This book is obviously well-researched, though I think that more information on other parts of Ohio could have been included as well. It's obvious that the author concentrated on his area of Ohio. I would love to see a few sequels to this book; I'd buy them! However, my biggest complaint is the title--it is *very* misleading. I expected stories of *haunted* places in Ohio--and only a couple of ghosts are alluded to. Actually calling it Ghost Towns: Ohio's Lost Landscapes and Forgotten Places or something like that would have been better, I think.

I love this book. While I never visited towns like Rialto, when they were more than a wide place in the road, I feel like I have a pretty good idea what they were like after reading "Ghosts." A nifty canal went through Rialto in it's boomtown days, and you can still see the remnants one of the locks there today, although the weeds and undergrowth try to hide it. The town is long-gone, but with Mr. McNutts writing, one can step back in time. And, the last chapter, on Hamilton, is priceless. I didn't want the book to end. Highly recommended.

I really loved Ghosts because it takes me to a lot of places I have visited and grown up around, from ghost towns to old canals to old battlegrounds. It is one of my favorite travelogues, and I recommend it highly.

I jut read Wicked Pavilion and found it to be so very, very well written, funny, ironic and poignant. She is really a master and a great revealer of a certain part of American life that is hardly ever heard from - postwar NY artists & socialites. Wow! I love Dawn Powell and intend to read all her works.

This book is the second volume of the Library of America's compilation of the novels of Dawn Powell (1896 - 1965), a writer whose works have attained deserved if belated recognition. The first volume included five novels of Dawn Powell written between 1930 and 1942. This, the second, volume includes four of Powell's novels written between 1944 and 1965.

Powell's earlier novels generally are set in small-town Ohio in the early 20th Century. They have as themes what Powell saw as the conformity and frustration, sexual and otherwise, of small-town life. The main characters in these books, typically young people, long to escape to make a new life for themselves in the city. The latter novels are, for the most part, set in New York City where Powell lived most of her adult life. The novels are comic and satirical, sometimes sharply so. They reflect loss of innocence and love and, on occasion, fall into cynicism.

The first volume of the Library of America compilation included two early Ohio novels, "Dance Night' and "Come Back to Sorrento" and three novels reflecting Powell's change in style and theme and set in New York City, "Turn, Magic Wheel', "Angels on Toast", and "A Time to be Born."

The second volume opens with a novel in which Dawn Powell returned to the setting of small-town Ohio. The book, "My Home is Far Away" (1944), is a fictionalized account of Powell's early unhappy childhood. The book offers a poignant picture of the death of Powell's mother and of her father's remarriage to a cruel and jealous stepmother. There are excellent scenes of the family wandering through cramped Ohio towns and small dusty hotels and back neighborhoods. The father himself is portrayed as a travelling salesman who generally behaves carelessly and irresponsibly to his three daughters. Powell initially planned this book as the first of a trilogy. This project did not materialze.

In the next book in the collection, "The Locusts have no King"(1948), Powell returned to sharp satire and to New York City. The book is set after the conclusion of WW II and includes a memorable passage of reflection at the end on the United States atomic testing program at Bikini Atoll. The book contrasts the life of serious, scholarly writing and its difficulty with the life of superficial magazine publishing devoted to economic success and to popular culture. There is also a love story, serious to the participants, in which the main character of the book, a serious if unsuccessful scholar, becomes infatuated with a shallow, sexy blonde. This book reminded me of George Gissing's Victorian novel of the literary life, "New Grub Street" as well as of West's "Day of the Locust", which has some of the same themes and the same dark humor as does Powell's book.

Powell wrote "The Wicked Pavilion" in 1954. Unlike most of Powell's works, the book appeared on the best-seller lists for a very brief time. The book is set in New York City in the late 1940s and celebrates, if that is the word, a bar called "The Cafe Julien", located in Grenwich Village, and its patrons. The book is full of would-be artists without talent, unhappy lovers, and people on the lookout for the main chance. It is sharp, astringent satire very close to disillusion. The book is well and convincingly written.

Powell's final novel, and the last in this collection, "The Golden Spur" (1962) was nominated for the National Book Award. As does its predecessor, this novel centers around a drinking establishment which gives the book its title and its patrons. This book also is set in Grenwich Village in the 1950's and records novelistically the passing of an era. This novel, as are some of Powell's earlier works, is a coming-of-age story which tells the story of a young man who comes to New York City from Ohio to learn the identity of his father. In the process, the young man learns about himself as well. This book is impressive less for its story line than for the beautiful writing style Powell achieved in this, her last novel. The book is deliberately light in tone, and I think it ranks with Powell's best.

