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.

Shortly after NYPD Chief of Detectives Thomas Byrnes publicly criticized the London police for failing to capture Jack the Ripper, he received a letter purportedly from Jack himself saying New York was his next target. Not long after, Byrnes was confronted by his own Ripper-style murder case in the death of Carrie Brown, a.k.a. “Old Shakespeare,” a colorful character who worked as a prostitute and had a penchant for quoting Shakespeare. People were worried that Jack might have actually come to America…

Economic Reforms and Modernization in Nigeria details the process and outcome of late-colonial and post-colonial Nigerian history. While its focus is on economic reforms, it includes a discussion of twentieth-century politics in order to place the events of the period in context. Author Toyin Falola presents statistical data on Nigeria’s economy that illustrate the nature of the changes made throughout the mid-twentieth century. Much of this information is presented here for the first time.

This volume contains a critical edition of Charles Brockden Brown’s Edgar Huntly, the third of his novels to be published in 1799 and the first to deal with the American wilderness. The basis of the text is the first edition, printed and published by Hugh Maxwell in Philadelphia late in the year, but the “Fragment” printed independently in Brown’s Monthly Magazine earlier in 1799 supplies some readings in Chapters 17-20. The Historical Essay, which follows the text, covers matters of composition, publication, historical background, and literary evaluation, and the Textual Essay discusses the transmission of the text, choice of copy-text, and editorial policy. A general textual statement for the entire edition appears in Volume I of the series.

The evolution of our institutions of learning, from one-room schoolhouses to the modern educational campuses of today, reflects both the growth of our populace and our shared cultures and traditions. Ohio offers an excellent perspective for viewing and interpreting educational architecture. The heritage of its pioneer settlers, the diversity of its immigrants, and its strategic geographic position for westward migration created a history typical of much of America. The state’s educational buildings reflect this rich history and culture.

Daniel Patterson’s Edward Taylor’s Gods Determinations and Preparatory Meditations: A Critical Edition reconsiders the texts of Taylor’s two major works for the first time since Donald Stanford’s 1960 edition. This volume also offers the first complete text of all of the Meditations that Taylor transcribed into his “Poetical Works” manuscript. The restoration of Taylor’s text, however, is the most enduring value of this edition, which is designed to become the new standard edition of these poems.

The election of 1860 was a crossroad in American history. Faced with four major candidates, voters in the North and South went to the polls not knowing that the result of the election would culminate in the bloodiest conflict the United States had ever seen. Despite its obvious importance, surprisingly few studies have focused exclusively on this electoral contest itself. In The Election of 1860 Reconsidered, seven historians offer insightful essays that challenge the traditional view of the election, present fresh inter- pretations, and approach the contest from new angles.

This is an introduction to the principle writers of the Enlightenment in Eighteenth Century France. French thinkers of this century made a long series of devastating attacks on old ideas, usages, and institutions that had been handed down from the past. And, at the same time, these thinkers proposed a series of thorough-going reforms in social, economic, political, religious, and educational ideas and institutions. France was the center of the Enlightenment of the Eighteenth Century, but there were important thinkers that belonged to the movement in other countries, such as Vico and Beccaria in Italy; Lessing, Herder, and Kant in Germany; and Hume, Adam Smith, and Bentham in Britain. France, though, took the lead, and, outside of France, there were no thinkers of quite the influence of the French writers, Voltaire and Rousseau.

Written over a thirty-year period, the essays included in this volume develop one central theme: the completion of American isolationism in the formative years of the nation. Isolationism, in Kaplan’s view, is not to be taken as economic or cultural independence but as abstention from political or military obligations to Europe, from alliances or from purposeful entanglement in the European balance of power.

Eric Mendelsohn’s Park Synagogue tells the story of the construction of The Park Synagogue and examines how Mendelsohn consciously sought to express the ideals and traditions of the congregation and Judaism in its architectural forms. From one of the world’s largest copper-clad domes weighing 680 tons to the shape of the sanctuary and spectacular bimah, Mendelsohn sought to incorporate the architecture into Jewish ritual and worship. He favored dramatic curves of glass walls, circular stairwells, and porthole windows, and he used the circle as a dominant form throughout his career. The Park Synagogue is one of the few Mendelsohn buildings that remains virtually as it was built.