The story of U.S. nuclear energy, told through the lens of one contested power station.
Built in the 1970s and cancelled in 1984 despite being 99% complete, the Zimmer plant in Ohio was fraught with serious financial and safety issues—like many others across America in the late 20th century. And like many others, it was ordinary people who organized against it, calling attention to its many problems.
Combining oral histories with government and corporate documentation, Zimmer pieces together this story of nuclear energy and political agency—demonstrating that ordinary, motivated people have the power to shape public health and energy infrastructure.
Available on Amazon, University Press of Kentucky, and in bookstores.
A history of American cities, shared through a single building: Ohio’s oldest, continually operating public market, home to 1M+ visitors every year.
It’s one of the few public urban markets left in America—the others were torn down over time—so Findlay Market digs into that history. The ups of cities—mass immigration, industrialization, consumerism, the need for public spaces—and cities’ later struggles with outward movement, racist policy, and subsequent segregation and divestment.
A book for Midwesterns who love this rare market—and for anyone who wishes to learn how cities have fared over time and why old places mean something to us.
Buy online at Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble.
Insignificant: A Hidden History of Women
A (forthcoming) book - my love letter to old buildings and the people who give them meaning.
From years spent fixing up abandoned historic buildings, Insignificant shares things from these old places. An old cracked plate. A scrap of a city directory. A faded picture. A yellowed newspaper ad. They’re from women—or about women—who spent time at these places, decades, centuries ago.
These were women ignored then and now, considered “insignificant” because they left few records. But as we enter their lives—the lives of immigrant and migrant women, institutionalized women, incarcerated women, women of color, and women with loved other women—we realize how much they have to teach us—and how far from “insignificant” they were and the places they spent time in.