Somewhere west of the Appalachians and north of the Ohio River, the Midwest begins. Just where exactly, and how, and why are the questions explored in Where East Meets (Mid)West. Bringing together a range of perspectives, the volume argues that while cultural boundaries remain difficult to define, Ohio has been central to regional transitions throughout history. To Native Americans, Ohio was the meeting place of two major drainage basins: the Ohio River and the Great Lakes Basin, which resulted in large amounts of trade activity, cultural exchange, and conflict. During America’s westward expansion, Ohio was an essential pathway, the first of the new Northwest territories to gain statehood, and a battleground over the issue of enslavement. 

More Important Than Good Generals is an in-depth study of the Army of the Tennessee’s junior officers—the company and field grade lieutenants, captains, majors, lieutenant colonels, and colonels. While many studies have examined generals and common soldiers, Civil War armies’ “middle management” has been largely ignored.

Lawrence E. Y. Mbogoni depicts a range of volunteers’ experiences, including anecdotes about their training, their work and social lives in Tanzania, and how they readjusted to life back in America following their service. Although there are several memoirs by returned Peace Corps volunteers from Tanzania, this is the first scholarly study of the agency’s history in Tanzania more broadly. Mbogoni draws extensively on archival resources, Tanzanian newspapers and government reports, and interviews he conducted with returned volunteers. The result is an engaging account of volunteers’ contributions and a critical assessment of how successfully the Peace Corps has met its objectives.

Though Ernest Hemingway distrusted Hollywood and often found himself in conflict with directors and producers, he frequented theaters and freely acknowledged the art and potential that cinema contained. In turn, the film industry’s interest in his stories has endured for nearly a century. Focusing on the relationship between written and cinematic work, Hemingway and Film brings together diverse literary and film studies scholars to both deepen understanding of Hemingway’s fiction and film adaptations and to provide practical guidance for approaching these topics in the classroom.

To demonstrate how a Union force overpowered Confederate troops in and around Fredericksburg, Erik F. Nelson emphasizes the role of terrain. Previous studies have relied on misleading primary sources that have left the campaign—and the Union’s larger victory—misunderstood. Moreover, the former battlegrounds near Fredericksburg have been altered by new roads and neighborhoods, further complicating study.

The latest chapter in The Complete Funky Winkerbean saga sees the sons and daughters of the original Funky gang starting to make their mark on the world by playing in basketball championships, climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, and being deployed to war zones. Along the way there are graduations, weddings, and anniversaries—including the 40th anniversary of Funky Winkerbean. In an introduction to the strips, Tom Batiuk shares fresh insights about what was transpiring behind the scenes when the work in this volume was being created.

Opium and Ambergris is the haunting debut collection by poet Colin Dekeersgieter, whose lyric poems scrutinize a family’s history with addiction, death, and mental illness.

Reeling from the loss of his brother to a heroin overdose, Dekeersgieter grieves while doing his best to keep his suicidal mother alive and raise his family. As a result, these poems shift between historical retellings and urgent examinations of love. In the title poem, “opium” is associated with death and “ambergris”—a substance formed in sperm whales’ digestive tracts and valued by many cultures for over one thousand years—is associated with love. As family history, death, trauma, and duty become entwined with the acts of living, suffering, growing, and writing, these metaphorical categories become essentially interchangeable. Opium comes from the beautiful poppy; ambergris is an ingredient still used in high-end perfumes to help the fragrance last longer, yet it is extracted from dead whales. Thus, “opium” and “ambergris” come to represent the possible coexistence of love and loss.

In early 1900s Indiana, John Terrell was the wealthiest man in Wells County, thanks to oil discovered on his farm. But when his youngest daughter, Lucy, became pregnant and entered into a forced marriage to abusive Melvin Wolfe, Terrell’s life and fortune unraveled in a tumultuous spiral of murder, a dramatic trial, and a descent into madness.

From the time James was a high school sophomore, former Cleveland Plain Dealer sports columnist Bill Livingston covered every step of his journey from the teenager who flouted high school league rules to a basketball icon and activist, one who even founded a school in his hometown.

LeBron James has been a polarizing yet beloved figure for sports fans around the world, possibly nowhere more so than in northeast Ohio, where he grew up. He began his basketball career hailed as “the chosen one,” a beacon of hope for a Cleveland team that had never won an NBA championship. He was then denounced for “the Decision” to leave and pursue his trophy dreams with the Miami Heat. The prodigal son subsequently returned to the Cavaliers, fulfilling “the Promise” to bring ultimate victory to Cleveland in 2016.

An anthology celebrating the biodiversity and staggering beauty of Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Light Enters the Grove collects 42 poems, each of which reflects its author’s unique connection to a living organism found within the park—ranging from white-tailed deer to brown bats and from Japanese honeysuckle to bloodroot. Additionally, each poem is paired with an artistic depiction of the poem’s subject that reinforces the rich relationship between artists and the natural world.