Many of Ohio’s historically significant locations have developed a reputation for being haunted. While it might be almost impossible to prove the validity of the paranormal tales that surround them, one thing is clear: ghost stories help to keep history alive. But the questions remain: How did these stories get started? More important, are any of them tied directly to actual historic events? And do any facts support the ghost lore?

The College of Wooster was a proud but modest college for much of its life, exemplified by the titles of the first two volumes of its history, Wooster of the Middle West. In 1944, a Wooster alumnus named Howard Lowry became president and created the Independent Study (I.S.) program, distinguishing Wooster from other quality liberal arts colleges nationwide. I.S. was and is much more than a capstone research project for seniors; the heavy responsibility of mentoring undergraduate research was offset for faculty by university-level research leave, guaranteeing Wooster a faculty of true teacher-scholars.

The best essays by one of the leading experts on the Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil War, a military rebellion supported by Hitler and Mussolini, attracted the greatest writers of the age. Among them were Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, André Malraux, Arthur Koestler, Langston Hughes, and Martha Gellhorn. They returned to their homelands to warn the world about a war of fascist aggression looming on the horizon.

The Ohio canals live again through the eye and hand of artist-historian Frank N. Wilcox. From his years of walking the canal ways and exploring the broken locks to searching old newspapers and musty records, Wilcox built this record. Through his art and writing he tells the story of canal location and construction; guides us through the intricacies of locks and their workings; and restores for today’s readers the texture and flavor of this colorful era.

In this classic and coveted volume, artist Frank N. Wilcox tackles the difficult job of mapping the Indian trails of Ohio. Basing his work on the journals and records of early settlers and soldiers, his knowledge of Native American ways, and his intimacy with the Ohio landscape, he locates and documents the major Indian towns and trails that crisscross the state. His maps, drawings, and watercolors beautifully evoke the lives and cultures of Ohio’s first peoples.

Roughly a century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt said, “I think there is only one thing in the world I can’t understand, and that is Ohio politics.” If The Ohio Politics Almanac had existed then, Roosevelt still might not have understood Ohio politics, but it wouldn’t have been for lack of information. A comprehensive and authoritative resource, The Ohio Politics Almanac sheds light on the complexity of Ohio’s electoral statistics. 

In the heyday of Civil War commemoration at the turn of the twentieth century, Mississippi’s Vicksburg National Military Park was considered “the art park of the South.” By 1920, more than 160 portrait statues, busts, and reliefs of Vicksburg’s defenders under Gen. John C. Pemberton and the besieging Union army commanded by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant lined the tour route along the earthworks around the Gibraltar of the Confederacy. Most of the memorial art and architecture was built in the classical revival Beaux-Arts style popular following the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. The federal government, states, and individual patrons commissioned dozens of sculptors and architects to create these enduring structures, marking the historic battlefield and commemorating the men and events involved in the campaign and siege of Vicksburg.

Quakers Alice and Staughton Lynd worked in Central America and Israel, where they championed the rights of Palestinian Arabs living in the West Bank. They took up the cause of prisoners’ rights following the April 1993 Lucasville, Ohio, prison uprising—the longest such rebellion in American history—working to improve the living conditions of the five inmates who were convicted of leading the rebellion. Together with Jules Lobel of the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Lynds filed suit on behalf of death row inmates who were kept in solitary confinement in Ohio’s prisons. Their lawsuit contributed to a landmark decision that improved living conditions for inmates in solitary confinement and established that prisoners have due process rights that have to be observed before they can be sent to solitary confinement.

During the summer of 1864 a Union column, commanded by Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson Smith, set out from Tennessee with a goal that had proven impossible in all prior attempts—to find and defeat the cavalry under the command of Confederate major general Nathan Bedford Forrest. Forrest’s cavalry was the greatest threat to the long supply line feeding Sherman’s armies as they advanced on Atlanta.

At midnight on January 24, 1954, the last step was taken in the armistice to end the war in Korea. That night, the neutral Indian guards who had overseen the prisoner of war repatriation process abandoned their posts, leaving their charges to make their own decisions. The vast majority of men allowed to choose a new nation were Chinese and North Koreans who elected the path of freedom. There were smaller groups hoping that the communist bloc would give them a better life; among these men were twenty-one American soldiers and prisoners of war. “We Fight for Peace” tells their story.