I had high hopes for this book, but it disappointed early on. The historical notes in the various towns are too brief to be very interesting and, since the author jumps from town to town along a road, his history jumps from early settlement to modern history every couple paragraphs, ruining any sort of narrative and creating a lot of overlap. There were interesting tidbits here and there, but it's more of a reference than a read-through. I made it through the first 20 pages on the communities along the Ohio River, then jumped ahead and read the section on Northern Illinois and a few other bits here and there. He would have been much better off to pick specific historical topics and trace them through the state or to just hit the main highlight in a given town.