Walter Havighurst – författare

Ringing hammers, swinging cranes, the hot breath of furnaces and the gush of molten metal, a skyline ringed with belching smokestacks--the energy of industry, both in manufacturing and in old-fashioned human diligence, has fueled Ohio since its earliest history as the first state in the Northwest Territory.  From Harvey Firestone's rubber rims for buggy wheels to John Leon Bennet's wire flyswatter, from O. C. Barber's first book matches to Dr. Edwin Beeman's flavored chewing gum, Ohio has buzzed with inventive drive and creativity. The Wright brothers flew a winged crate over a Dayton cow pasture; Stephen Foster allegedly wrote "Oh Susanna" while working as a bookkeeper in a Cincinnati riverfront shipping office; and Ohio native Victoria Claflin Woodhull declared herself the first woman presidential candidate. The state also produced some of the Civil War's greatest leaders, including Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman.  Havighurst gives a moving portrayal of Welsh inventor Samuel Milton Jones, who made his fortune with a device used in oil production and then turned his energies to creating his own "new deal" for his factory workers and, as mayor of Toledo, for his constituency. At the other end of the scale, shrewd, autocratic George B. Cox ruled Cincinnati through a sticky web of back-room corruption.             Focusing on the people who stamped the state with their vision, Havighurst captures the vibrancy and ingenuity of Ohio's inventors, manufacturers, leaders and dreamers, as well as the consequences, for the land and its inhabitants, of unchecked industrial excesses.

In character, the first Ohioans exhibited qualities that seemed typical of Americans in general. "The spirit of the place was large, vigorous, and buoyant," Walter Havighurst writes of the colorful early days when settlers attached forests with ax and fire. "Keep the ball rolling" and "Give it a try" became Ohio slogans as boosterism surged, fields were planted, towns were founded, and canals were dug. Steamboats, steel plants, and the rubber industry brought growth to Cleveland, Cincinnati, and other major cities, making Ohio a commercial and industrial as well as an agricultural heartland.

A dramatic account of three centuries of people and ships that sailed the Great LakesA popular history of navigation on the Great Lakes and life on their shores, The Long Ships Passing brings us aboard the crafts that have plowed the waves of the treacherous "five sisters" carrying the grain, lumber, and minerals that fed and built the cities of America. Walter Havighurst paints vivid pictures of life-and death-on the lakes, mysterious accounts of wooden ships and iron men that sank to freshwater graves, especially along the immigrant route where the wrecks lie thick. In rich and marvelous detail, this classic history recounts the saga of an inland marine empire.

A captivating history of river travelers-now available for the first time in paperback!Voices on the River relates two centuries of tales of famous steamboats and of the men who piloted them, from the renowned Mark Twain to the trailblazing Captain Henry Shreve. The book portrays roustabouts on the main deck, passengers in plush cabins, pilots at the big steering wheel, and government engineers at work in shifting channels. It shows Native American tribes carried to exile; soldiers transported to army posts; artists, scientists, and adventurers on their way to wild country; immigrants thronging river landings where the inland cities rose. Voices on the River follows frontier commerce up the Mississippi River and its two major tributaries, the Ohio and the Missouri. It tells of steamboat speed records, races, and disasters, and of the growing nation in the vast Midwest. This book gathers memories of a wide variety of Mississippi characters to provide an engrossing portrait of the expanse of river life.