Ohio History Journal




Book Notes

Book Notes

 

 

Croquet: An Annotated Bibliography from the Rendell Rhoades Croquet Collection.

By Nancy L. Rhoades. (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1992. xx + 214p.; illus-

trations, bibliography, appendix.) Today, croquet might appear a quaint, insignificant

game in an environment dominated by professional football, baseball, and basketball.

But this annotated bibliography underscores croquet's position of prominence among

American sports in the years following the Civil War, as well as its revival in the past

twenty years. Nancy L. Rhoades based this enlightening book on the croquet-related

collection of the late Rendell Rhoades, now housed in the Rutherford B. Hayes

Presidential Center, Fremont, Ohio. The bibliography is organized according to the

source of the croquet image or information, from rule books to fiction, patents to sheet

music, etiquette manuals to trade cards. The pungent annotations give the reader a clear

idea of both the substance and style of each citation. Read cover-to-cover, the book pro-

vides, in miniature, a history of croquet's meteoric rise as entertainment and obsession

followed by its precipitous decline as the public's taste shifted to lawn tennis.

 

The Strong Museum                                      Christopher Bensch

 

 

Sports in Cleveland: An Illustrated History. By John J. Grabowski. (Bloomington

and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992. xii + 150p.; illustrations, index.) An

Encyclopedia of Cleveland History project, this splendidly illustrated work will appeal

to all sports fans, both from within and without Cleveland, but especially to those old

enough to remember when the Indians were perennial contenders for the American

League crown. But Grabowski does not limit his coverage to baseball, as he includes

football (remember those early Paul Brown teams?), sleigh racing, trotting, auto racing,

tennis, roof-top tennis (see page 21 for this YWCA donation to the sports world), golf,

hockey, track events, basketball, and bowling. Grabowski's text is informative--espe-

cially a number of short biographical sketches-and his illustrations well chosen. The

book is a fine addition to Cleveland history.

 

Ohio Historical Society                               Robert L. Daugherty

 

 

Distinguished Shades: Americans Whose Lives Live On. By Louis Filler. (Ovid,

Michigan: Belfry Publications, Inc., 1992. vii + 278p.; illustrations, index.) In reexam-

ining the careers of 56 extraordinary Americans, historian Louis Filler presents new

information on men and women of various social and ethnic origins whose lives were,

as Filler notes, truly great. Filler, a widely respected historian, carefully explains in his

introduction that Distinguished Shades "is not a guide to distinction or to past figures

who seem to lean toward present interests, but rather a guide to methods by which past

or present lions can be given place to assert their qualities for good or evil." Among his

diverse collection of luminaries are several individuals with Ohio associations, includ-

ing William Burnham Woods, a native of Newark who rose to become Supreme Court

Justice, E. W. Scripps, father of the penny post newspapers and the United Press

International (UPI), and Arthur Ernest Morgan, creator of the Miami Conservancy

District, a landmark flood control system that served as a model for TVA, of which he



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became first chairman. In the final analysis Distinguished Shades is not a simple ency-

clopedic listing of all that is known, but is instead a provocative and at times question-

ing portrait of selected American lives as they really were.

 

Ohio Historical Society                                      Steve Gordon

 

 

Due to the July 1992 State of Ohio budget cuts, Ohio History has been forced to cut

back the number of pages in its fiscal year 1993 issues, thus reducing and delaying the

number of book reviews we can publish. We apologise to our readers who faithfully

follow the journal, to our reviewers who make an effort to turn in timely and thoughtful

reviews, to our authors whose worthy books will either be reviewed years after their

initial publication or not at all, and to the publishers who kindly supply the works for

review. Unfortunately, such cuts mean that reviews of many worthwhile publications

could not be available to our readers. The journal has received, and returned, the fol-

lowing publications:

 

Affectionately, Rachel: Letters from India, 1860-1884. Edited by Barbara Mitchell

Tull. (Kent: The Kent State Univesity Press, 1992. xv + 351p.; illustrations, notes,

bibliography, index.)

A Guide to Cleveland's Sacred Landmarks. By Foster Armstrong, Richard Klein, and

Cara Armstrong. (Kent: The Kent State University Press, 1992. xii + 332p.; illustra-

tions, notes, glossary, bibliography, index.)

Amish Roots: A Treasury of History, Wisdom, and Lore. Edited by John A. Hostetler.

(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. xv + 319 p.; illustrations,

chronology of Amish history; notes on selected contributors, index.)

Anthology of Western Reserve Literature. Edited by David R. Anderson and Gladys

Haddad. (Kent: The Kent State University Press, 1992. xi + 312p.; bibliography,

index.)

Aspects of Early North American Metallurgy, Occasional Paper 79. Edited by M.L.

Wayman, J.C.H. King, and P.T. Craddock. (London: The British Museum Press,

1992. 144p.; tables, charts, illustrations, notes, references.)

Between Memory and Reality: Family and Community in Rural Wisconsin, 1870-1970.

By Jane Marie Pederson. (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1992. xvi +

314p.; illustrations, maps, tables, notes, appendixes, bibliography, index.)

Charles Burchfield's Journals: The Poetry of Place, Edited by J. Benjamin Townsend.

