its author’s unique connection to a living organism found within the park—ranging from white-tailed deer to brown bats and from Japanese honeysuckle to bloodroot. Additionally, each poem is paired with an artistic depiction of the poem’s subject that reinforces the rich relationship between artists and the natural world.

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.

More than 175 years after his death, Senator Thomas Morris has remained one of the few early national champions of political and constitutional antislavery without a biography devoted to him. In this first expansive study of Morris’s life and contributions, David C. Crago persuasively argues that historians have wrongly marginalized Morris’s role in the early antislavery movement.

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.

Featuring more than 100 photographs taken by Richard W. Burry, Art and History in the Ohio Judicial Center is the first book to celebrate the building’s impressive architectural detail and highlight its 200 Art Deco– and Beaux Arts–style murals, reliefs, and mosaics. Burry tells the story of the public art in the Ohio Judicial Center and provides illuminating historical context, helping the present-day reader to understand the building’s art not only from a contemporary perspective but also through the eyes of those living almost a century ago.

A sequel of sorts to his earlier book, Pleasant Valley, this book significantly adds to Louis Bromfield’s body of work on agriculture, economics, and the value of home.

“Because Bromfield has seen so many different lands, he is now more a country man than ever. When he turned his first spadeful on his new Ohio farm acres, it marked the return of the native. Bromfield writes his books in pencil, longhand. He has such concentration that he can come in from working in his fields, go to his desk and finish a sentence he started the day before.”

—The New Yorker

“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