Monongahela Books

03/26/2026

FROM THE KENTUCKY HILLS IN A TIME OF WAR: A cycle of unrhymed sonnets. By BJ Omanson. (Monongahela Books, 2025). Illustrated, 92 pages.

https://www.lulu.com/shop/bj-omanson/from-the-kentucky-hills-in-a-time-of-war-a-cycle-of-unrhymed-sonnets/paperback/product-gjy5ewk.html?q=from+the+kentucky+hills&page=1&pageSize=4

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A book of unrhymed sonnets based closely on the letters of a young, newly-married woman to her husband in the training camp at Quantico, Virginia in 1917, shortly before he was shipped overseas. Written mostly among the isolated hills of her childhood home in Wolfe County, Kentucky, the letters are....

03/23/2026

The latest from Monongahela Books: eight pocket editions of voices from the Early Republic suitable for woodland walking. At roughly 4x7, they slip snugly into the pocket of a heavy overshirt or over-the-shoulder satchel. Emerson’s essays “Nature” & "Self-Reliance," Thoreau’s “Wild Apples,” “Walking” & "A Winter Walk," the only known biographical sketch of “Johnny Appleseed” by one who knew him, Dana Gioia's seminal essay on Longfellow, and a little-known essay on Whitman by one of his early biographers -- subjects steeped in the climate of an earlier America and suited to outdoor reverie and rumination.

These are lightweight, bare-bones editions, free of backcover blurbs or scholarly clutter -- (not that commentary and notes are without their uses, but such fatter editions belong on the shelf, available for consultation, and not weighing down a saunterer’s pack). ~~~ Six are currently available for purchase, while the other two are in the works. Each fits easily in the hand (leaving the other free for an apple or a pipe), while taking one’s repose on a mossy stone beside the trail, or under a spreading oak in a meadow.

https://monongahelabooks.blogspot.com/2025/11/four-new-old-titles-suited-to-woodland.html

03/22/2026

SUCH HARD AND SEVERE SERVICE: The 85th Pennsylvania in the Civil War. Vol. II: 1864-1865. By Dan Clendaniel. (Monongahela Books, 2021). Maps, illustrations, appendices, 220 pp. $30.

From the Introduction:
Volume I ended with the regiment recovering from their exhaustive duties on Morris Island, South Carolina during the siege of Charleston and Fort Sumter in 1863. They had organized in 1861, fought at Seven Pines during the Peninsula Campaign in Virginia and during the Goldsboro Expedition in North Carolina in 1862, and in 1863 had been sent to the South Carolina front. By September of 1863, 177 soldiers had died from battlefield wounds or diseases. An additional 337 men had been dismissed from the regiment, mostly due to medical discharges while a handful transferred to other units.

Also, by late 1863, their commanding officer, Colonel Joshua B. Howell, was convalescing from a severe concussion from a shell explosion. Their lieutenant colonel, Henry A. Purviance, had been killed by friendly fire in the trenches around Battery Wagner on Morris Island. Of the original ten regimental captains, none remained in their position by late 1863, mostly due to medical discharges. Just one, Isaac M. Abraham, who had been promoted to major, remained with the regiment. New leadership was emerging from the lower ranks in each company.

Volume II begins with the regiment enjoying a break from the battlefield beginning in late 1863 and follows the regiment through to the end of the war. Chapters include “Whitemash Island,” “Bermuda Hundred Campaign,” “Diary of Captain Richard Dawson,” “The Exchange Fleet,” “Fort Gregg” and “The Appomattox Campaign.” A final chapter covers post-war reunions. In addition there are thirty pages of appendices.

https://www.lulu.com/shop/dan-clendaniel/such-hard-and-severe-service-the-85th-pennsylvania-in-the-civil-war-volume-ii-1864-1865/paperback/product-v78kge.html?q=85th+Pennsylvania&page=1&pageSize=4

06/19/2025

Stark County Poems , by BJ Omanson. (Monongahela Books, 2019). Map, illustrations. 59 poems. 225 pages. $15.

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Consisting of over fifty poems, from short lyrics in a variety of forms to lengthy blank verse and free verse narratives, "Stark County Poems" portrays the history of a small rural county in central Illinois, along the upper Spoon River valley. ~~ Chronologically arranged, and incorporating letters,...

