In the early hours of New Year's Eve 1969, in the small soft coal mining borough of Clarksville, Pennsylvania, longtime trade union insider Joseph "Jock" Yablonski and his wife and daughter were brutally murdered in their old stone farmhouse. Seven months earlier, Yablonski had announced his campaign to oust the corrupt president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), Tony Boyle, who had long embezzled UMWA funds, silenced intra-union dissent, and served the interests of Big Coal companie...
Apr 05, 2021•59 min
At Gettysburg, PA, during three days of July 1863, 160,000 men fought one of the most fierce and storied battles of the US Civil War. Nearly one in three of those men ended up a casualty of that battle, and when the two armies departed a few days later, 21,000 wounded remained. This book is the story of how those soldiers were cared for in a town of 2,500 people. Historian and author of several other guides to Gettysburg, James Gindlesperger provides a context for the medical and organizational ...
Mar 22, 2021•59 min
Frederick R. Gabriel graduated from medical school in 1940, entered the US Army, and was assigned to the newly-created 39th Station Hospital. His letters from the Pacific theater—especially from Guadalcanal, Angaur, and Saipan—capture the everyday life of a soldier physician. His son, Michael P. Gabriel, a professional historian, has faithfully preserved, edited, and annotated that correspondence to add a new dimension to our understanding of the social history of World War II, which he presents...
Mar 15, 2021•58 min
Much has been published about the artistically talented Wyeth family—-N. C., Andrew, Carolyn, Ann, Jamie, Nicky and Victoria—-but there has been scant insight into the deeply personal interface between these individuals and a group of persons that interacted with them, talked with them almost daily, shared intimate thoughts and moments with them and were taught and mentored by them: collectively the Kuerner family and specifically Karl Kuerner. This volume brings forth many instances over severa...
Mar 08, 2021•51 min
One highly visible example of French influence on the city of Philadelphia is the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, modeled on the Champs-Élysées. In "Salut!", Lynn Miller and Therese Dolan trace the fruitful, three-centuries-long relationship between the City of Brotherly Love and France. This detailed volume illustrates the effect of Huguenots settling in Philadelphia and 18-year-old William Penn visiting Paris, all the way up through more recent cultural offerings that have helped make the city the ...
Mar 01, 2021•57 min
Outside of major metropolitan areas, the fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights has had its own unique and rich history—one that is quite different from the national narrative set in New York and California. "Out in Central Pennsylvania" highlights one facet of this lesser-known but equally important story, immersing readers in the LGBTQ community building and social networking that has taken place in the small cities and towns in the heart of Pennsylvania from the 1960s to the...
Feb 22, 2021•57 min
In "Moravian Soundscapes," Sarah Eyerly contends that the study of sound is integral to understanding the interactions between German Moravian missionaries and Native communities in early Pennsylvania. In the mid-18th century, when the frontier between settler and Native communities was a shifting spatial and cultural borderland, sound mattered. People listened carefully to each other and the world around them. In Moravian communities, cultures of hearing and listening encompassed and also super...
Feb 15, 2021•56 min
"Hell with the Lid Off" looks at the ferocious five-year war waged by Pittsburgh and Oakland for NFL supremacy during the turbulent seventies. The roots of their rivalry dated back to the 1972 playoff game in Pittsburgh that ended with the "Immaculate Reception," Franco Harris's stunning touchdown that led the Steelers to a win over the Raiders in their first postseason meeting. That famous game ignited a fiery rivalry for NFL supremacy. Between 1972 and 1977, the Steelers and the Raiders—betwee...
Feb 01, 2021•58 min
In "Preserving the White Man's Republic: Jacksonian Democracy, Race, and the Transformation of American Conservatism," historian Joshua Lynn reveals how in the years before the Civil War the national Democratic Party rebranded majoritarian democracy and liberal individualism as conservative means for white men in the South and North to preserve their mastery. Responding to fears of African American and female political agency, Democrats in the late 1840s and 1850s reinvented themselves as "conse...
Jan 25, 2021•55 min
The Delaware River flows some 330 miles from its headwaters near Hancock, New York, to the mouth of the Delaware Bay. It is the longest free-flowing river east of the Mississippi and one of America's most important rivers. Not only is it the primary water supply for New York City, but it provides clean drinking water to every home within a 150-mile radius. When the reservoirs were built on the East and West Branches, they disrupted the natural flows and turned nature upside down. The once-warm w...
