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Ohio and the World, 1753-2053: Essays toward a New History of Ohio. Edited by Geoffrey Parker, Richard Sisson, and William Russ Coil. (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2005. xiii, 256 pp. Cloth, $49.95, ISBN 0-8142-0939-4. Paper, $22.95, ISBN 0-8142-5115-3.)
In an essay titled “Ohio States” from the book of the same name, Jeffrey Hammond noted that Ohio appeared average because it was, meaning that Ohio is an amalgam of U.S. society, notable for being the middle against which more radical, trendy or controversial events are measured.1 In his introduction to Ohio and the World, Andrew R.L. Cayton, author of several books on Ohio and frontier North America, takes exception to this characterization as incomplete. As he notes, Ohio possessed real leadership, since from “the mid-eighteenth through the mid-twentieth century, Ohio was at the forefront of most major developments in the Americas and Europe” (2).
Ohio and the World began as a series of lectures in honor of Ohio's bicentennial. Now revised and edited, the essays by R. David Edmunds, James Oliver Horton, Eric Foner, Kathryn Kish Sklar, James T. Patterson, Herbert Asher, and William Kirwan seek to explain Ohio's past and future as intimately involved with globalization. The larger purpose is to push Ohioans to once again make the state a destination point, an economic and socially progressive leader. The overall trope of the book is declension, articulating how and why Ohio moved from being at the forefront of global trends towards a state of decay, of falling behind. Instead of pursuing new frontiers, Ohioans are happy with the status quo. But Ohio and the World offers an uneven effort in connecting Ohio and world history the essays might be useful in stimulating class discussions, suggesting lines of further research, and in creating a usable past.
The essay with the best global connection is the first, R. David Edmunds' “A German Chocolate Cake, With White Coconut Icing: Ohio and the Native American World.” His purpose is to bring Native American history to the center of analysis of not only Ohio but also American history. Thus, his title and central argument: “[The] entire span of American history is not a white cake with considerable marbling in its most recent layer. Indeed, in chronological terms, American history is instead, a rich, brown, multi-layered, German chocolate cake, with a white coconut icing” (37).
1 Jeffrey Hammond, Ohio States: A Twentieth-Century Midwestern, Kent: Kent State University Press, 2002.
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