The 55 West Virginias: A Guide to the State's Counties
By E. Lee North
West Virginia University Press, 1998
2d edition, 129 pages
ISBN: 0937058386
Reviewed by Scott Loveridge,
Director, WVU Regional Research Institute.
This coffee table book provides a mini-history of each of
West Virginia's 55 counties. The simple organization of one
chapter per county, arranged
in alphabetical order, allows the reader to flip easily to counties
of interest.
The large 8.5 x 11-inch format allows each chapter to start with one or two generously proportioned black and white photos depicting scenes of interest in the subject county—frequently a courthouse, historic structure, or bird's-eye view of a town. Two maps—one placing the county within West Virginia, and the other showing more detail about the county itself-are provided for each county. Thus one gets in a glance an idea of the salient features of the county—where it is and what (part of) it looks like. The photos and maps provide visual relief, adding to the friendly "come browse me" coffee table feel of the book.
Each chapter also contains a short, chronologically ordered text detailing the county's settlement and economic history. For some counties additional details about cities appear after the overview text. Short biographies of "County Notables" and a bibliography complete the text for each chapter. Two tables provide a statistical overview for each county. It sounds like a lot, but it isn't. North packs all the detail into two pages for most counties.
Ohio County, at three and half pages, is the longest chapter. The birthplace of West Virginia, Ohio County certainly deserves the extra space it receives. As with most works of this nature, the brevity leaves the reader a little hungry to find out more about the places described in its pages. Being so brief also leads to omission of some important items. For example, General Stonewall Jackson spent a significant portion of his boyhood at Jackson's Mill in Lewis County, and the people there consider him one of their own. Yet Jackson is not mentioned among the Lewis County notables—probably because he was born in Harrison County.
Who would use this book? If you are a transplant to West Virginia, then the book can be handy for familiarizing yourself with the state. If you travel in West Virginia for business or pleasure, this book could be helpful in giving you an overview of the places you have on your itinerary. Above all, if you enjoy dabbling in local history, you will enjoy this book.
It's Your Turn, Chickadees
By Rosalie Fuscaldo Gaziano
Parola, 1997
245 pages
ISBN: 0965375013
Reviewed by Eileen Dempsey,
The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch.
Reprinted by permission.
Wanderlust first struck Rosalie Fuscaldo Gaziano at the tender age of 7, when she traveled Route 66 cross-country with her family. After that trip, Gaziano writes in It's Your Turn, Chickadees, she dreamed of seeing the world. But the dream didn't come easily.
She met her true love, Dominic, while attending WVU. They married soon after her graduation, during his first year of medical school. Babies soon followed: five boys in eight years. In 1968, when Gaziano was 30, the wanderlust returned.
"Wanderlust is a seductive passion," Gaziano writes in Chickadees, which is part travelogue, part memoir. "It calls in the night like a lover, hinting of places and people not yet seen. You wake in a hot sweat of desire, feeling that something within you is missing. It was that incompleteness that preceded seven journeys of my life."
Gaziano longed to leave her comfortable, yet confining, West Virginia home to explore firsthand the world she knew only through books. The decision was made to uproot the family for one year while Dominic studied medicine in Liverpool, England.
Living on a meager stipend meant for just one person, the family still found a way to travel across Europe. The lack of money didn't stop them from soaking up atmosphere, art, literature, and history.
The book describes their adventures, and the lessons they learned, during that exciting year. "The experience of traveling with young children had a special gift of bonding our young family," Gaziano says. "It freed us to know that we were together in this balance of growth and work and family. We were sharing time as a family, and we were all benefiting.
"Traveling across Europe was worth it," says Gaziano, who encourages family travel. "Just like childbirth, some of the pains are eventually forgotten."
Sacrifice is a necessity, she says. For instance, a family might decide to take a short and relatively unremarkable trip to an amusement park, or forgo such trips for a few years to take a longer and more memorable trip abroad. Or a family might save money for traveling by driving an older car instead of a new one. "If you are willing to sacrifice a little bit, your dreams can come true," she says.
|
|
|
|
|