When news reached Parliament of the Boston radicals' destruction of the Royal East India Company's tea, it passed the Coercive Acts, a collection of punitive measures designed to rein in that insubordinate seaport town. The Coercive Acts unleashed a political firestorm as communities from Massachusetts to Georgia drafted resistance resolutions condemning Parliament's perceived encroachment upon American liberty. This project was financed in part by a grant from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, ...
Jun 09, 2025•59 min
The untold story of how America's declaration of independence hinged on seven critical months in 1776 and the courageous votes that changed the world forever. This gripping account reveals the precarious path to American independence through a series of pivotal dates that history has nearly forgotten. While July 4th claims the glory, the actual vote for independence came on July 2nd-and even that historic moment almost didn't happen. This project was financed in part by a grant from the Commonwe...
May 05, 2025•57 min
From December 12-19, 1777, Washington's Army encamped in the towering hills of Gulph Mills, Pennsylvania, fifteen miles from Philadelphia. Known as the Threshold to Valley Forge, the Gulph Mills Encampment is often forgotten or minimized, falling as it did between the more famous military engagements of the Philadelphia Campaign and the well-known experience of the army at Valley Forge. This project was financed in part by a grant from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the Department of Communit...
Apr 14, 2025•57 min
In summer 2023, Chester County, Pennsylvania, was shaken by the daring escape of convicted murderer Danilo Cavalcante. Cavalcante scaled a prison wall, sparking a gripping two-week manhunt. He traversed forests, farmlands, and neighborhoods, evading law enforcement and causing schools to close, businesses to shutter, and streets to empty. pcntv.com/donate pcntv.com/membership-signup pcntv.com...
Mar 31, 2025•54 min
Learn about the stories of the men and women who traveled across the mountain ranges and through the valleys that made up the Appalachian region, focusing on the 18th century leading to the American Revolution and events that occurred mainly in Pennsylvania and New York. pcntv.com/donate pcntv.com/membership-signup pcntv.com
Mar 24, 2025•59 min
Pittsburgh contains multitudes. From the decline of the steel industry and the exodus of a vast diaspora of Pittsburghers to its reinvention as a trendy mid-sized metropolis, the ethos of the Steel City remains ever-changing. This project was financed in part by a grant from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the Department of Community and Economic Development. pcntv.com/donate pcntv.com/membership-signup pcntv.com...
Mar 17, 2025•58 min
From the 1920s through the 1960s, Pittsburgh's Hill District was the heart of the city's Black cultural life and home to a vibrant jazz scene. In Jazz in the Hill: Nightlife and Narratives of a Pittsburgh Neighborhood, Colter Harper looks at how jazz shaped the neighborhood and created a way of life. This project was financed in part by a grant from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the Department of Community and Economic Development. pcntv.com/donate pcntv.com/membership-signup pcntv.com...
Feb 26, 2025•53 min
A born daredevil, John Homan joined the Army Air Forces after the attack on Pearl Harbor. By 1944, he was co-piloting a B-24 Liberator over Nazi Germany, raining death and destruction on the enemy. The tale will leave readers staggered by the determination and grit of World War II aviators. This project was financed in part by a grant from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the Department of Community and Economic Development. pcntv.com/donate pcntv.com/membership-signup pcntv.com...
Feb 20, 2025•58 min
From the origins of "Penn's Woods" to the controversial practice of fracking, Cradle of Conservation provides the first comprehensive study of Pennsylvania's environmental history. The story starts with forester Ralph Brock at the dawn of the conservation era and continues through the eras of energy production using coal, oil, natural gas, and other resources. This project was financed in part by a grant from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the Department of Community and Economic Development....
Dec 17, 2024•1 hr
"Never To Be Forgotten" tells the story of York County Pennsylvania residents just living their lives, building homes, raising families, making things and growing communities. The general history of this south central Pennsylvania county shows - with concise writing and more than 250 pictures - a community that is working hard at getting better - a place and people that are building on a worthy past honed with strong hands, smart minds and kind hearts and heading toward a future with a sense of ...
