For a century, Americans have been purchasing picture postcards. Ohio in Historic Postcards presents 208 examples of postcards from early twentieth-century Ohio and places them in their historical context. At the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, the first picture postcards portrayed a range of the fair’s attractions. From that beginning postcards took the nation by storm. The efficiency of the Railway Mail Service together with the sparsity of telephones made the cards a cheap, reliable, and convenient form of communication.

In this classic and coveted volume, artist Frank N. Wilcox tackles the difficult job of mapping the Indian trails of Ohio. Basing his work on the journals and records of early settlers and soldiers, his knowledge of Native American ways, and his intimacy with the Ohio landscape, he locates and documents the major Indian towns and trails that crisscross the state. His maps, drawings, and watercolors beautifully evoke the lives and cultures of Ohio’s first peoples.

Ohio Outback is a unique compilation of writings by Claude Clayton Smith about his experiences of living in Ohio for the past twenty-two years. Smith offers a vibrant, humorous portrait of life that focuses on individuals and events in out-of-the-way places throughout northwest Ohio. The pieces in this book reflect a growing curiosity and fondness for Ohio, with topics ranging from the manufacturing process of NFL footballs and the anatomy of ditches to an Ohio section of a ten-thousandmile drive by interstate highway across the forty-eight states and Smith’s reflections as a licensed professional boxing judge. Ohio Outback also contains “Yard Wars of the Ohio Outback,” a lighthearted piece that forms the book’s narrative core with tales of bird, pool, and driveway battles.

When first published in 1994, Ohio Politics was defined as the first comprehensive survey of the state’s post–World War II politics. A collaborative effort by a team of journalists and political scientists, this collection examines the major political events in Ohio since 1944 and provides insight into the state’s key personalities, institutions, and processes. This revised and updated edition continues the survey from 1994 through the Taft years and the 2006 gubernatorial elections.

Roughly a century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt said, “I think there is only one thing in the world I can’t understand, and that is Ohio politics.” If The Ohio Politics Almanac had existed then, Roosevelt still might not have understood Ohio politics, but it wouldn’t have been for lack of information. A comprehensive and authoritative resource, The Ohio Politics Almanac sheds light on the complexity of Ohio’s electoral statistics. 

In Ohio States: A Twentieth-Century Midwestern, Jeffrey Hammond asserts the quiet mysteries of an ordinary life. More than simply a glimpse of life in the Midwest in the 1950s, this collection of well-crafted, touching narratives finds the author recalling his childhood and youth with a mixture of affection and alarm.

This three-part series won awards from the International Film & TV Festival of New York, the Ohio Association of Historical Societies and Museums, and the American Association of Historical Societies and Museums. A 16-page Teacher/Discussion Guide is included. This series, produced in cooperation with the Canal Society of America, brings to life an almost forgotten period in Ohio’s early history, visiting restored sections of the vital nineteenth-century inland transportation system. Kent State University Press’s award-winning book A Photo Album of Ohio’s Canal Era, 1825–1913, by Jack Gieck, can be purchased along with this DVD.

Ohio’s Craft Beers celebrates the variety of craft brewing in Ohio, offers appreciations of its quality, and reports on the renaissance of the brewer’s art throughout the Buckeye State. Beautifully illustrated with color photographs, the book takes readers on a tour of more than 40 of Ohio’s larger and more influential breweries and provides detailed descriptions of most of the others.

Ohio’s Grand Canal concisely details the entire history of the canal system. Author Terry K. Woods chronicles the events leading up to construction, as well as public opinion of the canal system, the modifications made to traditional boat designs, the leasing of the waterways to private companies, and the canals’ legal abandonment in 1929. He also includes a personal look at the 1913 flood through the eyes of a thirteen-year-old boatman who experienced it firsthand. Well written and thoroughly researched, this single-volume history of the Ohio & Erie Canal will be important to educators and to a general audience interested in Ohio history and canals.

Many of Ohio’s historically significant locations have developed a reputation for being haunted. While it might be almost impossible to prove the validity of the paranormal tales that surround them, one thing is clear: ghost stories help to keep history alive. But the questions remain: How did these stories get started? More important, are any of them tied directly to actual historic events? And do any facts support the ghost lore?