PA BOOKS on PCN

Frank Furness (1839-1912) has remained a curiosity to architectural historians and critics, somewhere between an icon and an enigma, whose importance and impact have yet to be properly evaluated or appreciated. To some, his work pushed pattern and proportion to extremes, undermining or forcing together the historic styles he referenced in such eclectic buildings as the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the University of Pennsylvania Library. To others, he was merely a regional mannerist creating an eccentric personal style that had little resonance and modest influence on the future of architecture. By placing Furness in the industrial culture that supported his work, George Thomas finds a cutting-edge revolutionary who launched the beginnings of modern design, played a key part in its evolution, and whose strategies continue to affect the built world. In his sweeping reassessment of Furness as an architect of the machine age, Thomas grounds him in Philadelphia, a city led by engineers, industrialists, and businessmen who commissioned the buildings that extended modern design to Chicago, Glasgow, and Berlin. Thomas examines the multiple facets of Victorian Philadelphia's modernity, looking to its eager embrace of innovations in engineering, transportation, technology, and building, and argues that Furness, working for a particular cohort of clients, played a central role in shaping this context. His analyses of the innovative planning, formal, and structural qualities of Furness's major buildings identifies their designs as initiators of a narrative that leads to such more obviously modern figures as Louis Sullivan, William Price, Frank Lloyd Wright and eventually, the architects of the Bauhaus. George E. Thomas is a cultural and architectural historian who serves as co-director of the Critical Conservation Program at Harvard's Graduate School of Design. Description courtesy of University of Pennsylvania Press.

The Scots Irish were one of early Pennsylvania's largest non-English immigrant groups. They were stereotyped as frontier ruffians and Indian haters. In The Scots Irish of Early Pennsylvania, historian Judith Ridner insists that this immigrant group was socio-economically diverse. Servants and free people, individuals and families, and political exiles and refugees from Ulster, they not only pioneered new frontier settlements, but also populated the state's cities—Philadelphia and Pittsburgh—and its towns, such as Lancaster, Easton, and Carlisle. These men and women brought their version of Ulster to the colonies in their fierce commitments to family, community, entrepreneurship, Presbyterianism, republican politics, and higher education. The settlements they founded across the state, including many farms, businesses, meetinghouses, and colleges, ensured that Pennsylvania would be their cradle in America, and these settlements stand as powerful testaments to their legacy to the state's history and development. Judith Ridner is an Associate Professor of History at Mississippi State University and author of A Town In-Between: Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and the Early Mid-Atlantic Interior. Description courtesy of Temple University Press.

Three of the greatest detectives in the world--a renowned FBI agent turned private eye, a sculptor and lothario who speaks to the dead, and an eccentric profiler known as "the living Sherlock Holmes"-were heartsick over the growing tide of unsolved murders. Good friends and sometime rivals William Fleisher, Frank Bender, and Richard Walter decided one day over lunch that something had to be done, and pledged themselves to a grand quest for justice. The three men invited the greatest collection of forensic investigators ever assembled, drawn from five continents, to the Downtown Club in Philadelphia to begin an audacious quest: to bring the coldest killers in the world to an accounting. Named for the first modern detective, the Parisian eugène François Vidocq-the flamboyant Napoleonic real-life sleuth who inspired Sherlock Holmes-the Vidocq Society meets monthly in its secretive chambers to solve a cold murder over a gourmet lunch.

In just seven years–from 1950 through 1956–Grace Kelly embarked on a whirlwind career that included roles in eleven movies. From the principled Amy Fowler Kane in High Noon to the thrill-seeking Frances Stevens of To Catch a Thief, Grace established herself as one of Hollywood's most talented actresses and iconic beauties. Her astonishing career lasted until her retirement at age twenty-six, when she withdrew from stage and screen to marry a European monarch and became a modern, working princess and mother. Based on never-before-published or quoted interviews with Grace and those conducted over many years with her friends and colleagues–from costars James Stewart and Cary Grant to director Alfred Hitchcock–as well as many documents disclosed by her children for the first time, acclaimed biographer Donald Spoto explores the transformation of a convent schoolgirl to New York model, successful television actress, Oscar-winning movie star, and beloved royal. As the princess requested, Spoto waited twenty-five years after her death to write this biography. Now, with honesty and insight, High Society reveals the truth of Grace Kelly's personal life, the men she loved, the men she didn't, and what lay behind the façade of her fairy-tale life.