Dec 16, 2024•57 min
Take a new definitive look through the eyes of a misunderstood backcountry merchant, Major William Trent, who not only overcame obstacles and suffered loss, but whose strong quill and rebellious interactions with future founding fathers Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington, ambitiously helped shape and form the future United States of America. This project was financed in part by a grant from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the Department of Community and Economic Development. pcntv.com/do...
Dec 11, 2024•57 min
Philadelphia is famous for its colonial and revolutionary buildings and artifacts, but Philadelphia existed long before the Liberty Bell was first rung, and its history extends well beyond the American Revolution.This book presents a comprehensive portrait of the city, from the region's original Lenape inhabitants to the myriad of residents in the twenty-first century. This project was financed in part by a grant from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the Department of Community and Economic Dev...
Nov 01, 2024•52 min
Gathering a treasure trove of powerful, rare, and haunting original documents, New York Times bestselling author and award-winning historian Allen C. Guelzo presents a uniquely readable and intimate oral history of the Civil War's turning point. We hear from a Union staff officer, a Confederate amputee, artilleryman, a sympathetic Northern woman, a Union prisoner-of-war, Union colonels and Confederate generals, a drummer boy, a fearful college student, those who orchestrated the Battle of Gettys...
Jul 03, 2024•58 min
This book provides a comprehensive examination of the Keystone State's formal and informal political institutions and players, past and present, and elucidates the place each holds in governing the commonwealth today. Covering a period of more than three hundred years, this volume presents a clear and succinct overview of the commonwealth's political history, culture, and geography. pcntv.com/donate pcntv.com/membership-signup pcntv.com...
Jun 05, 2024•57 min
In 1918, Bethlehem Steel started the world's greatest industrial baseball league. Appealing to Major League Baseball players looking to avoid service in the Great War, teams employed "ringers" like Babe Ruth, Rogers Hornsby, and Shoeless Joe Jackson in what became scornfully known as "safe shelter" leagues. pcntv.com/donate pcntv.com/membership-signup pcntv.com...
May 20, 2024•48 min
Beginning in the early 1990s, Pittsburgh's South Side neighborhood began to transform from the post-industrial morass it had been suffering for the last few decades. Artists began to rent empty apartments, what were once shot-and-a-beer bars became hip dive bars and entrepreneurs found inexpensive real estate to follow their visions. It was in this landscape that the Beehive Coffeehouse began to attract a new 90s alternative crowd. pcntv.com/donate pcntv.com/membership-signup pcntv.com...
May 13, 2024•58 min
In 1917, at the start of World War I, among global war and a global pandemic, Harrisburgers stepped up and served. The city experienced tribulations as residents feared espionage, suspected foreigners and demanded loyalty. Hospitals struggled with the 1918 flu at their doorstep. Join author Rodney Ross as he charts the World War I era and the Harrisburg home front. pcntv.com/donate pcntv.com/membership-signup pcntv.com...
May 13, 2024•52 min
George Washington has frequently been criticized for his first military campaign, which sparked the French and Indian War. While his campaign failed to meet its objectives, Washington experienced his first taste of military command, dealing with situations that ultimately proved beyond his control, and learned lessons that made him into the man who led the Continental Army to victory in the Revolutionary War. pcntv.com/donate pcntv.com/membership-signup pcntv.com...
Apr 08, 2024•57 min
In late 1975 and early 1976, at the height of the Cold War, two of the Soviet Union's long-dominant national hockey teams traveled to North America to play an eight-game series against the best teams in the National Hockey League. The culmination of the "Super Series" was reigning Soviet League champion HC CSKA Moscow's face-off against the defending NHL champion Flyers in Philadelphia on January 11, 1976. pcntv.com/donate pcntv.com/membership-signup pcntv.com...
Mar 13, 2024•57 min
"Telling of the Anthracite" explores the various ways in which anthracite history has been represented and remembered since 1960, the chosen date for the start of the "posthistorical" era coinciding approximately with the Knox mine disaster (1959) and the beginning of the Centralia mine fire (1962-), two cataclysmic and fateful events that symbolize the beginning of the end for wide scale deep anthracite mining in northeastern Pennsylvania. pcntv.com/donate pcntv.com/membership-signup pcntv.com...