Dawn Powell produced a substantial body of excellent work describing the places and lives (primarily her own) with which she was familiar. The qualities of growing up, coming-of age, searching and frustration, and the loss of innocence are all well portrayed. The descriptions of New York City, in particular, are themselves irreplaceable. Those readers who enjoy the pleasure of discovering a previously little-known writer will enjoy the novels of Dawn Powell.

An author of immense popularity, Dawn Powell (1896-1965) wrote satiric, witty, sharply written and observant fiction that went out of print following her death. Then in the early 1990s a renewed awareness of this major literary figure saw the reissuing of her work, only to have it fall back into obscurity once again. Now The Library Of America has brought her work back into print again and in a format that will insure that her fiction will continue to be available to both scholarship and the general reading public for decades to come. Volume 1: Novels 1930-1942 includes Dance Night; Come Back to Sorrento; Turn, Magic Wheel; Angels on Toast; and A Time To be Born. Volume 2: Novels 1944-1962 features My Home Is Far Away; The Locusts Have No King; The Wicked Pavilion; and The Golden Spur. Dawn Powell: Volumes 1 & 2 is a very highly recommended addition to both academic and community library literary fiction collections.

Better detail than other available state-wide atlases. Great for business travel to smaller towns and to outlying county areas.

I like to scout out small lakes off the beaten path, and this Atlas has proven invaluable to me. Picture this: If you cut out all the pages and re-assembled them into a one-piece map it would be as roughly as big as the average front yard! Hardly anything is left out, including many small farm pond sized bodies of water. My best discovery to date was a tiny 'lake' South of Columbus, Ohio, with a picture of a fish on it. I made the short trip and proceeded to catch a 6 pound Bass out of it- unheard of in the more heavily populated lakes around Columbus.

I'm on my third copy of the Ohio Atlas & Gazetteer the others have worn out from all the use I give them. Based on the quality of the Ohio version, I just ordered the Colorado book for a trip I plan to take there. The Ohio version offers a great resource for not only accurate road maps of the whole state, but also other items of interest like recreation areas, etc. I have a copy in all my vehicles. Wouldn't leave home without it.

John Stover forgoes the nostalgia of Baltimore & Ohio Railroad folklore and tells the B&O story in straight black and white. Primarily an economic historian, he tells how the B&O was able to make it through thick and thin with the trends of this country's economic growth and downswings. He however, does not ignore the various programs undertaken by the company throughout its history to improve its lines, equipment, and service, and in this light, he documents very well, both the John W. Garrett and Daniel Willard presidential tenures.

If Mr. Stover undertakes a revision of his book, I would like to see him provide more coverage of the years after the B&O was acquired by the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad, eventually to become the CSX Corporation. Also, his documentation of economic data in the text would be more meaningful if he were to take advantage of one of the many graphics and spreadsheet programs now available on home computers and illustrate this data in a series of charts either within the body of the book itself, or in an appendix.

John Stover is a well-known and respected railroad historian, and his book on the B&O has been around for awhile. Readers looking for "the romance of the rails," nostalgic memories of the "Capitol Limited," etc. will not find it here. Rather, they'll find a good introduction to the history, life and times of the Baltimore & Ohio. This one belongs on the shelf of all with an interest in eastern railroads.

This book is the best I have seen on this, the first common carrier railroad in America. John Stover has done a thorough job of covering the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad,its history, operations,and the people behind it. I recommend this book to anyone interested in this railroad very highly.

I was working as an actor in the fair city of Cleveland, when a neighboring theatre presented a musical about the events described in this book. I will not comment on the show but it did spark a morbid curiousity about the facts. Blame it all on the restlessness of being away from home. So after reading series of articles about Badal in the local rags, I picked this up at first opportunity.

While utterly thorough, I felt the same frustration Ness & the boys must have felt. The case is a baffling and horrific one and I suppose the point of writing this was to put an end to more sensationalist takes on the matter. Badal paints a vivid picture of Depression era Cleveland and very honorably does not seek to solve the mystery. What he succeeds in doing is giving the reader a guided tour of the murder sites coupled with all the false leads, rumors and suppositions that followed. Come here looking for drama and climax and you will be disappointed. For the curious, this is a concise account of a city gripped in fear and corruption. Enlightening, yet shedding no new light.

