Ghosts & Legends of Athens, Ohio


Book Description

Far more chilling than the supernatural tales of faraway places are the stories from right around the corner. In Ghosts & Legends of Athens, Ohio, Nick Lantz sheds light on what makes Athens stand out as one of the most haunted cities in the world. Gathering historical research and personal experiences of those witnessing paranormal phenomena, Nick explores everything from haunted dormitories on Ohio University's campus to an old insane asylum overlooking the city.




History of Athens County, Ohio


Book Description




Growing Up in Athens


Book Description

"The true essence of a community is its people, the ordinary folks and families who comprise a town's fabric, its heart, and its soul. The spirit of any town is reflected in the lives, the stories, and the lore of people who live or have lived there - the young and the old, the ordinary and the extraordinary, the prominent and the common. Together they become an amalgam that we call our hometown. In the voices of people who grew up here, Growing Up in Athens brings you the essence of this one small town nestled in the hills of Southeastern Ohio. Through memories, they recount hijinks that will make you laugh aloud and events that will bring a few tears. Most assuredly, there are stories that will spark your own hometown memories."--Page 2 of cover.




Asylum on the Hill


Book Description

Asylum on the Hill is the story of a great American experiment in psychiatry, a revolution in care for those with mental illness, as seen through the example of the Athens Lunatic Asylum. Built in southeast Ohio after the Civil War, the asylum embodied the nineteenth-century "gold standard" specifications of moral treatment. Stories of patients and their families, politicians, caregivers, and community illustrate how a village in the coalfields of the Hocking River valley responded to a national movement to provide compassionate care based on a curative landscape, exposure to the arts, outdoor exercise, useful occupation, and personal attention from a physician. Katherine Ziff's compelling presentation of America's nineteenth-century asylum movement shows how the Athens Lunatic Asylum accommodated political, economic, community, family, and individual needs and left an architectural legacy that has been uniquely renovated and repurposed. Incorporating rare photos, letters, maps, and records, Asylum on the Hill is a fascinating glimpse into psychiatric history.




Athens County


Book Description

Athens County, Ohio, came out of the pioneer spirit of a new nation expanding westward after the Revolutionary War into the Northwest Territory. Upon declaration of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, the Ohio Company of Associates bought millions of acres of land to sell to land-hungry easterners. In 1788, the first boat of new settlers arrived in Marietta, Ohio. By 1797, wars with the Native Americans had ended and more land became available. When they got here, settlers found some rich farmland, but more importantly they discovered salt, coal, clay and a need for industry to provide for the needs of the people. Opportunities abounded to make fortunes in other places from the resources readily available locally. Central to the development of Athens County was the vision people had years before the first settlers arrived; they dreamed of and made provisions for a university in the new territory. Today, more than 200 years later, Ohio University thrives in the city of Athens.




Essentially Athens Ohio


Book Description

"I came to Athens for my undergrad and never left." "I first visited Athens when my high school marching band attended a halftime performance at an O.U. football game." "I live on the Westside, grow herbs and sweet potatoes in patio pots." "I left Athens after my undergrad studies and scratch my head as to why I so often think of my time there, daydream about returning someday. "Sound familiar? Athens, Ohio. Many who come, stay. Those who leave can never quite set aside the pull, the echo that reverberates no matter how far they roam - CASA, the Burrito Buggy, the Bike Path, New-2-You, bricks, church bells at noon, your favorite local or professor. Over one hundred poets, essayists, storytellers, songwriters and fine artists have come together in this very special collection. The work is raw, honest and steeped in all things Athens; from the foothills to the stadium, uptown to throughout the county. Join us as we celebrate all that is the heart and hearth of Athens, Ohio. - Kari Gunter-Seymour, Athens Poet Laureate




The Thirteen


Book Description

H4'Five' Lowrey's passage from the center of his universe - Hockingport, Ohio - to nearby Ohio University is more than just a coming of age journey. If Thomsen Lowrey V had a middle initial it would be 'N' for naive. Five's choice of going to college seems his only alternative to following the family tradition of life on Ohio River towboats, as his father and three previous generations had done. With only one hometown friend on campus - Denzel 'The Bear' Duerhof - Five is thrown into the turmoil of university life without a clue of a goal. That changes rapidly as his penchant for drawing brings him early notoriety and that rarity among freshmen, campus recognition. He finds classes, especially art courses, can be fun. He discovers beer drinking, pizza, a unique moneymaking scheme, and above all, a wonderful variety of girls. His love affair with a town girl, Darcy Robinette, leads to even greater campus recognition and his first conflict between life and love. When fraternity rush rolls around, Five goes along with the crowd and finds himself a pledge to Alpha Chi Epsilon. The Thirteen, as the ACE pledge class is known, move from early euphoria to the depths of despair as their pledgeship reveals some of the harsher aspects of brotherhood. When tragedy occurs, the Thirteen maintain their unity to prevail against a sadistic element within the ACE membership. Five's role in this story of changing college life in the Fifties brings him into the realms of Korean War veterans, secret society intrigue, modern art and ultimately, vengeance for a murder which he and his pledge brothers seemingly cannot prove.




Enchanted Ground


Book Description

In a fascinating work of religious history and cultural inquiry, Hatfield brings to life the true story of a nineteenth-century farmer-spiritualist, Jonathan Koons, whom thousands traveled to Ohio to see. As heirs to the second Great Awakening, he and his followers were part of a larger, uniquely American moment that still marks the culture today.




The Discontinuity of Small Things


Book Description

This quiet story of the Holocaust chronicles the lives of several Danes through the summer of 1943. It is the discontinuity of small things--the scattered inconveniences, chance meetings, glimpses of injustice, and indulgences of hope, --that haphazardly directs each individual to his fate. An hypnotic story of ordinary people caught in a silent maelstrom, ultimately driven to extraordinary feats. FIC000000




Stay and Fight


Book Description

"Like Bastard Out of Carolina, ffitch's electrifying debut novel is a paean to independence and a protest against the materialism of our age." —O: The Oprah Magazine "Delightfully raucous." —Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal Helen arrives in Appalachian Ohio full of love and her boyfriend’s ideas for living off the land. Too soon, with winter coming, he calls it quits. Helped by Rudy—her government-questioning, wisdom-spouting, seasonal-affective-disordered boss—and a neighbor couple, Helen makes it to spring. Those neighbors, Karen and Lily, are awaiting the arrival of their first child, a boy, which means their time at the Women’s Land Trust must end. So Helen invites the new family to throw in with her—they’ll split the work and the food, build a house, and make a life that sustains them, if barely, for years. Then young Perley decides he wants to go to school. And Rudy sets up a fruit-tree nursery on the pipeline easement edging their land. The outside world is brought clamoring into their makeshift family. Set in a region known for its independent spirit, Stay and Fight shakes up what it means to be a family, to live well, to make peace with nature and make deals with the system. It is a protest novel that challenges our notions of effective action. It is a family novel that refuses to limit the term. And it is a marvel of storytelling that both breaks with tradition and celebrates it. Best of all, it is full of flawed, cantankerous, flesh-and-blood characters who remind us that conflict isn't the end of love, but the real beginning. Absorbingly spun, perfectly voiced, and disruptively political, Madeline ffitch's Stay and Fight forces us to reimagine an Appalachia—and an America—we think we know. And it takes us, laughing and fighting, into a new understanding of what it means to love and to be free.