New Book Releases

VIew Cincinnati via photography and the history of the Italians that began immigrating and populating the area since the 1800s.

Italians of Greater Cincinnati focuses on the Italian immigration into the Cincinnati area beginning in the early 1800s. The northern Italians were the first to arrive, followed by those in the south of Italy, including Sicily. In the spring of 1892, plans were being made to build a Catholic church for the estimated 4,000 Italian immigrants. In 1897, two biological Italian immigrant sisters, who had joined the religious order of the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati, Sr. Blandina and Sr. Justina Segale, began their life's work with the poor immigrants living in the Cincinnati area. Today descendants of these early immigrants, as well as those who arrived in the 20th century, continue to celebrate their rich Italian heritage through social clubs and community involvement. The photographs contained in this volume detail the lives of the Italians as they strived to become Americans.

Extreme wealth could buy a mansion in Millionaires' Row but not immunity from unsavory business dealings or shameful behavior.

May Hanna gave her millionaire ex-husband's hired Pinkerton detectives the slip to sneak out of the country. To escape financial embarrassment, James Potter, the manager of a prominent Euclid Avenue apartment building, gave his family cough medicine laced with poison, killing his entire family including himself. Married to a Millionaires' Row doctor, the infamous con woman Cassie Chadwick posed as Andrew Carnegie's illegitimate daughter and forged a fake $5 million check. Author Alan Dutka delves into sixteen tales of anguish and deceit that offer a startling perspective on Cleveland's super-rich.

Cleveland's Playhouse Square documents the fascinating history of the five theatres which boomed, beginning in the 1920s.

In the early 1920s, five opulent theaters--the Allen, the Ohio, the State, the Palace, and the Hanna--opened on a stretch of Euclid Avenue in Cleveland. They offered legitimate theater, vaudeville, name bands and entertainers, and films for the affluent and hardworking citizens of this booming industrial city. Unfortunately, the introduction of television and the flight to the suburbs in the 1950s and 1960s turned the theaters into ghost palaces destined for the wrecking ball. In 1970, a bold group of planners led by Raymond K. Shepardson formed the Playhouse Square Association, a nonprofit group dedicated to saving the theaters. A 25-year restoration endeavor emerged that raised $53 million, culminating in the largest theater restoration project in the world. Today Playhouse Square Center ranks second only to New York's Lincoln Center as North America's largest performing arts complex.

How the city of Lorain, Ohio, came to be and the vital role it played on its way to becoming known throughout the world.

The City of Lorain was incorporated in 1874 by the town council. It was named after the county, which had been named by Heman Ely, who thought the area looked very much like the Province of Lorraine in France. Lorain's location next to Lake Erie and the early arrival of the B&O Railroad in 1871 made the city a hotbed for industry. The Hayden Brass Works built a large plant on Elyria Avenue. Captain Thew, a ship captain on the lakes, developed an improved gear system for a steam shovel, and that started the Lorain Thew Shovel Co., which became known worldwide.

Lorain grew tremendously in the 1890s. Construction of the Johnson Steel Rail Company started in 1894, and in just 10 years, the population of the City of Lorain tripled. In 1894, the American Stove Works built a plant in Lorain, where they made heaters and furnaces. Three years later, the American Shipbuilding Company built a yard and launched hundreds of ships before it closed in 1984. Lorain, Ohio, certainly did its part during World War II; many men went into service, and Lorain produced its own share of heroes. The shipyard was also put to work by the government to build the USS Lorain, a frigate.

Discover the dozens of exciting never-before-published images of the people and events at Lunken Airfield.

Lunken Airfield flew headlong into the golden age of aviation in the 1920s. World War I veterans became gutsy barnstormers who had only roads and railroad tracks as navigational landmarks. They gave way to courageous pilots who flew airmail, as well as record makers who flew for the joie de vivre and fame under conditions fraught with danger. These flyers gave way to aircraft engineers and designers who would craft the next generation of planes. Pilots were seduced by the allure of international recognition and wealth, as well as the feeling of freedom experienced in the air. Along the way, they assumed the status of movie stars. On any given day, anyone from a spectator to a mechanic might hobnob with Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, Roscoe Turner, or Jimmy Doolittle, who routinely flew in and out of Lunken. Over the decades, Lunken has undergone many changes, but today, as it approaches its centennial, planes still take off and land daily, and crowds still flock to special events.