The Cleveland Torso Murders were among the first, accounted for, serial killings in America. Because of the gruesome details, not to mention that fact that the case is still open, they deserved much more attention. Criminologists, especially those interested in psychological profiling, would learn much from studying this case, than from other, more publicized murders, including the Sam Sheppard case.

Though we have not seen each other recently, I knew Jim Badal many years ago when I lived in Cleveland. His expertise in the Torso case at that time merited, at least in my opinion, a book, but Badal held back until he could bring real additional knowledge to the discussion, not just rehash and theories. His wait was worth it. Not only was Badal able to track down and interview members of the victim's families (and thus put a real face on persons previously portrayed through stereotypes), but he was the first Torso case author to read through the extensive records left by the lead police investigator. Thus we have a book of superb accuracy and detail, that reads better than a good crime novel.

The best part of the book is that Badal does not push his own theory of who was the Torso murderer. While some may find that disappointing, he instead takes the high road by giving the readers just the facts, and thus allows them to come up with their own theories. We will probably never know who did these awful crimes, and speculating for a little added notoriety would have only diminished the book's true horror.

"In the Wake of the Butcher" is the most complete book I have read regarding the topic of the Torso killings in Cleveland, Ohio. Not only can you uncover new details and new information about this case but James Badal has an uncanny way of putting "faces" on the victims and people involved. From Elliot Ness to Peter Merylo to Frank Dolezal...you'll walk away from this book feeling like you have gone back to the Thirties, have your Sherlock Holmes hat on and come up with your own theories of "Who Done It"! This book will not disappoint you.

Okay, first of all let me start by stating that I was born and for the most part raised in Gadsden, Alabama. Abel Streight & Nathan Bedford Forrest practically stomped through my back yard while riding toward Rome, GA. What's odd about this is that most people from that area are only aware of Emma Sansom and her role. She was the brave 16-year-old girl who kept Forrest and his Calvary on the heels of Streight and his Mule Brigade. Most of us grew up seeing that statue of Emma Sansom right on the edge of the Coosa River Bridge at the end of Broad Street. This mislead me for years to believe it was the Coosa she helped Forrest cross - it was actually Black Creek that she helped him cross. As a teenager, I would go hunting and see "John Wisdom Trail" signs on old rural roads. For some reason... I never thought to ask, "Who is John Wisdom?" Of course all this was before the Internet. Now I know that John Wisdom is the "Paul Revere of the South" and rode farther, faster and longer than Paul Revere actually did. These are just a few of the interesting elements of Streight's Raid. A Google search sparked my curiosity and led me to this book. This is the only comprehensive work on Streight's Raid. Simply put, this story sells itself. Streight was a righteous and decent man who believed in his cause. Forrest was noble and brilliant... who also believed in his cause. I have read far too few books on the Civil War to offer a serious book review, but I will give you a few thoughts.

I feel as though it was a fair representation of both Union and Confederate point of views. The acute attention to detail and first hand accounts were beneficial to the storyline. I am not an avid reader of military battles, so this next comment should be taken with a grain of salt. I found some portions of the book to be a little confusing. On more than one occasion, I had to back up a page and read it again. Someone more educated in regard to the Civil War might have zipped through these sections with ease. This is the only reason I subtracted a star from the review. I strongly suggest this book to anyone who is a "Civil War Buff". If this were a movie, no one would believe it was non-fiction.

Robert L. Willett conducted his own raid into previously uninhabited territory, and for this I commend him. There were no major battles fought in Alabama during the Civil War. Maybe it is for this reason that Streight's Raid is rarely written about. Maybe it's because the outcome of Streight's Raid somewhat glorifies Nathan Bedford Forrest. It may be too taboo in today's politically correct environment to glorify the founder of the Ku Klux Klan - whose military tactics were admired and studied by Nazi General Erwin Rommel. The significance of Forrest's "victory" is strongly debated. Could this be the most overlooked raid of the Civil War? Not anymore...

At the same time that Benjamin Grierson was making his remarkable raid through Mississippi and on to Baton Rouge, another raid took place in the opposite direction. Poorly equiped and badly scouted, Colonel Abel Sleight's raid across northern Alabama could have been successful with better scouting and being better equipt.