Jan 18, 2021•29 min
The second and final volume of this magnificent biography begins during World War II, when Calder–known to all as Sandy–and his wife, Louisa, opened their home to a stream of artists and writers in exile from Europe. In the postwar decades, they divided their time between the United States and France, as Calder made his first monumental public sculptures and received blockbuster commissions that included Expo '67 in Montreal and the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. Jed Perl makes clear how Calder's...
Dec 15, 2020•58 min
This is the first book that tells the story of how a small slice of eastern Pennsylvania became the cradle of the American Industrial Revolution. Pennsylvania was America's powerhouse in the nineteenth century, supplying the hot-burning, high-energy anthracite coal that ignited the iron and, later, steel industries that transformed the United States. This revolution began in the five counties – Bucks, Northampton, Lehigh, Carbon, and Luzerne – that are now designated the Delaware and Lehigh Nati...
Dec 08, 2020•59 min
In the spring of 1861, as the nation balanced on the brink of the Civil War, a farmer from the Hudson Valley brought a pedigreed colt to his new home in the Cowanesque Valley of northern Pennsylvania. What were his intentions for the young stallion? For the next three decades, the stallion was controlled by various members of the Wood family and passed from father to sons. From the Civil War through the Gilded Age and into the era of the Great War, horses sired by the Woods' Hambletonian stallio...
Nov 29, 2020•56 min
John Kromer's "Philadelphia Battlefields" considers key local campaigns undertaken from 1951 to 2019 that were extraordinarily successful despite the opposition of the city's political establishment. Kromer draws on election data and data-mapping tools that explain these upset elections as well as the social, economic, and demographic trends that influenced them to tell the story of why these campaign strategies were successful. He analyzes urban political dynamics through case studies of newcom...
Nov 16, 2020•57 min
On assignment for a small-town newspaper in rural Pennsylvania, rookie reporter, Jessica Weible, meets Joan Swigart, a creative fireball and "pioneer in print." As the two women forge a relationship based on their passion for storytelling, Joan reveals a mystery that she had discovered years ago, but had never solved—a pile of dead letters found in an abandoned general store, just before it was torn down. Joan gives Jessica the letters, each stamped and dated over a hundred years ago, and encour...
Nov 02, 2020•59 min
The Steel City has boasted some of the most famous figures, landmarks and innovations in the country's history. Pittsburgh's past is littered with dozens of fascinating stories behind the icons that define it. Mary Schenley was the city's biggest benefactress of the nineteenth century, gifting the site of the 425-acre park in her name, but her fortune was almost lost when she eloped at the age of fifteen. The first ever call-in radio talk show began at famed KDKA in 1951, inspiring the birth of ...
Oct 26, 2020•58 min
In "The Founding Fortunes," historian Tom Shachtman reveals the ways in which a dozen notable Revolutionaries deeply affected the finances and birth of the new country while making and losing their fortunes. While history teaches that successful revolutions depend on participation by the common man, the establishment of a stable and independent United States first required wealthy colonials uniting to disrupt the very system that had enriched them, and then funding a very long war. While some fo...
Oct 05, 2020•52 min
Over the past two decades, Inga Saffron has served as the premier chronicler of the city's physical transformation as it emerged from a half century of decline. Through her Pulitzer Prize-winning columns on architecture and urbanism in the Philadelphia Inquirer, she has tracked the city's revival on a weekly basis. "Becoming Philadelphia" collects the best of Saffron's work, plus a new introduction reflecting on the stunning changes the city has undergone. A fearless crusader who is also a seaso...
Sep 28, 2020•59 min
Hurricane Agnes struck the United States in June of 1972, just months before a pivotal election and at the dawn of the deindustrialization period across the Northeast. The response by local, state, and national officials had long-term consequences for all Americans. President Richard Nixon used the tragedy for political gain by delivering a generous relief package to the key states of New York and Pennsylvania in a bid to win over voters. After his landslide reelection in 1972, Nixon cut benefit...
Sep 21, 2020•58 min
Offers a detailed chronology of the growth, decline, and attempted resurrection of one American public education system. This book illustrates academic milestones and contributions of Johnstown's African-American community with the development of Johnstown Schools.
