The Kent State University P ress
“One of the jewels in Kent State U niversity’s crown.”
—Tom Batiuk, Funky Winkerbean creator and author of the Lisa’s Legacy Trilogy
Updates from Kent State University Press
In2025, Kent State University Press celebrated and reflected on our 60th anniversary. We also began looking ahead to our Spring/ Summer 2026 season, which will feature diverse books: a beautiful collection of experimental essays (The First 649 Days by Eric LeMay), the immersive story of a high school gymnastics team’s nerve-racking season (A Fraction of a Point by Nina Mandell), and a close examination of healthcare and sanitation in the American Civil War (Civil War Camps and Soldier Health by Earl J. Hess). We are also pleased to announce the release of two new paperbacks: Behind the White House Curtain by Steven L Herman and Inkling, Historian, Soldier, and Brother by Don W. King. Featured backlist titles reflect staff favorites from the past 60 years.
The Press also marked milestones in 2025 with several staff promotions recognizing their expertise and longtime service.
Clara Totten is now the Director and Acquisitions Editor
Chris Brooks is now Senior Design, Production, and Inventory Manager
Darryl Crosby is now Communications and Design Specialist
Mary D. Young is now Assistant Director and Editorial Manager
Collaboration is at the heart of what we do— whether it be representing our authors at book fairs and conferences, introducing Kent State students to the publishing industry via internships or employment opportunities, or interacting with the larger Kent State University Library and other University stakeholders. We deeply value connecting with our supporters and helping them understand the important work that we do.
We believe this upcoming season exemplifies the kind of work we publish— enduring scholarship and compelling trade titles—all produced with care and pride.
CREATIVE NONFICTION / ESSAYS / REGIONAL INTEREST
April 2026, 256 pages, 6 x 9
Paperback $26.95t, ISBN 978-1-60635-506-0
A stirring essay collection from one of the form’s most widely praised innovators
How do we wrestle with unimaginable loss? How does love open us to new worlds and even new versions of ourselves? In The First 649 Days, Eric LeMay explores the everyday moments and momentous events that make and unmake our lives, from the birth of a child to mass death in a global pandemic to finding a home and comfort among the fields and forests of Appalachian Ohio.
Using forms as diverse as journal entries, cell phone texts, children’s picture books, and erasure poems, LeMay wrestles with questions of illness, isolation, identity, grief, family, and love because, like so many us, he’s had to live them. He was diagnosed with cancer in 2017
The First 649 Days
Essays and Other Acts of Love
Eric LeMay
“Eric LeMay’s The First 649 Days is a work of breathtaking honesty and heart. LeMay captures life’s singular moments—the birth of a child, unexpected illness, mortality— exquisitely, revealing the precarious beauty of our world through the eyes of his young son Ro. LeMay’s inventive renderings are a brilliant reminder that our lives may harbor threat, disappointment, and grief, yet still shimmer with hope and wild beauty at every turn.”
Dinty W. Moore, author of Between Panic & Desire
when his first child was a little over a year old. He learned during the worst month of the COVID-19 pandemic that his 80-year-old father, unable to breathe, had been admitted to the emergency room in the middle of the night. Would he live? And if not? In these richly varied essays, LeMay helps us make our way, personally and collectively, through experiences that may be our last, all the while honoring those “firsts”—the first cry, the first word, the first day of school.
With remarkable humor and candor, LeMay explores how we grieve, how we grow, and how the gardens we plant, the children we raise, and the words we share lead us more deeply into our own lives.
“How to describe a book as so profoundly human as The First 649 Days? LeMay’s archive of parenthood during a global pandemic reckons with many of life’s heavier subjects—illness and mortality, anxiety about the future, the ever-present threat of gun violence—woven into the fabric of the small moments that, taken together, comprise the whole of our lives: bringing a newborn baby home, long walks in the Appalachian wilds, conversations over spoonfuls of sherbet. The essays in The First 649 Days are a celebration of love and its resilience in the face of unthinkable circumstances and a resonant contemporary record of our time.”
Zoë Bossiere, author of Cactus Country: A Boyhood Memoir
ERIC LEMAY is a multimedia artist and writer currently in remission from cancer. He is on the faculty at Ohio University, where he directs the creative writing program. He is also a host on the New Books
Related Interest ▼
The Great Blue of Neptune
Terry Belew Paperback $18.95t
ISBN 978-1-60635-498-8
Network. He is the author of five books, and his work has appeared in The Paris Review, Poetry Daily, the Best Food Writing series, and other venues.
