Views and Themes from Ohio's Past

R.W. Apple Jr., Associate Editor, The New York Times

As associate editor of The New York Times, R.W. "Johnny" Apple Jr. has covered the saga of contemporary world affairs, from the Civil Rights movement to the fall of Communist governments in Eastern Europe. While living in places of crisis and in the midst of historically defining events, this Akron native frequently returns to the Ohio of his roots, which, in a sense, he has carried with him around the world.

Native Ohioans and European Conflict: Society and Culture Before European Settlement

R. David Edmunds, Watson Professor of American History at the University of Texas at Dallas, is a specialist on Native American peoples of the Midwest. Among his many publications are The Shawnee Prophet and The New Warriors: Native American Leaders Since 1900. He recently received the Award of Merit from the American Indian Historians Association, and he currently serves as President of the American Society for Ethnohistory.

Statehood and After: Settlement, Culture, and Social Change

A strong advocate for public history, James O. Horton has served as historical advisor to many museums, including the Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati. He is Benjamin Banneker Professor of American Studies and History at George Washington University, and Director of the Afro-American Communities Project of the National Museum of American History. He is the author of Hard Road to Freedom: The African American Story and In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Protest, and Community Among Northern Free Blacks, 1700-1860, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in History.

Prologue to War: Slavery, Social Conflict, and the Civil War

Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, focuses his research on the Civil War and Reconstruction, slavery, and 19th-century America. His prize-winning publications include Who Owns History? Rethinking the Past in a Changing World, Nothing But Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy, and Reconstruction: Americaπs Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. Committed to teaching, Dr. Foner has been honored by the Society of Columbia Graduates with its Great Teacher Award.

Ohio, The Heartland of Progressive Reform

As co-director of the Center for the Historical Study of Women and Gender and Distinguished Professor of History at the State University of New York at Binghamton, Kathryn Kish Sklar’s research and teaching encompass a wide view of America’s Antebellum and Progressive eras. A leading scholar on women in social movements, she has written U.S. History as Women’s History: New Feminist Essays, and Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly.

Beyond Main Street: The Passing of Agrarian Society, War, and Civil Rights

James T. Patterson is the Ford Foundation Professor of History at Brown University. With broad interests in 19th-century U.S. social and political history, Dr. Patterson has taught at universities throughout the United States and Europe. His research has produced Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy and Mr. Republican: A Biography of Robert A. Taft, for which he received the Ohioana Award for Biography.

A Changing Society: The New World Economy, Energy, Globalization, and the Environment

Professor Emeritus of Political Science and counselor to the university president, Herbert B. Asher joined the faculty of The Ohio State University in 1970. Founding director of the John Glenn Institute for Public Service and Public Policy, Dr. Asher published Polling and the Public: What Every Citizen Should Know and American Labor Unions in the Electoral Arena. He is currently working on a book about leadership, politics, and policymaking in Ohio.

A Retrospective on Ohio's Quality of Life: A Consideration of 'Roads Taken and Roads not Taken' for the 21st Century

A widely respected academic and public intellectual, William E. Kirwan is chancellor of the University System of Maryland. However, Ohio was his home during the time he served as president of The Ohio State University. Holding a Ph.D. in mathematics from Rutgers University, Dr. Kirwan has published many articles on issues in higher education. He served as chair of the Kellogg Commission on the Future of Higher Education, which produced the report Renewing the Covenant: Learning, Discovery, and Engagement in a New Age and Different World.