To get a personal look at what it's like to work on the Ohio River, newspaperman James E. Casto spent eight days aboard the Blazer as it traveled the Ohio from Huntington, West Virginia, to Pittsburgh, up the Allegheny and the Monongahela for a stretch, and then back to Huntington.

Interwoven with the narrative of the trip upriver and back is the history of commerce on the Ohio - of how the flatboats and keelboats gave way to the steamboats and how, in turn, the steamboats were replaced by today's powerful, diesel-powered boats such as the Blazer.

Casto details the development of the river's locks and dams and the efforts of the Corps of Engineers to modernize that aging system, a continuing story that is as current - and as controversial - as the newspaper that landed on your front step this morning. He throws in a generous dose as well of the colorful history of the communities that grew up along the river and were nurtured by it.