Resurrection of the Wild Meditations on Ohio’s Natural Landscape
Deborah Fleming Paperback $19.95t
ISBN 978-1-60635-418-6
Fugue Figure
Michael McKee Green Paperback $15.00t
ISBN 978-1-60635-356-1
SPORTS / REGIONAL INTEREST
March 2026, 212 pages, 6 x 9
Paperback $24.95t, ISBN 978-1-60635-507-7
A Fraction of a Point
A Gymnastics Dynasty on the
Line
The true story of a high school gymnastics team’s most dramatic season
When the Brecksville-Broadview Heights High School gymnastics team competes in the Ohio High School Athletic Association state gymnastics meet, they’re expected to win. That’s because they’ve won each year—since 2004. And as the streak builds, there’s more pressure each year on the public school’s team to continue that tradition. No year was more tense than the year that they were hoping to take home their 20th straight title.
A Fraction of a Point follows the Bees throughout the intense 2022–2023 season as the team works toward the state meet. During one of their most competitive seasons in recent years, sports journalist Nina Mandell explores the gymnasts’ backstories and traces the legacy
Nina Mandell
of the Ganim family, the team’s longtime coaches. Initially led by husband and wife Joan and Ron Ganim, their daughter, Maria Schneider, then became coach. In a sport that has been plagued by scandal—especially for the mistreatment of athletes—the Ganims represent a changing face of gymnastics by emphasizing their players’ well-being and mental health.
Throughout A Fraction of a Point, the players and coaches frequently question if they’re good enough to keep the winning streak alive and if the gymnasts will be able to rise to the challenge. But this isn’t just a story about one historic season. At its heart, it’s also about the teenagers balancing athletics with high school life, the larger community that supported the team, what it means to compete for the joy of the sport, and the athletes’ and coaches’ dedication even while facing immense pressure.
“Women’s gymnastics has never been more popular, from the Olympics to the NCAA to America’s high schools. So the timing is perfect for journalist Nina Mandell to tell the fascinating story of the awe-inspiring domination of an unbeatable Ohio high school gymnastics team—and she is the perfect writer to do it . . . Her book will resonate as a story of remarkable female sports success as the nation continues to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Title IX.”
C hristine Brennan, author of On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women’s Sports
“Nina tells the story of the greatest sports streak you’ve never heard of—a 19-year streak of state titles for an Ohio high school gymnastics program. That streak of dominance would be unbelievable on its own, but the journey she takes readers on is much deeper than just one about raising another banner. It explores the emotions of living up to those crushing expectations, the pressure on the next generation to keep this otherworldly streak alive, and the nail-biting suspense of whether it will finally end.”
— Greg Presto, author of The Workout Bucket List
U ltimately, the state title comes down to the final event. As the Bees line up to compete, the gym falls silent. Hundreds of gymnasts and their supporters from around the state watch and wonder: Will the Bees maintain their streak? Or will this be the year it all ends?
NINA MANDELL is a journalist living in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, who has written for Bustle, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, USA Today, The New York Daily News, and NBC Regional Sports Networks She is the former managing editor of USA Today ’s “For The Win” site and the former digital director/managing editor of NBC Sports Washington, and currently works in sports marketing.
Related Interest ▼
Disqualified: Eddie Hart, Munich 1972, and the Voices of the Most Tragic Olympics
Eddie Hart and Dave Newhouse Hardback $29.95t
ISBN 978-1-60635-312-7
The Promise of LeBron James: The Rise, Fall from Grace, and Redemption of Ohio’s Own
Bill Livingston Paperback $24.95t
ISBN 978-1-60635-484-1
INTERPRETING THE CIVIL WAR: TEXTS & CONTEXTS
CIVIL WAR HISTORY / AMERICAN HISTORY / HEALTHCARE
May 2026, 336 pages, 6¹⁄ 8 x 91/4
Paperback $39.95s, ISBN 978-1-60635-505-3
EARL J. HESS taught at the college level, primarily at Lincoln Memorial University, until 2020. He is the author of 30 books on Civil War military history, including Civil War Infantry Tactics: Training, Combat, and Small-Unit Effectiveness, winner of the Tom Watson Brown Book Award, Society of Civil War Historians, in 2016. He is also the coauthor with his wife Pratibha A. Dabholkar of four books on the history of film musicals.
Related Interest ▼
High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac: Reclaiming Their Honor
Edwin P. Rutan II
Paperback $39.95t
ISBN 978-1-60635-486-5
Civil War Camps and Soldier Health
Sanitation and Military Effectiveness in the Union Army
Earl J. Hess
An immersive analysis of camp life and soldiers’ well-being during the Civil War
The Civil War was a watershed in public awareness of the many health-related issues soldiers faced while living in camps. The US Sanitary Commission, a nongovernmental agency sanctioned by the Federal government, created a massive campaign to study conditions in semipermanent camps and advise unit commanders how to avoid unnecessary illness and curb soldier deaths by disease. Commission inspectors, mostly civilian physicians, examined camps from 1861 to early 1864 and filed more than 1,400 reports of their findings.
