Richard O. Davies, a native of Camden, is a professor of history at the University of Nevada, Reno. He is the
author of America's Obsession: Sports and Society since 1945 and Defender of the Old Guard: John Bricker and American
Politics (Ohio State University Press 1993).
Review
"This is local history at its best--a professional research historian's conceptual interpretation of the
town in which he grew up in the context of larger historical-geographical forces."
--Choice
"Main Street Blues . . . provides a new perspective, an unusual angle of vision, on the history of the United States:
the American past through the eyes of the residents of a small town. . . . It is remarkably evocative history,
the major contribution of which lies in the nuanced ways in which the author not only re-creates Camden and the
world of similar small Midwestern towns but uses its history to illustrate and reflect upon the interplay of local
and national and international developments."
--Andrew R. L. Cayton, coauthor of Midwest and the Nation.
Ohio State University Press Web Site, March, 2001
Summary
Richard O. Davies takes the reader through two hundred years of American history as reflected in the small Ohio
farming village of Camden. Davies describes the development of the relatively self-sufficient community that emerged
from the Ohio land rush of the early nineteenth century, a community that reached its apex during the 1920s and
then entered into a period of slow decline caused by forces beyond its control. He details the roles of land speculation,
the railroad era, the impact of the automobile, the emergence of a tightly knit community, and finally the post
World War II loss of business and population to the nearby cities of Dayton, Hamilton, and Cincinnati.
The author draws heavily on the writings of novelists--particularly Sherwood Anderson, who was born in Camden--sociologists,
political scientists, historians, and anthropologists to place Camden within the larger spectrum of regional and
national history. He has also plumbed local sources, including manuscripts, public records, interviews, questionnaires,
and newspapers.