06/19/2025

THE OLD HOTEL AT THE END OF NIGHT, by BJ Omanson. (Monongahela Books, 2020). 20 pages. $7.50.

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A man is driving through the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere, in what used to be the Old Republic, the old America, and he breaks down and begins walking-- through a night that never ends in a nation that is not quite gone. ~~~~~ "... a true American artifact, and a rare example of alle...

06/19/2025

SUCH HARD AND SEVERE SERVICE: The 85th Pennsylvania in the Civil War. Vol. II: 1864-1865. By Dan Clendaniel. (Monongahela Books, 2021). Maps, illustrations, appendices, 220 pp. $30.

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Volume I of this history of the 85th Pennsylvania Infantry ended with the regiment recovering from their arduous duties in South Carolina on Morris Island during the siege of Charleston and Fort Sumter in 1863. The 85th PA had fought at Seven Pines, Virginia and during the Goldsboro Expedition in No...

06/18/2025

IN THE HOUR BEFORE DUSK, by BJ Omanson. (Monongahela Books, 2024). Illustrated, 75 pp. $12.50

After half a century of work in the naturalistic narrative mode of Hardy, Robinson and Frost, Omanson returns to his aesthetic origins-- to that long period in English poetry from late-18th century Gothic to the late Victorians-- to contemplate once more the mesmerizing vistas of his youth from the more philosophical vantage of old age.

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Color illustrations, 76 pages. ~~~ After half a century of work in the naturalistic narrative mode of Hardy, Robinson and Frost, Omanson returns to his aesthetic origins-- to that long period in English poetry from late-18th century Gothic to the late Victorians-- to contemplate once more the mesmer...

06/18/2025

WALT WHITMAN: Poet of Democracy by Cleveland Rodgers. (Monongahela Books, 2025). Illustrated. $8.50.

The latest 'small booklet' from Monongahela Books is an obscure, little-known essay-- originally published in 1920-- on Whitman as a poet of democracy by one of his earlier biographers, Cleveland Rodgers, who also served as editor-in-chief of the Brooklyn Eagle, a post held for a time by Whitman himself.

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Reprint of a little-known article originally published in 1923 by Cleveland Rodgers, Associate Editor of the "Brookland Eagle" and author of "Walt Whitman's Life and Work." Pointed and, at times, surprisingly prescient.

06/18/2025

MULESKINNER WITH THE MARINE BRIGADE, 1917-1919. Vol. 1: From Before the War to the Eve of Belleau Wood, by BJ Omanson. (Monongahela Books, 2024). 264 photographs, 26 maps, 15 drawings, 379 pages. $40.

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The story of Alpheus Appenheimer, a young Illinois farmer who left his fiancé, his widowed mother and his farm to go off to war on the Western Front. The year was 1917, he was 26, and America had just declared war on Germany. There was never any doubt that he would go, but you can't just walk away ...

06/18/2025

BOOK HOUSE NIGHTS, by BJ Omanson. (Monongahela Books, 2022). Illustrated, 26 pp. $10.

I look back on my time as a used-bookstore clerk with mixed emotions. The pay (as has always been the case with bookstore jobs), was far from sufficient, and the hours long—yet the afternoons and evenings I spent in that bookstore were one long panoply of offbeat characters with whom I never tired of talking: hoarse-throated street musicians, poor independent scholars and morose writers of every stripe, a surprising number of highly literate janitors and other bookish workmen—even an ex-Hell’s Angel turned bibliophile—though it is the poets who most clearly stand out in my memory.

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A brief memoir of Dinkytown's literati and other bookish denizens near the University of Minnesota during the early 1980s.

03/24/2024

LONGFELLOW IN THE AFTERMATH OF MODERNISM, by Dana Gioia. (Monongahela Books, 2023). Illustrated, 107 pp. $15.

Dana Gioia's seminal essay, "Longfellow in the Aftermath of Modernism," which sparked a renaissance in Longfellow studies, is now available from Monongahela Books as an attractive, pocket-sized book, liberally illustrated with period engravings.

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https://www.lulu.com/shop/dana-gioia/longfellow-in-the-aftermath-of-modernism/paperback/product-zm5m5kp.html?q=gioia%2C+longfellow&page=1&pageSize=4