The history of public transportation in Greater Cleveland spans two centuries. As the city developed from a trading post on Lake Erie to an industrial giant and ever-growing urban center, transportation policies and practices both promoted and reflected the dynamics of change. From the opening of the Ohio and Erie Canal to the opening of the new waterfront rapid transit, Toman and Hays trace the ever-changing contours of a metropolitan area and the modes of transportation available to its public. The scope of the book is comprehensive—canal, river, lake, and air transport—but the focus is on Cleveland’s streetcars, interurbans, trackless trolleys, buses, and rapid transit trains. It also explores the effect of the coming of the automobile and its inevitable impact on the city.

Orlando M. Poe chronicles the life of one of the most influential yet underrated and overlooked soldiers during the Civil War. After joining the Union Army in 1861, Poe commanded the 2nd Michigan Infantry in the Peninsula Campaign and led brigades at Second Bull Run and Fredericksburg. He was then sent west and became one of the Union heroes in the defense of Knoxville. Poe served under several of the war’s greatest generals, including George McClellan and William T. Sherman, who appointed him chief engineer to oversee the burning of Atlanta and Sherman’s March to the Sea. Though technically only a captain in the regular army at the war’s end, Poe was one of Sherman’s most valued subordinates, and he was ultimately appointed brevet brigadier general for his bravery and service.

Through colorful, personal vignettes, landscape designer Valerie Strong presents and solves specific landscape problems, including the excavations of her own ponds and the creation of three award-winning gardens. She comments on her natural surroundings, even empty lots and roadsides. Strong examines the neglected infrastructure of landscape design—the growers, carpenters, stone masons, landscapers, and labor force—with sympathy and humor, lifting the paper plans to philosophical observations of gardening and life. All My Phlox will direct the novice gardener and confirm the habits of those who are committed to working with nature. The author passes on her message of how to be a good steward of the land.

Caves and Culture is primarily focused on the archaeological research of Dr. Olaf H. Prufer and his associates as they investigated and explored caves in Ohio since 1964. Spurlock and her co-editors report, sometimes reclaim, and frequently reinterpret data that will be useful to the understanding of Ohio archaeology for decades to come. Anyone with interest in local or regional (Midwestern or midcontinental) prehistory will appreciate this exploration into Ohio’s history.

Fans of Jan Snow’s “Marginal Considerations”—a “weekend Radio” feature heard on nearly 150 radio stations across the country –will delight in this new collection of her humorous pieces. Her essays offer a lighthearted look at everyday events and ordinary people-from “Creeping Cutetrification” to “The Training of Cats” and “Keeping the World Safe for Singing.” Bathtubs, toothpaste, underwear, fruitcake, and even pockets become laughable objects under Snow’s scrutiny.

During the latter half of the twentieth century, the world witnessed the rise of the modern environmental movement. Chronicling this significant occurrence in Ohio, and specifically in Kent, a university town in the American Midwest, Botanical Essays from Kent is a collection of writings and photographs that capture the spirit and excitement of botanical fieldwork during the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s. Kent Bog, dedicated as a state nature preserve in 1987, is the book’s focal point.

During the first half of the eighteenth century, Pennsylvania became home to a variety of German-speaking sectarians who rebelled against the oppression of European state-church establishments and migrated to the United States to form their own communions. One such group was the Snow Hill Cloister, which was founded in 1762 as an attempt to continue the monastic, communal lifestyle practiced at Georg Conrad Beissel’s famed Ephrata Cloister. In an engaging narrative that chronicles with humor and insight her research into this fascinating community of German Seventh-Day Baptists, Denise A. Seachrist tells the story of Snow Hill—its spiritual and work life; its music, writings, architecture, and crafts tradition; and its sad demise in the waning days of the twentieth century. A product of in situ fieldwork that explores the places and personalities behind the founding and prosperity and demise of the cloister, Snow Hill is a long-overdue study of one of America’s “experiments” in communal living. It speaks to another time and place and stands as a testament to the idealism of community and the tenaciousness of the human spirit.

Author H. L. Schreiner’s collection of “flying pulps” and aviation publications served as the primary impetus for his comprehensive research. Included in this handsomely illustrated aviation history are photos and plans that originally accompanied the model kits and a never-before-published illustrated-plans index. Rare color photographs of Cleveland National Air Race aircraft and their daredevil pilots will be of interest to modelers, collectors, pilots, and aviation historians, who will find this book to be a significant addition to their libraries.

Ohio can be a land of weather extremes. There are droughts followed by flood, arctic cold and soaring heat in one year, a Christmas warmed to 70 degrees and a Christmas white with thirty inches of snow. Ice jams on the Sandusky River and tornadoes across its southern counties, wind storms in Cleveland and floods in the Ohio River Valley inspire Ohioans to “remember when.” Thomas and Jeanne Schmidlin, native Ohioans, have brought together data from government records, scientific studies, memoirs, diaries, and newspapers in the first comprehensive book on Ohio weather. They highlight 200 weather events from 1790 to the present—extremes of rain, snow, storms, and temperature. Anecdotal, often first person, accounts are enhanced by statistics, photographs, and maps. They describe the place of weather in popular history and folklore and how forces of nature compelled the construction of extensive flood control and weather warning systems in Ohio. Thunder in the Heartland will be of interest to climatologist, cultural historians, and all who live the weather of the Oho Country.

In this lively memoir, William B. Saxbe narrates his life’s journey from his youth in a small Ohio town to his military career during World War II and Korea and through his career as a public servant in Ohio, in Washington, D.C., and overseas. He regales readers with stories about hopping a freight train when he was in the sixth grade, insights on being elected to the United States Senate, commentary on serving as Nixon’s attorney general at the height of the Watergate scandal, and descriptions of life as the U.S. ambassador to India.