Charles L. Blockson, one of the leading authorities on African American history, has compiled one of the nation's largest private collections of black history artifacts, photographs, maps, and books, a culmination of forty years of research. This guide, drawn from his vast collection and research, explores sites significant to the African American experience in Pennsylvania and includes maps with highlighted events from each part of the state. Charles Blockson founded the Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum in Philadelphia and is curator of the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection at Temple University. He has written on the Underground Railroad for National Geographic.

John Mauchly and Presper Eckert designed and built the first digital, electronic computer. Mauchly and Eckert met by chance in 1941 at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Engineering. They soon developed a revolutionary vision: to use electricity as a means of computing - in other words, to make electricity "think." Ignored by their colleagues, in early 1943 they were fortuitously discovered and funded by the U.S. Army, itself in urgent need of a machine that could quickly calculate ballistic missile trajectories in wartime Europe and Africa.

The father fled East Prussia to escape the 1880s pogroms and, as a penniless immigrant boy, hawked newspapers on the streets of Chicago. The son, who lives on Philadelphia's Main Line and on a palatial California estate, is a multibillionaire and America's most generous living philanthropist. Legacy is an epic saga of how Moses and Walter Annenberg built a vast publishing empire and one of the nation's greatest family fortunes. Seeping through the century, the story encompasses brutal circulation wars, bookie parlours and racetracks, a lethal presidential vendetta, the glory days of Hollywood and of television, diplomatic drawing rooms, White House intrigues, tangled romances, a tragic suicide, extravagant social climbing, the Royal Family, a fabled art collection and astonishing generosity. Unauthorised but written with unprecedented access to the Annenberg family and their private papers, Legacy is at once a moving story of a family's triumph, a rich cultural history and an irresistible reading experience.

Born in Gettysburg, PA only a dozen years after the bloody Civil War battle, Eddie Plank grew up on a farm and was a late-bloomer. By his early twenties, he was a local star on the town ball team and enrolled in the Gettysburg Academy in order to pitch for the Gettysburg College team. Soon after, Connie Mack from the Philadelphia Athletics in the newly-formed American League came calling and the rest is history. Eddie Plank was the mainstay of Connie Mack's early success from 1901 through 1914. Plank's unorthodox delivery and pinpoint control brought him consistent results. While others out-pitched him during individual seasons, "Steady-Eddie" provided Mack excellence year after year while others came and went. Gettysburg Eddie chronicles the life of this clean-living baseball superstar who worked hard, saved his money, and was always the perfect gentleman. Said Mack upon hearing of Eddie's premature death in 1926, "I feel like a father must feel who has lost a son." Lawrence Knorr is the author or co-author of more than twenty books on regional history and biography. Description courtesy of Sunbury Press.

His name summons up our earliest images of the beloved books we read as children. His illustrations for Scribner's Illustrated Classics (Treasure Island, Kidnapped, The Last of the Mohicans, The Yearling) are etched into the collective memory of generations of readers. He was hailed as the greatest American illustrator of his day. For forty-three years, starting in 1902, N.C. Wyeth painted landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and murals, as well as illustrations for a long shelf of world literature. Yet despite worldwide acclaim, he judged himself a failure, believing that illustration was of no importance. David Michaelis tells the story of Wyeth's family through four generations -- a saga that begins and ends with tragedy -- and brings to life the huge-spirited, deeply complicated man, and an America that was quickly vanishing.

The cabin door crashes open-and in a few minutes Regina's life changes forever. Allegheny Indians murder her father and brother, burn their Pennsylvania home to the ground, and take Regina captive. Only her mother, who is away from home, is safe. Torn from her family, Regina longs for the past, but she must begin a new life. She becomes Tskinnak, who learns to catch fish, dance the Indian dance, and speak the Indian tongue. As the years go by, her new people become her family, but she never stops wondering about her mother. Will they ever meet again?