The story of these immigrants to northeastern Ohio and their role in the development of the Mahoning Valley is told through rare and vintage images.

To many people, the sight of a sky aglow with flame, clouds of smoke, and the smell of sulfur in the air would bring thoughts of sermons about brimstone, fire, and punishment for a life of sin. But Slovak immigrants fleeing poverty in Europe saw a picture of hope and prosperity as they came to the Mahoning Valley of northeastern Ohio in response to the promise of jobs and good pay in the steel mills. These mills stretched in an almost unbroken chain from Warren, Ohio, through Youngstown and Campbell and on into Sharon and Farrell, Pennsylvania. From the 1870s, when the first Slovaks came to this area, to the present, there is no part of American life in which these Slovak Americans have not thrived while living the American Dream.

For more than a century, Cincinnati's candy industry satisfied our national sweet tooth. Dive into its specialties and past.

Stick and drop candies appeared here long before their Civil War popularity. Opera creams, rich fondant-filled chocolate candy brought here by Robert Hiner Putman, provided decadence. Candy corn, which the Goelitz Company introduced to the United States before World War I, remains a ubiquitous treat. Marpro Products created and popularized the marshmallow cone candy. Doscher invented the French Chew and made caramel corn a baseball concession at Redland Field decades before Cracker Jack became synonymous with our national pastime. The city's many Greek and Macedonian immigrants influenced the unique Queen City tradition of finishing a Cincinnati-style ""threeway"" of spaghetti, chili and cheddar with a chocolate mint. Local food etymologist Dann Woellert tells these stories and more in this delectably sweet history.

The struggles and successes of the industrious coal miners in Ohio's Mahoning Valley.

Year after year, local Welsh coal diggers supplied the ravenous and roaring ironworks in Mahoning Valley but the good times ended in the closing weeks of 1872. The demand for iron slackened, and with it, coal orders fell. Responding to plunging coal prices, mine owners cut wages, but rank-and-file miners would have none of it. On New Year's Day, they went on strike. The bitter stalemate broke only when operators sidestepped local labor by employing African Americans from Virginia and Italian immigrants crowding the Eastern Seaboard. Violence followed. Yet this vicious strife opened the Mahoning Valley to permanent Italian settlement. Authors Ben Lariccia and Joe Tucciarone uncover this forgotten chapter in the region's storied labor history.

Early postcards and photographs reveal the begininngs of rail travel in Ohio, and the rail depots and buildings that served the passengers and their goods.

The first rail lines in northeast Ohio opened for business in July 1850, and by the 1890s, northeast Ohio was laced with railroad tracks. Cleveland was the hub of railroad activity, and important rail-served lake ports developed at Ashtabula, Conneaut, Fairport Harbor, Huron, and Lorain. Akron became a center of southerly east-west lines. Over 310 passenger and combination depots were established at various points along the railroads to serve the needs of passengers traveling throughout northeast Ohio. Depots were the focal point of communities--news arrived over their telegraphs, traveling salesmen gathered on the trackside platforms, depot staff maneuvered four-wheel wagons loaded with baggage, parcels, and milk cans, locals gathered to meet, greet, and send off family and friends. The depot was a veritable beehive of activity at train time. Railroad Depots of Northeast Ohio offers a glimpse into these golden years of train travel through the use of early postcards and photographs of selected depots and related structures.

Beginning on Easter Sunday, March 23, 1913, torrential rains across the Midwest dropped a record three months of rainfall in four days.

Floodwaters funneled down Ohio's Miami Valley into the heart of the vibrant industrial city of Dayton. Levees burst, houses were swept away, and downtown was gutted by fires blazing from broken gas mains. At the end of Easter week, nearly 100 Daytonians had perished, and tens of thousands more were left homeless and destitute--a tragedy that made banner headlines in newspapers nationwide. Out of Dayton's ashes and mud rose fierce public resolve never again to suffer such destruction. The Great Dayton Flood of 1913 reproduces some 200 astounding photographs from the collections of the Dayton Metro Library and the Miami Conservancy District and the archives of the National Cash Register Company at Dayton History. They portray the terrifying flood, monumental destruction, heroic rescues, and compassionate leadership that occurred during the disaster and its immediate aftermath, as well as the pioneering flood-control engineering that has kept Dayton safe ever since.