Earl J. Hess delves deeply into 280 of those reports, shedding new and startling light on camp conditions and giving unique snapshots of what it was like to live in a Union army camp. Reports reveal that sanitation varied widely. Volunteer regimental officers and surgeons were often unable to take sanitary principles seriously. Overall, the volunteer regiments did well enough to get by, but they did not achieve high marks for military effectiveness when it came to preventive healthcare.
More Important Than Good Generals: Junior Officers in the Army of the Tennessee
Jonathan Engel
Paperback
$39.95t
ISBN 978-1-60635-489-6
Civil War Camps and Soldier Health is a thought-provoking, impeccably researched volume that enriches our understanding of the sanitation challenges facing the Union army camps as well as how these challenges were recorded and examined by early researchers.
New in Paperback and with New Material
Behind the White House Curtain
A Senior Journalist’s Story of Covering the President—and Why It Matters
Steven L Herman
Foreword by Scott McClellan
Going behind the scenes with a veteran member of the White House press corps
Steven L Herman pulls back the curtain on the inner workings of the White House press corps, giving readers a rare glimpse into the historic and current relationship between the president and the press.
Herman traces his career as a journalist—from learning to be skeptical of government officials’ statements when he worked as a novice reporter to understanding the power of on-the-ground social media coverage after the Fukushima disaster and facing the challenges of covering the Trump administration for the nonpartisan, governmentfunded Voice of America (VOA).
Featuring updated material, throughout Behind the White House Curtain, Herman convincingly argues that public access to accurate, unbiased information is essential to a healthy and peaceful democracy, and that journalists can and should play a key role in pressing government officials to be truthful and transparent. At a time when misinformation is rampant and the need for unbiased coverage of current events is more urgent than ever, Herman reminds readers that freedom of the press is a foundational American right.
JOURNALISM / POLITICS / DEMOCRACY AND PEACE
March 2026, 258 pages, 6 x 9 Paperback $24.95t, ISBN 978-1-60635-509-1
STEVEN L HERMAN was the Voice of America’s White House bureau chief and chief national correspondent. He is currently the executive director of the Jordan Center for Journalism Advocacy and Innovation and an assistant professor of practice in the School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi. He resides in Stafford County, Virginia, and Lafayette County, Mississippi. Learn more at steveherman.press.
“Vivid.”
Columbus Dispatch
Related Interest ▼
As Ohio Goes: Life in the PostRecession Nation
Rana B. Khoury Paperback $19.95t ISBN 978-1-63101-212-9
LITERARY STUDIES / INKLING STUDIES / BIOGRAPHY / HISTORY
June 2026, 296 pages, 6 x 9
Paperback $32.95t, ISBN 978-1-60635-510-7
DON W. KING is Faculty Fellow and professor of English at Montreat College. On multiple occasions he has led Lewis seminars at the Kilns—Lewis’s home in Oxford. He is the author of C. S. Lewis, Poet: The Legacy of His Poetic Impulse, The Collected Poems of C. S. Lewis: A Critical Edition, and Plain to the Inward Eye: Selected Essays on C. S. Lewis.
New in Paperback Inkling, Historian, Soldier, and Brother
A Life of Warren Hamilton Lewis
Don W. King
The first full biography of Warren Lewis, brother and secretary of C. S. Lewis
2023 Bronze IPPY Award (Independent Publisher Book Awards), World History Category
Detailing the life of Warren Hamilton Lewis, author Don W. King gives us new insights into the life and mind of Warren’s famous brother, C. S. Lewis, and also demonstrates how Warren’s experiences provide an illuminating window into 20th-century England.
As a career soldier, Warren served in France during the nightmare of World War I. A talented writer and accomplished amateur historian, Warren also researched and wrote seven books on 17th-century French history.
Related Interest ▼
The Collected Poems of C. S. Lewis: A Critical Edition
Don W. King
Paperback $24.95s
ISBN 978-1-60635-411-7
The Lion in the Waste Land: Fearsome Redemption in the Work of C. S. Lewis, Dorothy L. Sayers, and T. S. Eliot
Janice Brown
Hardback $45.00t
ISBN 978-1-60635-338-7
Inkling, Historian, Soldier, and Brother examines Warren Lewis’s role as an original member of the Oxford Inklings—that now famous group of novelists, thinkers, clergy, poets, essayists, medical men, scholars, and friends who met regularly to drink beer; discuss books, ideas, history, and writers; and share pieces of their own writing for feedback from the group.
Drawing from Warren Lewis’s unpublished diaries, his letters, and other primary materials, this biography is an engaging story of a fascinating life, period of history, and of the warm and loving relationship between Warren and his brother, which lasted throughout their lives.
The Kent State University Press partners with University Press Audiobooks, an imprint of Redwood Audiobooks, to release audiobooks of select titles. These titles and more are available through Audible or KentStateUniversityPress.com.