In this new biography, Colin Calloway uses the prism of George Washington's life to bring focus to the great Native leaders of his time--Shingas, Tanaghrisson, Bloody Fellow, Joseph Brant, Red Jacket, Little Turtle--and the tribes they represented: the Iroquois Confederacy, Lenape, Miami, Creek, Delaware; in the process, he returns them to their rightful place in the story of America's founding. The Indian World of George Washington spans decades of Native American leaders' interactions with Washington, from his early days as surveyor of Indian lands, to his military career against both the French and the British, to his presidency, when he dealt with Native Americans as a head of state would with a foreign power, using every means of diplomacy and persuasion to fulfill the new republic's destiny by appropriating their land. By the end of his life, Washington knew more than anyone else in America about the frontier and its significance to the future of his country. Colin G. Calloway is the John Kimball Jr. 1943 Professor of History and Native American Studies at Dartmouth College. Description courtesy of Oxford University Press.

As the twentieth century dawned on western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio, the region's steel industry faced a struggle for unionism. Unionists like Philip Murray, John L. Lewis, Samuel Gompers and Gus Hall battled for fair wages, hours and working conditions. Strong managers like Judge Elbert Gary and Tom Girdler opposed their every move. Tensions from issues of immigration, class, skill and race erupted throughout the industry. The tribulations led to widespread steel strikes directed by the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers and the Steel Workers Organizing Committee. Author Dale Richard Perelman charts the struggle and decline of the nation's most prominent regional steel industry. Dale Richard Perelman has written several books, including Mountain of Light: The Story of the Koh-I-Noor Diamond, The Regent: The Story of the Regent Diamond, Centenarians: One Hundred 100-Year-Olds Who Made a Difference and Steel: The Story of Pittsburgh's Iron and Steel Industry, 1852–1902. Description courtesy of The History Press.

In The Loyal Son, award-winning historian Daniel Mark Epstein throws the spotlight on one of the more enigmatic aspects of Franklin's biography: his complex and confounding relationship with his illegitimate son William. When he was twenty-four, Franklin fathered a child with a woman who was not his wife. He adopted the boy, raised him, and educated him to be his aide. Ben and William became inseparable. After the famous kite-in-a-thunderstorm experiment, it was William who proved that the electrical charge in a lightning bolt travels from the ground up, not from the clouds down. On a diplomatic mission to London, it was William who charmed London society. He was invited to walk in the procession of the coronation of George III; Ben was not. The outbreak of the American Revolution caused a devastating split between father and son. By then, William was royal governor of New Jersey, while Ben was one of the foremost champions of American independence. In 1776, the Continental Congress imprisoned William for treason. George Washington made efforts to win William's release, while his father, to the world's astonishment, appeared to have abandoned him to his fate. Daniel Mark Epstein is the author of biographies of Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman, Aimee Semple McPherson, Nat King Cole, and Edna St. Vincent Millay, as well as nine volumes of poetry. His verse has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and The Paris Review, among other publications. The American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded Epstein the Rome Prize in 1977 and an Arts and Letters Award in 2006. Daniel Mark Epstein lives in Baltimore. Description courtesy of Ballantine Books.

Talk show host and columnist Michael Smerconish has been chronicling local, state, and national events for the Philadelphia Daily News and the Philadelphia Inquirer for more than 15 years. He has sounded off on topics as diverse as the hunt for Osama bin Laden and what the color of your Christmas lights says about you. In this collection of 100 of his most memorable columns, Smerconish reflects on American political life with his characteristic feistiness. With a new Afterword for each column, the author provides updates on both facts and feelings, indicating how he has evolved over the years, moving from a conservative political perspective to having more of a centrist view. Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right covers the post-9/11 years, Barack Obama's ascension, and the rise of Donald Trump. Smerconish also recounts meeting Ronald Reagan, having dinner with Fidel Castro, and barbequing with the band YES in his backyard, as well as spending the same night with Pete Rose and Ted Nugent, drinking champagne from the Stanley Cup, and conducting Bill Cosby's only pre-trial interview. Additionally, he writes about local Philadelphia culture, from Sid Mark to the Rizzo statue. Michael A. Smerconish is a SiriusXM radio host, CNN television host and Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper columnist. Description courtesy of Temple University Press.

