Historically, Ohio seems to have had everything--great physical beauty; rich resources of coal, oil, gas, and fertile soil; a central location with easy means of transportation by land and water; inventive and dynamic people; and the kind of national political influence that wealth and a large population can give a state. It was no accident that eight of the nation's presidents had an Ohio connection. 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.

In 1989, when Ohio and Its People was first published, the state was still reeling from severe economic blows. Now its economy is resurgent. Its cities have made great progress in renewing portions of their downtowns and, in some cases, their neighborhoods.

As the state of Ohio prepares to celebrate its bicentennial in 2003, Andrew R. L. Cayton offers an account of ways in which diverse citizens have woven its history. Ohio: The History of a People, centers around the many stories Ohioans have told about life in their state. The founders of Ohio in 1803 believed that its success would depend on the development of a public culture that emphasized what its citizens had in common with each other. But for two centuries the remarkably diverse inhabitants of Ohio have repeatedly asserted their own ideas about how they and their children should lead their lives. The state's public culture has consisted of many voices, sometimes in conflict with each other. Using memoirs, diaries, letters, novels, and paintings, Cayton writes Ohio's history as a collective biography of its citizens. Ohio, he argues, lies at the intersection of the stories of James Rhodes and Toni Morrison, Charles Ruthenberg and Lucy Webb Hayes, Carl Stokes and Alice Cary, Sherwood Anderson and Pete Rose. It lies in the tales of German Jews in Cincinnati, Italian and Polish immigrants in Cleveland, Southern blacks and white Appalachians in Youngstown. Ohio is the mingled voices of farm families, steelworkers, ministers, writers, schoolteachers, reformers, and football coaches. Ohio, in short, is whatever its citizens have imagined it to be.