Baseball Goes West
The Dodgers, the Giants, and the Shaping of the Major Leagues
Lincoln A. Mitchell
Narrated by Tim Edwards
Beyond the Plain and Simple
A Patchwork of Amish Lives
Pauline Stevick
Narrated by Heidi Paek
The Company They Keep
C. S. Lewis and J. R. R.
Tolkien as Writers in Community
Diana Pavlac Glyer
Narrated by Bev Kassis
House of Horrors
The Shocking True Story of Anthony Sowell, the Cleveland Strangler
Robert Sberna
Narrated by Dave Clark Memoir of a Cold War Soldier
Richard E. Mack
Narrated by Kenneth Lee
My Gettysburg Meditations on History and Race
Mark A. Snell
Narrated by John Burlinson
Circus Parade
Jim Tully
Foreword by Harvey Pekar
Introduction by Paul J. Bauer and Mark Dawidziak
A facsimile reprint of this classic tale of the seamier side of circus life
Paperback $19.95t
ISBN 978-1-60635-001-0
—Selected by Darryl Crosby, Communications and Design Specialist
Cold War Secrets:
A Vanished Professor, a Suspected Killer, and Hoover’s FBI
Eileen Welsome
The chameleon who evaded justice and the missing person case that baffled the FBI
Paperback $24.95t
ISBN 978-1-60635-425-4
—Selected by Chris Brooks, Senior Design, Production, and Inventory Manager
Peatlands of Ohio and the Southern Great Lakes Region
Guy L. Denny and Gary Meszaros
Exploring and appreciating the fascinating ecosystems of bogs and fens
Paperback with flaps $27.95t
ISBN 978-1-60635-437-7
—Selected by Clara Totten, Director and Acquisitions Editor
Queen of the Con: From a Spiritualist to the Carnegie Imposter
Thomas Crowl
The definitive account of audacious con woman Cassie
Chadwick, the Carnegie Imposter
Paperback $24.95t
ISBN 978-1-60635-429-2
—Selected by Kat Saunders, Associate Editor
The Fifth Star Ohio’s Fight for Women’s Right to Vote
Jamie C. Capuzza
How Ohio’s women were essential to the national women’s suffrage movement
Paperback $28.00t
ISBN 978-1-60635-455-1
—Selected by Mary D. Young, Assistant Director and Editorial Manager
Bandersnatch
C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and the Creative Collaboration of the Inklings
Diana Pavlac Glyer
Illustrated by James A. Owen
An inside look at the Inklings and their creative process
Paperback $24.95t
ISBN 978-1-60635-276-2
Under Kilimanjaro
Ernest Hemingway
Edited by Robert W. Lewis and Robert E. Fleming
A posthumously published literary treasure
Hardback $39.95t
ISBN 0-87338-845-3
The Insanity Defense and the Mad Murderess of Shaker Heights: Examining the Trial of Mariann Colby
William L. Tabac
By claiming insanity, did this housewife get away with murder?
Paperback $19.95t
ISBN 978-1-60635-353-3
Growing Season: The Life of a Migrant Community
Gary Harwood and David Hassler
Photos and personal narratives of Mexican migrant workers in northeast Ohio
Hardback $29.95t
ISBN 0-87338-873-9
Moments of Truth:
A Photographer’s Experience of Kent State 1970
Howard Ruffner
Foreword by Thomas M. Grace
A student journalist’s photographic memoir of events surrounding the 1970 Kent State shootings
Paperback $34.95t
ISBN 978-1-60635-367-7
Hardback, $24.95t ISBN 978-1-60635-493-3
“Literate, thoughtful excursions that emphasize both the local and particular in her part of Ohio, as well as the wider world of discourse bearing on her topics.”
— indiana magazine of history
“Meticulously researched and lovingly written, Deborah Fleming’s Ghosts of an Old Forest is a meditative tribute to the native ecosystems of rural Ohio.”
— kelly sundberg , author of Goodbye, Sweet Girl: A Story of Domestic Violence and Survival and The Answer Is in the Wound: Trauma, Rage, and Alchemy
Sales and Distribution
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We invite customers outside the United States to visit our storefront through Mare Nostrum Group: https://mngbookshop.co.uk/publisher/the-kentstate-university-press/
Sales Representatives
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MARKETING & PUBLICITY
For review copies, desk copies, or publicity information: Darryl Crosby
Communications and Design Specialist dcrosby@kent.edu or 330-672-8091
RETURNS & DISCOUNTS
The letter “t” following the price of a book indicates a trade discount; the letter “s” indicates a short discount. Prior permission to return is not required. Books may be returned within one year of the date of the invoice and in resellable condition for full credit. Direct all billing inquiries and returns to Longleaf Services.
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