This cultural exploration offers an unparalleled presentation of Pennsylvania's ritual healing traditions known as powwowing or Braucherei in Pennsylvania Dutch, through original primary source materials, including manuscripts, ritual objects, and books—most of which have never before been available to English-speaking readers. Although methods and procedures have varied considerably over three centuries of ritual practice within the Pennsylvania Dutch cultural region, the outcomes and experiences surrounding this tradition have woven a rich tapestry of cultural narratives that highlight the integration of ritual into all aspects of life, as well as provide insight into the challenges, conflicts, growth, and development of a distinct Pennsylvania Dutch folk culture. Patrick Donmoyer is the director of the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center at Kutztown University. Description courtesy of Masthof Press.

Everyone knows about Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and his 20th Maine Regiment, but there's much more to the story of Maine at the Battle of Gettysburg. Soldiers from Maine made their presence felt all over the battlefield during three days of fighting in July 1863. There's Oliver Otis Howard, corps commander who helped secure high ground for the Union on the first day. There's Adelbert Ames, who drilled the 20th Maine—including Chamberlain himself—into a fighting regiment and then commanded a brigade at Gettysburg. The 17th Maine fought ably in the confused and bloody fighting in the Wheatfield on the second day, the 19th Maine helped defeat Pickett's Charge, and of course Chamberlain's men made their legendary stand at Little Round Top. Tom Huntington is the author of Searching for George Gordon Meade: The Forgotten Victor of Gettysburg, as well as Guide to Gettysburg Battlefield Monuments, Pennsylvania Civil War Trails, and Ben Franklin's Philadelphia. He is also the former editor of American History and Historic Traveler magazines, and his writing has appeared in many publications, including Smithsonian, Air & Space, American Heritage, British Heritage, and Yankee. He was born and bred in Augusta, Maine, but now lives in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, not far from Gettysburg. Description courtesy of Stackpole Books.

The free black community of Hinsonville sent its sons to serve the Union when called on. As members of the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Volunteers, brothers Wesley, William and George Jay survived the bloody battle at Fort Wagner, South Carolina, memorialized in the film Glory. George W. Duffy and Stephen J. Ringgold were part of the only black regiment to lead President Lincoln's funeral procession in Washington. William B. Fitzgerald, Abraham Stout, Samuel H. Blake and Isaac A. Hollingsworth fought with troops who cornered Robert E. Lee's army, forcing surrender at Appomattox Court House. Cheryl Renée Gooch is dean of Arts, Humanities, Developmental Studies at Cumberland County College. Description courtesy of The History Press.

In April 2003, Jim O'Brien was the first Pittsburgher inducted into the U.S. Basketball Writers Hall of Fame. This book is a celebration of 60th anniversary of a career as a professional sports writer. O'Brien was the founding editor of Street & Smith's Basketball Yearbook in 1970 and continued to be associated with the magazine for more than 35 years. It became the No. 1 selling annual of its kind in the country and the official NBA pre-season magazine. O'Brien also edited The Complete Handbook of Pro Basketball and wrote a column on pro basketball for The Sporting News for nine years. In "Looking Up," O'Brien tells inside stories of great basketball players, coaches, administrators, writers, and fans. It's about time spent with tall men, giants of the game, looking up from the best seat in the house. Description courtesy of James P. O'Brien Publications.

When Prohibition hit the Steel City, it created a level of violence and corruption residents had never witnessed. Illegal producers ran stills in kitchens, basements, bathroom tubs, warehouses and even abandoned distilleries. War between gangs of bootleggers resulted in a number of murders and bombings that placed Pittsburgh on the same level as New York City and Chicago in criminal activity. John Bazzano ordered the killing of the Volpe brothers but did so without the permission of Mafia bosses. His battered body was later found on the street in Brooklyn. Author Richard Gazarik details the shady side of the Steel City during a tumultuous era. Richard Gazarik has been a journalist in western Pennsylvania for more than forty years. Description courtesy of The History Press.