Aug 24, 2020•58 min
Ruling Suburbia chronicles the history of the Republican machine that has dominated the political life of Delaware County, Pennsylvania, since 1875, and of the career of John J. McClure, who controlled the machine from 1907 until 1965.
Aug 17, 2020•59 min
"Bridges…Pittsburgh at the Point…A Journey Through History" tells the stories of the 34 bridges that crossed the Monongahela, Allegheny, and Ohio rivers in Pittsburgh from 1818 to today. Told through the words of engineers, architects, planners, and historians this is a story of the development of technology, the rise of a city, and the progress of transportation. Thomas Leech is the retired Chief Bridge Engineer of Gannett Fleming, Inc., Adjunct Professor of Civil Engineering of Carnegie Mellon...
Jul 27, 2020•58 min
Louis Kahn (1901–1974), one of the most important architects of the postwar period, is widely admired for his great monumental works, including the Kimbell Art Museum, the Salk Institute, and the National Assembly Complex in Bangladesh. However, the importance of his houses has been largely overlooked. This beautiful book is the first to look at Kahn's nine major private houses. Beginning with his earliest encounters with Modernism in the late 1920s and continuing through his iconic work of the ...
Jul 20, 2020•58 min
A stirring documentary of Dennis McIlnay's trip on the 100- mile Juniata River in central Pennsylvania, and a moving portrait of some of the Juniata's earliest -- and bloodiest -- events.
Jul 13, 2020•59 min
When Buchanan entered the White House in March 1857, he seemed well positioned to accomplish his main objectives. A canny and seasoned politician from Pennsylvania with a reputation for moderation on slavery-related issues, Buchanan had a straightforward agenda: the amelioration of sectional tensions, the promotion of American prosperity, and the extension of the Democrats' control of the federal government. Four years later, Buchanan left Washington convinced that he had done his best and accom...
Jul 06, 2020•1 hr 1 min
Pennsylvania, first home of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, has a tradition of political progress. However, along with the good, the political playground of Pennsylvania has also seen the brazenly bad behavior of its political leaders. For over twenty-five years, political columnist John Baer has had a front-row seat to the foibles and follies of the Keystone State's political system. Baer takes readers through his memories of covering state politics for the last quarter ce...
Jun 29, 2020•59 min
German immigrants of the nineteenth century brought their traditions of winemaking and mouthwatering cuisine to the slopes of Mount Penn high above Reading. With a Santa Claus beard and a long-stemmed pipe, the hermit of Mount Penn, Louis Kuechler, founded Kuechler's Roost, where travelers flocked for feasts, literary soirees and free-flowing local wine. The opening of the Mount Penn Gravity Railroad brought a flurry of tourists from around the nation and fueled the creation of resorts throughou...
Jun 22, 2020•28 min
During the Paxton massacres of 1763, a mob of white settlers, so-called "Paxton Boys" murdered 20 unarmed Conestoga People in a genocidal campaign that reshaped Pennsylvania settlement politics. Ghost River: The Fall and Rise of the Conestoga reimagines this difficult history through an educational graphic novel that introduces new interpreters and new bodies of evidence to highlight the Indigenous victims and their kin. Author Lee Francis IV is the owner and CEO of Native Realities and the auth...
Jun 15, 2020•30 min
On September 10, 1813, the hot, still air that hung over Lake Erie was broken by the sounds of sharp conflict. Led by Oliver Hazard Perry, the American fleet met the British, and though they sustained heavy losses, Perry and his men achieved one of the most stunning victories in the War of 1812. Author Walter Rybka traces the Lake Erie Campaign from the struggle to build the fleet in Erie, Pennsylvania, during the dead of winter and the conflict between rival egos of Perry and his second in comm...
Jun 08, 2020•1 hr 1 min
Nestled among the rolling hills of South Central Pennsylvania, six counties – Adams, Cumberland, Dauphin, Lancaster, Lebanon, and York – are home to more than three centuries of history and architecture. Beginning with early eighteenth century buildings, almost every style of American architecture is featured in the region's mid-sized cities, charming towns, and quaint villages. Susquehanna Valley buildings showcase excellent examples of Colonial, Early Republic, Victorian, and twentieth-century...
Jun 01, 2020•58 min
