After creeping out of bed on a frigid January night in 1832, teenage farmhand Abraham Prescott took up an ax and thrashed his sleeping employers to the brink of death. He later explained that he’d attacked Sally and Chauncey Cochran in his sleep. The Cochrans eventually recovered but—to the astonishment of their neighbors—kept Prescott on, somehow accepting his strange story.

For twenty-five years, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has defined Cleveland’s image as the “Rock and Roll Capital of the World.” But while the Rock Hall has become an iconic landmark for the city of Cleveland and for fans of rock and roll around the world, it was just one missed phone call away from never being built in Cleveland. If the prominent singer and actress Leslie Gore hadn’t contacted radio personality Norm N. Nite in August 1983, the Hall of Fame would not be in Cleveland—period.

The Cost of Freedom: Voicing a Movement after Kent State 1970 is a multi-genre collection describing the May 4, 1970, shootings at Kent State University, the aftermath, and the impact on wider calls for peace and justice. Fifty years after the National Guard killed four unarmed students, Susan J. Erenrich has gathered moving stories of violence, peace, and reflection, demonstrating the continued resonance of the events and the need for sustained discussion. This anthology includes poetry, personal narratives, photographs, songs, and testimonies—some written by eyewitnesses to the day of the shootings—as well as speeches from recent commemoration events and items related to the designation of the site on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016.

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.

Editor Kathleen O’Shea has managed to gather a wide selection of helpful excerpts, chapters, poetry, and even a short play in this anthology—all with a view toward increasing our understanding and ending the stigma attached to migraines and migraine sufferers. Unlike clinical materials, this anthology addresses the feelings and symptoms that the writers have experienced, sometimes daily. These pieces speak freely about the loneliness and helplessness one feels when a migraine comes on. The sufferer faces nausea, pain, sensitivity to light, and having the veracity of all these symptoms doubted by others. O’Shea, a professor of literature and a migraine sufferer herself, also includes an original essay of her own reflections.

President Nixon’s announcement on April 30, 1970, that US troops were invading neutral Cambodia as part of the ongoing Vietnam War campaign sparked a complicated series of events with tragic consequences on many fronts. In Cambodia, the invasion renewed calls for a government independent of western power and influence. Here at home, Nixon’s expansion of the war galvanized the long-standing anti–Vietnam War movement, including at Kent State University, leading to the tragic shooting deaths of four students on May 4, 1970.

Ernest Hemingway casts a long shadow in literature—reaching beyond his status as a giant of 20th-century fiction and a Nobel Prize winner—extending even into comic books. Appearing variously with Superman, Mickey Mouse, Captain Marvel, and Cerebus, he has even battled fascists alongside Wolverine in Spain and teamed up with Shade to battle adversaries in the Area of Madness.

For decades, the dramatic stories of World War II soldiers have been the stuff of memoirs, inter­views, novels, documentaries, and feature films. Yet the men and women who served in less visible roles, never engaging in physical combat, have received scant attention. Convinced that their depiction as pencil pushers, grease monkeys, or cowards was far from the truth, Rona Simmons embarked on a quest to discover the real story from the noncombat veterans themselves.

The National Road was the first major improved highway in the United States built by the federal government. Built between 1811 and 1837, this 620-mile road connected the Potomac and Ohio Rivers and was the main avenue to the West. Roger Pickenpaugh’s comprehensive account is based on detailed archival research into documents that few scholars have examined, including sources from the National Archives, and details the promotion, construction, and use of this crucially important thoroughfare.

An in-depth examination of the role of divine beings in Tolkien’s work, Tolkien’s Cosmology: Divine Beings and Middle-earth brings together Tolkien’s many references to such beings and analyzes their involvement within his created world. Unlike many other commentators, Sam McBride asserts that a careful reading of the whole of the author’s corpus shows a coherent, if sometimes contradictory, divine presence in the world.