In the summer of 1957, a young Holmes County farmer was gunned down in cold blood. There was little to distinguish this slaying from hundreds of others throughout the United States that year except for one detail: Paul Coblentz was Amish. A committed pacifist, Coblentz would not raise a hand against his killers. As sensational crimes often do, the "Amish murder" opened a window into the private lives of the young man, his family and his community--a community that in some respects remains ...

In the years leading up to the Civil War, Ohio had more African American settlements than any other state. Owing to a common border with several slave states, it became a destination for people of color seeking to separate themselves from slavery. Despite these communities having populations that sometimes numbered in the hundreds, little is known about most of them, and by the beginning of the twentieth century, nearly all had lost their ethnic identities as the original settlers died off...

2022 Foreword INDIES Gold Award WinnerMaster the simple formulas behind every great real estate deal for a foolproof investing strategy.Whether you’re looking to purchase your first rental property, scale a portfolio, or evaluate massive syndication deals, every great real estate deal comes down to a few key metrics. From cash flow to compound interest, Real Estate by the Numbers makes it easy for anyone to master the concepts that form th...

With the opening of the Ohio State Reformatory in 1896, the state legislature had put in place "the most complete prison system, in theory, which exists in the United States." The reformatory joined the Ohio Penitentiary and the Boys Industrial School, also central-Ohio institutions, to form the first instance of "graded prisons; with the reform farm on one side of the new prison, for juvenile offenders, and the penitentiary on the other, for all the more hardened and incorrigible class." ...

YOU CAN KICK THE BOY OUT OF THE BAND...Some fifty years after Zack Black & the Blues Attack broke-up, the surviving members of the band still hadn't come to terms with it. For Wes Kennedy and Evan Bishop, the wounds still hadn't healed. But things were different for Will Black ever since he met Audrey Taylor, Zack's beautiful and wealth widow. You might say his life had landed "jelly side up." He was ready to move on, but the past wouldn't let him.B...

More than 200 tips on choosing and caring for your new feline friend, from North America's largest non-profit pet adoption website. Includes photos!From adoption and care to behavior and communication, this comprehensive guide to cats comes from the experts at Adopt-a-Pet.com, who have spent many years connecting homeless pets to their new families. It covers:Basics: Understand your new kitten or cat, prepare for a new arrival, get the skin...

As early as 1755, explorers found coal deposits in Ohio's Hocking Valley. The industry that followed created towns and canals and established a new way of life. The first shipment of coal rolled into Columbus in 1830 and has continued ever since. In 1890, the United Mine Workers of America was founded in Columbus. Lorenzo D. Poston became the first of the Hocking Valley coal barons, and by the start of the twentieth century, at least fifty thousand coal miners and their families lived and ...

Explore one of history's most notorious maximum-security prisons through these tales of mayhem and madness.As "animal factories" go, the Ohio Penitentiary was one of the worst. For 150 years, it housed some of the most dangerous criminals in the United States, including murderers, madmen and mobsters. Peer in on America's first vampire, accused of sucking his victims' blood five years before Bram Stoker's fictional villain was even born; peek into the cage of the o...

Organized crime was born in the back of a fruit store in Marion. Before America saw headlines about the Capone Mob, the Purple Gang and Murder Inc., the specter of the Black Hand terrorized nearly every major city.Fears that the Mafia had reached our shores and infiltrated every Italian immigrant community kept police alert and citizens on edge. It was only a matter of time before these professed Robin Hoods formed a band. And when they did, the eyes of the world t...

A "superbly written, richly illustrated" guide to the animals who lived 450 million years ago—in the fossil-rich area where Cincinnati, Ohio now stands ( Rocks & Minerals).The region around Cincinnati, Ohio, is known throughout the world for the abundant and beautiful fossils found in limestones and shales that were deposited as sediments on the sea floor during the Ordovician Period, about 450 million years ago—some 250 million years before the dinosaurs l...

Forty years of work and a lifetime of savings. Many of us strive for these goals when we retire. No one can steal the years, but the money? The savings you earned to spend time with loved ones and live comfortably on your terms? Your savings could be gone instantly with one innocent error: trusting the wrong person to invest your money. It wasn't until David Meyer took on his first investment fraud case at twenty-eight that he truly understood the decimation caused by devious financial adv...

Have you ever caught yourself wondering where was God when you really needed Him? As far as I was concerned, I was just one person out of the billions of people on earth. Why should God be interested in my troubles?The Holy Spirit is our teacher, and He loves to reveal truths about God's grace toward us. Grace isn't just something we say before meals; it is getting something we don't deserve, and it's also not getting what we do deserve. Grace allows us to have access to the living...