Dance of the Trustees: my book will be out on July 30!

My book Dance of the Trustees: on the Astonishing Concerns of a Small Ohio Township will be published by Trillium Press, an imprint of The Ohio State University Press, on July 30.

Info about the book can be found below, and some excerpted chapters can be found on this site. For a look at the table of contents and other miscellaneous info, please visit the OSU Press’s site for this book here. The book will be available in bookstores and through a certain monolithic online megastore. And as a digital version too!

As the webpage explains, “On September 9, 2015, in the quirky village of Yellow Springs, Ohio, the Miami Township Board of Trustees arbitrated a dispute concerning an area bed and breakfast that was apparently causing a lot of problems in the neighborhood where it was located. People were irate – the B&B was considered too loud or unfairly under attack, and the township officials were called incompetent by both sides for not ruling in their favor. The trustees looked amused, concerned, interested, annoyed, and baffled at the situation before them.

But this quaint debate was one of many fascinating problems the trustees deal with on a daily basis. While Miami Township is small, the concerns are myriad – cemeteries are filled with unknown remains, there is a fire department to oversee, and they sometimes take legal action against properties clogged with junk. The responsibilities are doubly impressive considering no trustees have backgrounds in public office.

This book combines entertaining nonfiction vignettes with well-researched township history – including its history of religious cults and the possibility that Lee Harvey Oswald was once in town – and elucidates the processes behind an entire civic division. The book documents 21st century township life with humor, warmth and erudition, but also with the scholarship befitting an easy to read civics textbook.”

And as an esteemed colleague of mine commented, “Dylan Taylor-Lehman has a curiosity that knows no bounds, and he has trained it on the quirky concerns of a village and township in southwest Ohio where he lived for two years. Lucky for us, the readers, his narrative voice is as charming and distinctive as his curiosity is strong — this book is a funny, informative and delightful look at small town shenanigans and goings-on.” —Diane Chiddister, Editor, Yellow Springs News