Frank Mendez, a child of Mexican immigrants begins his memoir with the story of his father’s harrowing migration from Mexico to Texas in 1920 as he escaped from Zapata’s guerrrillos and continues with his story of growing up in northeast Ohio. He recounts the Mendez family’s experience with the Depression, living in the Lorain, Ohio barrio, labor issues, racism, and World War II. Mendez dropped out of high school in 1943 and enlisted in the Marine Corps where he served twenty-two months in the Pacific theatre. When he returned to Lorain, he received his high school diploma, bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and a professional engineering license.

In Lost Ohio McNutt, who has devoted his career to uncovering forgotten Ohio and its spirited inhabitants, continues his travels around the state in an attempt to discover vanishing traces of our lives—celebrations, motels, road art, drive-in theaters, traditions, inventions, folk tales, battlefields, and forts. His journeys rediscover missing pieces of our past that reflect a state of mind as well as a collection of landscapes. McNutt’s vanishing Ohio is a place where rural America converges with small cities and fading history and disappearing culture, lost to burgeoning technology, global economy, technological immediacy, and time. He visits Fizzleville, Sodaville, and Footville; the hollow, metal globe that is the final resting place of Captain John C. Symmes, who theorized that the earth was hollow and access to the core was through the polar caps; the Mansfield Reformatory, Ohio’s largest and toughest haunted house; Waynesville, home of the Ohio Sauerkraut Festival; and Harry Dearwester, the “carny” who guesses peoples’ weight with 90 percent accuracy.

Travelers in Worthington, Ohio, might think they were in a New England town. Old brick buildings line the very edges of the sidewalk, and a picturesque village green is flanked by two church steeples. Like most frontier communities, it reflects the heritage of its founders. In New Englanders on the Ohio Frontier, Virginia and Robert McCormick examine the founding and development of Worthington to show how it reflects New England culture transplanted and reshaped by the western frontier.

The evolution of our institutions of learning, from one-room schoolhouses to the modern educational campuses of today, reflects both the growth of our populace and our shared cultures and traditions. Ohio offers an excellent perspective for viewing and interpreting educational architecture. The heritage of its pioneer settlers, the diversity of its immigrants, and its strategic geographic position for westward migration created a history typical of much of America. The state’s educational buildings reflect this rich history and culture.

The Bicentennial Edition of Ohio and Its People is a revised and updated volume of this bestselling work and includes a new final chapter examining Ohio through the end of the twentieth century. Author George W. Knepper presents contemporary information on the national and state political arenas, the economy as it affects Ohio, the economic and environmental revival of Cleveland, and an updated bibliography. Ohio and Its People remains a wonderful classroom text and history of Ohio.

Using a systematic and thematic approach, The Geography of Ohio serves as the definitive study of both the state’s landscape and people scape. Standardized and updated maps are featured throughout in full color, as well as current census and demographic data. With the addition of sidebars, study questions, a glossary, and an extensive bibliography, The Geography of Ohio is the essential text for understanding Ohio’s evolution and its place in the “new order.”

After enjoying exceptional growth at the turn of the last century, Cleveland’s fortunes, like that of many metropolitan centers, have sharply declined. How much of this change is due to characteristics of growth and development, the outmigration of population and investment’ technological advances, and the changing racial composition of the population? On the eve of its bicentennial, Cleveland serves as a paradigm of American urbanization by providing lessons regarding urban America, our communities, and ourselves. Cleveland, A Metropolitan Reader emphasizes the political economy, social development, and history of Cleveland from 1796 to the present.

Produced shortly before his death in 1911 and long since out of print, Tom L. Johnson’s autobiography provides a rare personal insight into the career and philosophy of one of the most prominent figures of the American Progressive Era. Influenced by the single tax proposals of Henry George, Johnson gave up a prosperous business career to become a reform politician. Elected first to the U.S. House of Representatives, he served as mayor of Cleveland from 1901 to 1909, instituting sweeping reforms. His championship of municipal ownership, professional management of city departments, and broad public involvement in government makes Johnson’s mayoral administration one of the most celebrated in Cleveland’s history, as well as a focal point for scholars studying the Progressive Era.

Walker and Weeks was the foremost architectural firm in Cleveland for nearly forty years, from 1911 to 1949. Its clients were the wealthy and influential of Cleveland and the Midwest; its landmark accomplishments included the Cleveland Public Library, Cleveland Municipal Stadium, Severance Hall, the Cleveland Post Office, and the Indiana World War Memorial.

Jenkins argues that the Klan drew from all social strata in Youngstown, Ohio, in the 1920s, contrary to previous theories that predominately lower middle-class WASPs joined the Klan because of economic competition with immigrants. Threatened by immigrant movement into their neighborhoods, these members supposedly represented a fringe element with few accomplishments and little hope of advancement. Jenkins suggests instead that members admired the Klan commitment to a conservative protestant moral code.