Books published by Ohio State University Press

Albertus Magnus has long been recognized as one of the greatest minds of the Middle Ages; his contemporaries conferred upon him the title Doctor Universalis. An epitaph at his tomb described him as prince among philosophers, greater than Plato, and hardly inferior to King Solomon in wisdom. In 1941, Pope Pius XII named Albertus Magnus patron saint of scientists.In his work De animalibus, Albert integrated the vast amount of information on nature that had come down to him in previous centuries: the exposition of Michael Scotus's translation from the Arabic of Aristotle's books on the natural world (Books 1-19), Albert's own revisions to Aristotle's teachings (Books 20-21), and a "dictionary" of animals appropriated largely from the De natura rerum of Thomas of Cantimpré (Books 22-26). Albert's comprehensive treatise on living things was acknowledged as the reputable authority in biology for almost five hundred years.In this translated and annotated edition, Kenneth F. Kitchell Jr. and Irven Michael Resnick illuminate the importance of this work, allowing Albert's magnum opus to be better understood and more widely appreciated than ever before. Broken into two volumes (Books 1-10 and 11-26),Albertus Magnus On Animals is a veritable medieval scientific encyclopedia, ranging in topics from medicine, embryology, and comparative anatomy to women, hunting and everyday life, commerce, and much more-an essential work for historians, medievalists, scientists, and philosophers alike.

In 1984, Phillip Lopate sat down with his mother, Frances, to listen to her life story. A strong, resilient, indomitable woman who lived through the major events of the twentieth century, she was orphaned in childhood, ran away and married young, and then reinvented herself as a mother, war factory worker, candy store owner, community organizer, clerk, actress, and singer. But paired with exciting anecdotes are the criticisms of the husband who couldn't satisfy her, the details of numerous affairs and sexual encounters, and, though she succeeded at many of her roles, accounts of how she always felt mistreated, taken advantage of. After the interviews, at a loss for what to do with the tapes, Lopate put them away. But thirty years later, after his mother had passed away, Lopate found himself drawn back to the recordings of this conversation. Thus begins a three-way conversation between a mother, his younger self, and the person he is today.Trying to break open the family myths, rationalizations, and self-deceptions, A Mother's Tale is about family members who love each other but who can't seem to overcome their mutual mistrust. Though Phillip is sympathizing to a point, he cannot join her in her operatic displays of self-pity and how she blames his father for everything that went wrong. His detached, ironic character has been formed partly in response to her melodramatic one. The climax is an argument in which he tries to persuade her-using logic, of all things-that he really does love her, but is only partially successful, of course.A Mother's Tale is about something primal and universal: the relationship between a mother and her child, the parent disappointed with the payback, the child, now fully grown, judgmental. The humor is in the details.

Kotex, Kleenex, Huggies is the riveting story of Kimberly-Clark, a Wisconsin paper company that became a pioneer of personal hygiene products in the twentieth century. In addition to tracing Kimberly-Clark's technology development and product diversification, Heinrich and Batchelor explore momentous changes in consumer behavior and marketing.