(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. xxvi + 737p.; illustrations,

notes, genealogical charts, maps, chronology, selected bibliography, index.)

From the Heart of Crow Country: The Crow Indians' Own Stories. By Joseph

Medicine Crow. (New York: Orion Books, 1992. xxii + 138p.; illustrations, index.)

John Marshall Harlan: Great Dissenter of the Warren Court. By Tinsley E.

Yarbrough. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. xvi + 395p.; notes, biblio-

graphical note, index.)

John Robert Shaw: An Autobiography of Thirty Years, 1777-1807. Edited by Oressa

M. Teagarden and Jeanne L. Crabtree. (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1992. xvii +

187p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.) REPRINT.

Letters from New France: The Upper Country, 1686-1783. Translated and edited by

Joseph L. Peyser. (Champaign: The University of Illinois Press, 1992. xv + 248p.;

illustrations, tables, appendixes, bibliography, index.)

Letters from the Front, 1898-1945. Edited by Michael E. Stevens. Volume 1 of Voices



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Book Notes                                                             79

 

of the Wisconsin Past series. (Madison: The State Historical Society of Wisconsin,

1992. xii + 175p.; illustrations, notes, suggestions for further reading and location of

original letters, index.)

Liberalism and American Identity. By Patrick M. Garry. (Kent: The Kent State

University Press, 1992. 224p.; notes, bibliography, index.)

Mormon Odyssey: The Story of Ida Hunt Udall, Plural Wife. Edited by Maria S.

Ellsworth. (Champaign: The University of Illinois Press, 1992. xiv + 296p.; illustra-

tions, notes, appendices, bibliography, index.)

NASA Engineers and the Age of Apollo. Compiled by Sylvia Doughty Fries.

(Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1992. xx +

216p.; notes, appendices, index.)

Nativism & Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings & the Politics of the 1850s. By

Tyler Anbinder. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. xv + 330p.; illustra-

tions, notes, appendix, bibliography, index.)

Pea Ridge: Civil War Campaign in the West. By William L. Shea and Earl J. Hess.

(Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1992. xiii + 417p.; illustra-

tions, notes, bibliography, index.)

Reminiscences of a Private: William E. Bevens of the First Arkansas Infantry, C.S.A.

Edited with an introducation by Donald E. Sutherland. (Fayetteville: The University

of Arkansas Press, 1992. xxix + 282p.; illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography,

index.)

Rites of Conquest: The History and Culture of Michigan's Native Americans. By

Charles E. Cleland. (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1992. viii +

333p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.)

Shipping Literature of the Great Lakes: A Catalog of Company Publications 1852-

1990. Compiled by Le Roy Barnett. (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press,

1992. ix + 165p.; illustrations, tables, appendixes, bibliography, index.)

Social Work and Social Order: The Settlement Movement in Two Industrial Cities,

1889-1930. By Ruth Hutchinson Crocker. (Champaign: The University of Illinois

Press, 1992. x + 347p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.)

The Kingfish and His Realm: The Life and Times of Huey P. Long. By William Ivy

Hair. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991. xvi + 406p.; illustra-

tions, notes, bibliography, index.)

The Naval War of 1812. A Documentary History. Volume II: 1813. Edited by William

S. Dudley, Christine F. Hughes, Tamara Moser Melia, Charles E. Brodine, Jr., and

Carolyn M. Stallings. (Washington, D.C.: Naval Historical Center, 1992. xlv +

779p.; illustrations, notes, index.)

The Orphan Trains: Placing Out in America. By Marilyn Irvin Holt. (Lincoln:

University of Nebraska Press, 1992. 248p.; illustrations, notes, bibliographical essay,

index.)

The Park and the People: A History of Central Park. By Roy Rosenzweig and

Elizabeth Blackmar. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992. xi + 623p.; illustra-

tions, notes, index.)

The Polish Experience in Detroit. By Joseph A. Wytrwal, (Detroit, Michigan: The

Endurance Press, 1992. x + 538p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.)

The Presidency of John F. Kennedy. By James N. Giglio. (Lawrence: University Press

of Kansas, 1991. x + 334p.; notes, bibliographical essay, index.)

The Spirit of 1848: German Immigrants, Labor Conflict, and the Coming of the Civil

War. By Bruce Levine. (Urbana: The University of Illinois Press, 1992. xiv + 378p.;

tables, appendix, notes, select bibliography, index.)



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The Transformation of Western Pennsylvania, 1700-1800. By R. Eugene Harper.

(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991. xx + 273p.; notes, index.)

To Build in a New Land: Ethnic Landscapes in North America. Edited by Allen G.

Noble. (Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. x + 455p.;

illustrations, charts, maps, tables, glossary, notes, references, contributors, index.)

Victims: The LDS Church and the Mark Hoffmann Case. By Richard E. Turley, Jr.

(Urbana: The University of Illinois Press, 1992. viii + 519p.; notes, index.)

Women of the West. By Cathy Luchetti and Carol Olwell. (New York: Orion Books,

1992. 240p.; illustrations, appendix, chronology, footnotes, bibliography, photo-

graphic sources, acknowledgements.)