In The Fearless Benjamin Lay, renowned historian Marcus Rediker chronicles the transatlantic life and times of a singular man—a Quaker dwarf who demanded the total, unconditional emancipation of all enslaved Africans around the world. Mocked and scorned by his contemporaries, Lay was unflinching in his opposition to slavery, often performing colorful guerrilla theater to shame slave masters, insisting that human bondage violated the fundamental principles of Christianity. He drew on his ideals to create a revolutionary way of life, one that embodied the proclamation "no justice, no peace." Lay was born in 1682 in Essex, England. His philosophies, employments, and places of residence—spanning England, Barbados, Philadelphia, and the open seas—were markedly diverse over the course of his life. He worked as a shepherd, glove maker, sailor, and bookseller. His worldview was an astonishing combination of Quakerism, vegetarianism, animal rights, opposition to the death penalty, and abolitionism. While in Abington, Philadelphia, Lay lived in a cave-like dwelling surrounded by a library of two hundred books, and it was in this unconventional abode where he penned a fiery and controversial book against bondage, which Benjamin Franklin published in 1738. Always in motion and ever confrontational, Lay maintained throughout his life a steadfast opposition to slavery and a fierce determination to make his fellow Quakers denounce it, which they finally began to do toward the end of his life. With passion and historical rigor, Rediker situates Lay as a man who fervently embodied the ideals of democracy and equality as he practiced a unique concoction of radicalism nearly three hundred years ago. Rediker resurrects this forceful and prescient visionary, who speaks to us across the ages and whose innovative approach to activism is a gift, transforming how we consider the past and how we might imagine the future. Marcus Rediker is Distinguished Professor of Atlantic History at the University of Pittsburgh and Senior Research Fellow at the Collège d'études mondiales in Paris. Description courtesy of Beacon Press.

Sen. Robert Jubelirer was first elected to the Pennsylvania Senate in 1974. Watergate was a deep wound on voter psyche, and Jubelirer was the lone Republican freshman Senator elected. Until his loss in a primary election in 2006, Jubelirer would serve skillfully and energetically, making a political career out of his willingness to fight in the face of long odds. Jubelirer was admired and respected on both sides of the political aisle, and while his views an actions were sometimes questioned, his integrity and commitment were never doubted. From the memorable people with whom he served to the media, lobbyists, and other political influencers, Jubelirer paints a picture of members of a political process that, while not always succeeding, strives to serve the needs of Pennsylvanians. He evaluates and grades the six governors he served under with honesty and candor and recounts his time as the longest-serving senate president pro tempore. A graduate of Penn State University and the Penn State Dickinson School of Law, Sen. Robert Jubelirer served eight consecutive terms in the Pennsylvania Senate from 1974 to 2006. Jubelirer is now head of the government relations division of the law firm Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell & Hippel.

Walt Koken, the founding member of the Highwoods Stringband, reminisces about traveling and playing old time music in the 1960's and 1970's, and the people he met while barnstorming, before and during his days in the band. Description courtesy of Mudthumper Music.

Historian Lee Stout and engineering professor Harry H. West show how Penn State's Beaver Stadium came to be, including a look at its predecessors, "Old" Beaver Field, built in 1893 on a site centrally located northeast of Old Main, and "New" Beaver Field, built on the northwest corner of campus in 1909. Stout and West explore the engineering and construction challenges of the stadium and athletic fields and reveal the importance of these facilities to the history of Penn State and its cherished traditions. Packed with archival photos and fascinating stories, Lair of the Lion is a celebration of the ways in which Penn State fans, students, and athletes have experienced home games from the 1880s to the present day, and of the monumental structure that the Lions now call home. Lee Stout is Librarian Emeritus at the Penn State University Libraries. Harry H. West is Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering at Penn State University. Description courtesy of Penn State University Press.