Robert Willett has written an interesting story based on eyewitness accounts and regimental histories. This work, which is well cited, is the only in depth work on this raid. Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of this work is that it will not gain the attention it deserves since it was not published by an academic press or written by an academic scholar. So much the loss.

I'm a great history student on Nathan Bedford Forrest myself. When I heard about this book, "The Lightning Mule Brigade" I immediately had to have it because I knew that NBF was involved in deterring Streight's Raid into Alabama. Bob Willett has done an outstanding job at pulling all the reference resources together into a great book about the raid. It has a lots of factual accounts that make for excellent reading about Forrest and Streight alike.

I read a Stephen King intro to a Matthew Scudder novel in which King said that Scudder and Stoner were his two favorite PI's. King should be ashamed of himself.

The Lime Pit is a not particularly well told hard-boiled detective story. There are no surprises. There are no likable characters. The telling is very formulaic. The writing is at best mediocre. Robert Parker, Loren Estleman, Lawrence Block, Donald Westlake write interesting, lively, original characters. Jonathan Valin's Harry Stoner is dull, plodding and predictable.

I may try another Harry Stoner novel some day, but only when I have run out of other things to read.

I love the way Amazon.com creates lists of titles that you might enjoy based on how you rate other books. It's like finding someone who loves all the same books as you and keeps finding new ones for you to dig into. I found this book amidst the recommendations Amazon provided and snatched it up from a used book dealer. It was an excellent, hard-boiled detective story in the Robert B. Parker tradition. The plot was fairly simple and ordinary but the main character and the stark and brutal violence were enough to engage me and hook me into reading this book in a single sitting. Check it out...you won't be disappointed.

The first entry in the Harry Stoner detective series is also the best. Harry tries to track down the whereabouts of a teenage hooker who has gotten herself involved with a ring of snuff film makers. The case takes Stoner through the underworld of his native Cincinnati, and never have the streets of the Queen city seemed so ominous. The climax is befittingly brutal and bloody. This book is for lovers of down and dirty detective fiction.

Interesting if you are from Ohio and have knowledge of the State etc... but pretty much is consistent with what I would call more of an loosely written reference book. Some detail seems to have been overlooked whereas other aspects were delved into deeply.

R Douglas Hurt has provided us with a solid survey of Ohio's history from its first settlement to the end of the frontier period. He manages to cover the various Indian tribes and their unique problems in dealing with the white man. He covers the economic developments, the process of urbanization, the religious differences, the cultural differences of the early settlers as well as the conflicts between Britain and the United States and how they affected the people (including the Indians)of the Ohio country. In later years Hurt discusses the political struggles between the Federalists and Republicans which ultimately led to statehood during the Jefferson administration. He ends by detailing the conflicts between the Republicans and the Jacksonian democrats and what the conflicts meant to the people of the Ohio frontier. His discussion of canal building is also informative.

One can find a wealth of detail here about particular regions and towns and how they grew and developed. The book, however, cannot be awarded five stars as Hurt's writing style is very matter-of-fact and (although he points out that the Western Reserve was slow to develop) the northeastern section of the state is given little attention. All in all, however, a book well worth reading for anyone interested in Ohio history or the development of the Northwest Territory.

I've read all four books in this series, and find them excellent reading and fascinating history. Being a native of northeast Ohio, I enjoyed finally learning some of the history of my birth state - something not taught very well in my public school.

When do we see "Michigan Frontier?"

This was our book club's August selection, partly because Malabar Farm is nearby. Bromfield made his name as a fiction writer, but this is non-fiction, and it would be interesting to read one of Bromfield's novels to see if his fiction still has any power to capture an audience. "Pleasant Valley" has an ecological theme that resonates well with today's readers. Twenty-five years ago when I was reading 20th century American fiction with a bunch of know-it-alls in graduate school, Bromfield was not on any radar screen. Maybe it was snobbishness or academic fashion or whatever, but I had never heard of the guy until much later and then only in relation to Malabar Farm and Humphrey Bogart. The literary critics who mention major American writers of this century never mention his name. He may be a genius and a brilliant fiction writer who has gone unnoticed, but I wouldn't know.

This book is such a personal statement for Bromfield that it probably isn't fair to judge him as a writer on the basis of this book. What I was conscious of was the polemical nature of his writing. He hectors his readers with his opinions about agriculture and human culture. Granted, he is writing in the context of recent history that included a depression, the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and the Second World War. He sees his farm as a refuge from the insanity of the world that is evident all around him. Some of that writing is quite nice and funny.

