Although much has been written about the Old Northwest territory, The Boundaries between Us fills a void in this historical literature by examining lesser known forms of interaction between Euro-Americans and native peoples and their struggles to gain control of the region and its vast resources. Comprised of eleven original essays, The Boundaries between Us presents unique perspectives on the history and significance of the contest for control of the Old Northwest territory.

Rolling Down Black Stockings is a personal recollection of Esther Royer Ayers’s youth spent in a highly restrictive and confined religious community. Her story is as much a search for identity and a longing for a mother’s love as it is a tale about a totalitarian culture that led to her departure from the Old Order Mennonite religion. This poignant story is told in three books: book 1 describes her youth in a farm community on the outskirts of Columbiana, Ohio; book 2 follows the struggles of Ayers as she tries to fit in with another culture after leaving the church when her family moves to Akron, Ohio; and book 3 discusses the history and cultural dynamics of the religion.

Son of an Ohio Supreme Court Justice and longtime political reporter, Rick Zimmerman presents Ohio politics from the inside. He began learning about Ohio politics and politicians as a young boy, sitting at the dinner table presided over by his father, Judge Charles Ballard Zimmerman. The author says his “father was a Democrat of sorts, but identified with the Jeffersonian wing of the party. In short, he was a conservative and a favorable mention of Franklin Roosevelt was practically banned in our house.” Yet, in spite of these philosophical leanings, the elder Zimmerman was truly nonpartisan as far as his political tales were concerned, with an opinion about most political leaders from both parties, that were for the most part negative, a “perspective which my later critics likely would suggest I inherited,” contends Zimmerman.

In the summers of 1936 and 1937, the Great Lakes Exposition was presented in Cleveland, Ohio, along the Lake Erie shore just north of the downtown business area. At the time, Cleveland was America’s sixth largest city. The Exposition was scheduled to commemorate the centennial of Cleveland’s incorporation and was conceived as a way to energize a city hit hard by the Great Depression. In its first summer, the Exposition drew four million visitors and three million more during its second and final season.

Though Murder Has No Tongue tells the story of Frank Dolezal, the only man actually arrested and charged with the infamous “Torso Murders” in Cleveland, Ohio, during the late 1930s. Dolezal, a fifty-two-year-old Slav immigrant, came to the attention of sheriff ’s investigators because of his reputation as a strange man who possessed a stockpile of butcher knives. According to rumors, he threatened imagined transgressors and had a penchant for frequenting bars in the seedy neighborhood where the dismembered bodies of victims had been discovered. Dolezal was arrested in July 1939 and never saw freedom again.

In this study of Akron’s Cascade Locks, canal historian Jack Gieck examines the story of this remarkable lock system, including a look at early-nineteenth-century entrepreneurs who exploited the precipitous terrain to found one of the first industrial centers in the American Midwest.

A busy and densely packed valley in its heyday, this area once housed an iron foundry, a furniture factory, a distillery, several grist mills, and two rubber plants—all within a half-mile stretch of the canal. Still remaining are several watered locks and wasteway structures, evidence of the Cascade Race and tunnel two canal-era buildings; Ace Rubber/Garro Tread (one of Akron’s few remaining rubber plants); and two historic railroads. The entire Cascade Locks Historic District was placed on the National Register of Historic Places by the Department of the Interior in 1992.

A 30-minute history of the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous in Akron, Ohio, in 1935. AA had its beginnings as the outcome of a meeting between Bill W., a New York stockbroker, and Dr. Bob S., an Akron surgeon. Prior to their meeting, Bill had gotten sober and had maintained his recovery by working with other alcoholics. Meanwhile, Dr. Bob had yet to achieve sobriety. Responding to Bill’s convincing ideas, he soon got sober, never to drink again. The founding spark of AA had been struck.

Premiering at the Civic Theater in 1976, this 39-minute film was made for Akron’s Sesquicentennial celebration. City at the Summit is a history of Akron from the time of its founding by Simon Perkins in 1825, through its becoming a major canal town, surviving the Great Depression, and becoming the “rubber capital of the world,” ending with parades and celebrations associated with the Sesquicentennial.

A 37-minute DVD that tells the story of a young Col. George Perkins returning home to Akron after the Civil War. Using vintage photographs and images of re-enactors, it portrays the effect of the war on Perkins and the social and political changes that occurred nationally and on the homefront.