When David Hunter Strother, also known by his pen name Porte Crayon, arrived as U.S. consul general in Mexico City in 1879, Mexico and its society, only a decade removed from French occupation, were initially struggling with questions of national order and stability, with maintenance of independence, and with all aspects of modernization. Achieving these goals without sacrificing its patrimony to imperialistic powers, which had capital to invest, proved to be difficult for Mexico and pushed the nation’s quest for stability into another dictatorship. Strother was present at the beginning of U.S. involvement with this phase of Mexico’s evolution under President Porfirio Diaz.

This history of Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation paints a gritty portrait of the successes and failures of the American steel industry. The 131-year life of this “American Business” is presented from its origins as one of the many struggling iron makers in the mid-19th century through its leadership in technological innovation and progressive worker/management relations in the early 20th century to its demise in 1984. J & L Steel, however, was more than just the management styles of the Jones & Laughlin families. From the beginning, its workers were intensely loyal and creative, and Portraits in Steel portrays the sometimes stormy relationship between iron and steel workers and management.

Albin Ludwig was furious. He had caught his wife, Cecilia, with other men before; now, after secretly following Cecilia one evening in 1906, Albin was overcome with suspicion. Albin and Cecilia quarreled that night and again the next day. Prosecutors later claimed that the final quarrel ended when Albin knocked Cecilia unconscious with a wooden potato masher, doused her with a flammable liquid, lit her on fire, and left her to burn to death.

With text by coauthors Gary Meszaros and Guy L. Denny and striking photographs by Meszaros, The Prairie Peninsula examines the many prairie types, floristic composition, and animals that are part of this ecosystem. It took only 50 years for 150 million acres of tallgrass prairie to disappear under the steel plow, transforming the Prairie Peninsula into fields of corn and wheat. Today, only a few thousand acres of this endangered ecosystem remain in small parcels, some just a few acres each. The second half of the 19th century brought the mass slaughter of prairie wildlife. By 1900, like the prairie they roamed, the plains bison, gray wolf, and eastern elk became extirpated east of the Mississippi River.

Prelude is a collection of the early comic strips that bring Lisa and Les together. Introduced to readers of Funky Winkerbean in late 1984 as she experiences SAT test anxiety, Lisa becomes Les Moore’s best friend and a pivotal character. Les and Lisa go to the prom, begin steady dating, and then break up. Over the summer, Les realizes how much he misses Lisa. When he gathers his courage and goes to her house, he is stunned to discover Lisa is pregnant with a child fathered by a jock from Walnut Tech. Lisa asks Les to be her coach in childbirth classes, and their friendship explodes from there. Prelude takes fans from the early days of their deep friendship through the birth of Lisa’s baby and the baby’s adoption.

“After reading Primer for Non-Native Speakers, I feel like I’ve just come back from a trip to Russia. Philip Metres’s brilliantly compressed lyrical narratives capture the grandeur and the bleakness of an almost mythological country, where a bronze statue of the great poet Pushkin now gazes out on the golden arches, and the swear of a slammed door is more expressive than a mouthful of words. These are subtle, accomplished, shimmering poems that explore the nuances of being an outsider in a language.”—Maura Stanton

In language that resonates with power and beauty, this compilation of personal letters written from 1844 to 1864 tells the compelling story of controversial newspaper editor Will Tomlinson, his opinionated wife (Eliza Wylie Tomlinson), and their two children (Byers and Belle) in the treacherous borderlands around that “abolitionist hellhole,” Ripley, Ohio. The

Printer’s Kiss includes many of Tomlinson’s columns that appeared in the Ripley Bee, the local Ripley newspaper, and excerpts from a short story in the Columbian Magazine. It features many of his letters to his family and a remarkable number of letters from Eliza and the children to Tomlinson while he was away during the Civil War, serving variously as quartermaster sergeant for the Fifth Ohio, as captain of a company of counterinsurgents in West Virginia, as an independent scout and spy in Kentucky, as a nurse on a hospital boat, and as a compositor for the Cincinnati Gazette.

Henry S. White, a chaplain attached to the Fifth Rhode island heavy Artillery, was captured in May 1864 and remained a prisoner of war until the following September. After his release he wrote a series of letters to Zion’s Herald, a New England Methodist newspaper, in which he described in vivid detail his capture and transportation to Andersonville and then to the officers’ prison in Macon. The letters reveal White’s eye for detail and his keen interest in the state of affairs in the south. He drew pointed comparisons between the officers and men of the two armies, and recounted the terrible lot of the prisoner of war.

Elinor Wylie’s body of work—four novels and four volumes of poetry produced between 1921 and 1928—has often been overshadowed by her controversial personal life. In A Private Madness Evelyn Hively explores the points at which her life and her art intersect and demonstrates how Wylie “used language and literary form to transform the chaos of her experiences.” This purpose was successfully met, as A Private Madness presents Wylie and her work within the culture of the twenties.

Problem Plants of Ohio is an informative guide, providing information on the identification and control of nonnative plant species formally listed as invasive or prohibited noxious weeds in Ohio. In addition, the book treats many additional species that are considered a nuisance in gardens, landscaping, or natural settings.