STATE

STATE
Ohio history published
As Ohio prepares to celebrate its bicentennial in 2003, Andrew R. L. Cayton offers an account of ways in which diverse citizens have woven its history. "Ohio: The History of a People" centers around the stories Ohioans have told about life in their state. The founders of Ohio believed that its success would depend on the development of a public culture that emphasized what its citizens had in common with each other. But for two centuries, the remarkably diverse inhabitants of Ohio have repeatedly asserted their ideas about how they and their children should lead their lives.
Using memoirs, diaries, letters, novels and paintings, Cayton writes Ohio's history as a collective biography of its citizens. Cayton is a distinguished professor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. "Ohio: The History of a People," published by the Ohio State University Press, costs $35.
Literary nonfiction
In "Ohio States: A Twentieth-Century Midwestern," Jeffrey Hammond asserts the quiet mysteries of an ordinary life. More than simply a glimpse of life in the Midwest in the 1950s, this collection of narratives finds the author recalling his childhood and youth with a mixture of affection and alarm. Published by the Kent State University Press, the 190-page book costs $14.95.
Hammond teaches English and American literature, biblical and classical literature and nonfiction writing at St. Mary's College of Maryland. His creative nonfiction has won a Pushcart Prize and Shenandoah's Carter Prize for Essay.