Mar 05, 2024•59 min
Irving College was the first college to offer degrees in the arts and sciences to women and that two of its buildings still stand to this day. Named after famed author Washington Irving, this college for women was part of a nationwide trend in the nineteenth century to finally educate women, but a trend that was always fraught with opposition. pcntv.com/donate pcntv.com/membership-signup pcntv.com...
Feb 20, 2024•51 min
Of the more than seventy sites associated with the Civil War era that the National Park Service manages, none hold more national appeal and recognition than Gettysburg National Military Park. In "On a Great Battlefield," Jennifer M. Murray chronicles the administration of the National Park Service and how it educates the public about the battle and the Civil War as a whole since it acquired the site in August 1933. pcntv.com/donate pcntv.com/membership-signup pcntv.com...
Feb 05, 2024•57 min
The September 11, 1777, battle of Brandywine, a defeat for General George Washington, is too often forgotten by historians. Brandywine was one of the most important engagements of the war, also the largest land battle. Lafayette began his rise to an American hero that afternoon when he shed his blood for American freedom. Artist Karl J. Kuerner and author Bruce E. Mowday grew up near the main battlefield. Karl received instructions by world-renowned artist Andrew Wyeth. Karl uses his artistic ta...
Dec 14, 2023•57 min
Turbulent rapids and wild shorelines of the Youghiogheny River highlight natural wonders of the Appalachian Mountains, and midway on the stream's revealing path, Ohiopyle State Park is a showcase of beauty and has become a recreational hotspot where the river thunders over its iconic falls and cascades through the wooded gorges of Pennsylvania. Now, in this revised and expanded edition of his classic narrative on this special landscape and its people, athor, Tim Palmer, revisits the river, addre...
Nov 30, 2023•57 min
The British Army in North America conducted two campaigns in 1777. John Burgoyne led one army south from Canada to seize control of the Lake Champlain-Hudson River corridor resulting in the battle of Saratoga. Rather than assist Burgoyne's campaign, William Howe led his army from New York City on the Philadelphia campaign. Although Howe captured Philadelphia, the events of 1777 led to the French Alliance and ultimately American victory in the American Revolution. pcntv.com/donate pcntv.com/membe...
Oct 10, 2023•53 min
The first installment (June 3-22, 1863) carried the armies through the defining mounted clash at Battle of Brandy Station, after which Lee pushed his corps into the Shenandoah Valley and achieved the magnificent victory at Second Winchester on his way to the Potomac. Caught flat-footed, Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker used his cavalry to probe the mountain gaps, triggering a series of consequential mounted actions. The current volume (June 23-30) completes the march to Gettysburg and details the actions...
Oct 04, 2023•57 min
In 1777, Congress labeled Quakers who would not take up arms in support of the War of Independence as "the most Dangerous Enemies America knows" and ordered Pennsylvania and Delaware to apprehend them. In response, Keystone State officials sent twenty men-seventeen of whom were Quakers-into exile, banishing them to Virginia, where they were held for a year. pcntv.com/donate pcntv.com/membership-signup pcntv.com...
Sep 25, 2023•53 min
Historic Philadelphia has long yielded archaeological treasures from its past. Excavations required by the National Historic Preservation Act have recovered pottery shards, pots, plates, coins, bones, and other artifacts relating to early life in the city. This updated edition of Digging in the City of Brotherly Love continues to use archaeology to learn about and understand people from the past. pcntv.com/donate pcntv.com/membership-signup pcntv.com...
Sep 18, 2023•57 min
George Marshall was one of America's most significant statesmen during the mid twentieth century. He was born and raised in Uniontown, PA and attended VMI before earning a commission in the U.S. Army in 1902. During World War II he led the Army as Chief of Staff and after the war served as Secretary of State where he initiated the Marshall Plan for the recovery of Europe. In this episode, Army War College professor Tom Bruscino joins us to talk about Marshall's memoir of his service as a staff o...
Jun 27, 2023•1 hr 53 min
George Nakashima began his furniture business as a reactionary movement against the practice of 20th century "modern" architecture, design, and art. With a solid background in architectural history and design, engineering and building practice, George turned towards a simpler life in which direct contact with materials, tools, clients, and craftsmen was more important than the imposed egoism of the modern world. pcntv.com/donate pcntv.com/membership-signup pcntv.com...
Jun 12, 2023•50 min