The book highlights the old contrast between city and country that is a literary theme as old as the ancient Greeks and Romans.

But after a while, I got tired of hearing the same arguments over and over. Let's see if I can summarize. Natural is better than unnatural. Farmers are cultural heroes. Rotating your crops is a good idea. Manure makes good fertilizer. Do your plowing perpendicular to the fall line of a hill. Rednecks are lazy and stupid because they are brought up on inferior agricultural products of farms that have been stripped of their vital nutrients. (This sounded a little like General Buck Turgidson's rant about fluoridation destroying our precious bodily fluids in "Dr. Strangelove.")

His focus on the loss of topsoil as a huge threat to civilization is understandable in light of what he could see happening in the 1940s. But farmers did change some of their practices. The book's appeal today, I thin, is as an example of pastoral writing with an ecological theme.

Novelist Louis Bromfield won the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1927 (Early Autumn). He wrote a total of 31 books in his lifetime. But, for my money at least, Pleasant Valley is the best book he ever wrote. Malabar Farm comes a close second. Bromfield's other farm books include: The Farm, 1933 Out of The Earth, 1950 Animals and Other People, 1955 From My Experience, 1955

In 1962, his youngest daughter, Ellen, wrote The Heritage -- A Daughter's Memories of Louis Bromfield. She tells the story of growing up in the shadow of her famous father and his Hollywood pals -- Bogie and Bacall were married at Bromfield's Malabar Farm in 1945 -- wonderfully well. But even better, I think is her 1957 Strangers In The Valley, the story of how she and husband Carson moved to Brazil to start a Bromfield-style farm on the new frontier there.

Jim Breiner is right: Louie Bromfield was a genius and a brilliant writer. Living in France in the '20s, he helped Hemingway first get published, and was compared favorably with Fitzgerald, thurber and Steinbeck, among others. His fiction is now dated, but his farm writing is immortal.

I grew up in Mansfield, Ohio and visited Malabar Farm on occassion. However, I never read any of Louis Bromfield's book until recently. After reading Pleasant Valley I was very touched by the stories of the people and animals Louis writes about in the book. I am reminded of the beauty of life we all experience no matter where we live if only we allow ourselves the opportunity to look around. Wonderful book.

Beckett's drama "What Where" is another example of a disorganized world where the only two certainties are suffering and uncertainty. Ample readings of the terse drama only serves as a catalyst for increased suffering and uncertainty in the reader. It never becomes clear whether the play is a mime, a schizophrenic episode, a parody, or a dream. The drama's brevity leads us scrambling for details that are intentionally omitted. For example, how do the stage directions relate directly to the play? Moreover, who is Bam torturing? Himself? While a deep understaning of "the absurd" and existentialism may help the reader unravel some of the drama's mysteries, such an understaning is unlikely to yield any discernible truth.

Ohio Impromptu is one of those rare plays which brightens your day yet blackens it at the same time. The language is painfully beautiful and is play i would love to see performed. From reading the text there is a warped sense of tension but warmth at the same time. I read this many times upon purchasing it and it has the wonderful ability to paint Mona Lisa style smile across my face each time i do. This is one of my favourite plays, by an excellent author.

Veering dangerously close to self-parody, 'Ohio Impromptu' is probably the most beautiful and least difficult of Beckett's last works. It tells the story of a black-clad Reader who reads a story to a silent black-clad Listener, about a grieving man who has lost his lover, who sends him a man to comfort him, and who does so by reading to him...As a work about loss and grief it is unsurpassed even in Beckett's work, and its description of lonely walks around Paris and Shades visiting from the dead are haunting, while the dutiful formal self-reflexivity does no real damage to the sentimentality.

'Catastrophe' is considered Beckett's only political play (I always thought 'Godot' was pretty political), written in support of Vaclav Havel in the early 80s when he was a jailed dissident playwright. As politics, it is rather obvious and banal, but it also works as a play about the theatre, about the power struggle that is life and the usual 'universal' stuff.

'What Where' is one of the late pattern plays, where four characters perform a mime which is explained by one of them through megaphone. Often taken as another political parable, this time about torture and confession in a system where truth cannot exist, its inspiration in Schubert's song-cycle 'Winterreisse' gives it a more human force.