Alexander Calder is one of the most beloved and widely admired artists of the twentieth century. Anybody who has ever set foot in a museum knows him as the inventor of the mobile, America's unique contribution to modern art. But only now, forty years after the artist's death, is the full story of his life being told in this biography, which is based on unprecedented access to Calder's letters and papers as well as scores of interviews. Jed Perl shows us why Calder was–and remains–a barrier breaker, an avant-garde artist with mass appeal. Born in 1898 into a family of artists–his father was a well-known sculptor, his mother a painter and a pioneering feminist–Calder went on as an adult to forge important friendships with a who's who of twentieth-century artists, including Joan Miró, Marcel Duchamp, Georges Braque, and Piet Mondrian. We move through Calder's early years studying engineering to his first artistic triumphs in Paris in the late 1920s, and to his emergence as a leader in the international abstract avant-garde. Jed Perl is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books. He was the art critic for The New Republic for twenty years and a contributing editor to Vogue for a decade, and is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in New York City. Description courtesy of Knopf.

An essential food in Mid-Atlantic kitchens for hundreds of years, scrapple is the often-overlooked king of breakfast meats. Developed by German settlers of Pennsylvania, the slow food byproduct was created to avoid waste in the day's butchering. Pork trimmings were stewed until tender, ground like sausage and blended with the originating broth, cornmeal and buckwheat flour. Crispy slabs of scrapple sustained regional ancestors through frigid winter months and hard-worked harvests. Today, companies such as Habbersett and Rapa still produce scrapple as new generations of chefs create exciting ways to eat the staple. Join author Amy Strauss as she traces the sizzling history and culture of a beloved Pennsylvania Dutch icon. Amy Strauss is a food and drink writer and editor living in Philadelphia. Description courtesy of The History Press.

To the rebelling colonies, French assistance made the difference between looming defeat and eventual triumph. Even before the Declaration of Independence was issued, King Louis XVI and French foreign minister Vergennes were aiding the rebels. After the Declaration, that assistance broadened to include wages for our troops; guns, cannon, and ammunition; engineering expertise that enabled victories and prevented defeats; diplomatic recognition; safe havens for privateers; battlefield leadership by veteran officers; and the army and fleet that made possible the Franco-American victory at Yorktown. Nearly ten percent of those who fought and died for the American cause were French. Those who fought and survived, in addition to the well-known Lafayette and Rochambeau, include François de Fleury, who won a Congressional Medal for valor, Louis Duportail, who founded the Army Corps of Engineers, and Admiral de Grasse, whose sea victory sealed the fate of Yorktown. This illuminating narrative history vividly captures the outsize characters of our European brothers, their battlefield and diplomatic bonds and clashes with Americans, and the monumental role they played in America's fight for independence and democracy. Tom Shachtman has written or co-authored more than thirty books, as well as documentaries for ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and BBC, and has taught at New York University and lectured at Harvard and Stanford. He is currently a consultant to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's science and technology initiatives. Description courtesy of St. Martin's Press.

The first volunteer killed defending Robert E. Lee's position in battle was really a German assassin. After fleeing to the United States to escape prosecution for murder, the assassin enlisted in a German company of the Pennsylvania Volunteers in the Mexican-American War and died defending Lee's battery at the Siege of Veracruz in 1847. Lee wrote a letter home, praising this unnamed fallen volunteer defender. Military records identify him, but none of the Americans knew about his past life of crime. Before fighting with the Americans, Lee's defender had assassinated Johann Heinrich Rieber, mayor of Bönnigheim, Germany, in 1835. Rieber's assassination became 19th-century Germany's coldest case ever solved by a non–law enforcement professional and the only 19th-century German murder ever solved in the United States. Thirty-seven years later, another suspect in the assassination who had also fled to America found evidence in Washington, D.C., that would clear his own name, and he forwarded it to Germany. The German prosecutor Ernst von Hochstetter corroborated the story and closed the case file in 1872, naming Lee's defender as Rieber's murderer. Ann Marie Ackermann is a former attorney with focuses on criminal and medical law. Eighteen years ago she moved to Bönnigheim, Germany, the town in which the assassination occurred, and is a member of its historical society. She has a number of academic publications in law, ornithology, and history. Description courtesy of Kent State University Press.

Philadelphia native Charles Sheeler (1883-1965) is recognized as one of the founding figures of American modernism. Initially trained in impressionist landscape painting, he experimented early in his career with compositions inspired by European modernism before developing a linear, hard-edge style now known as Precisionism. Sheeler is best known for his powerful and compelling images of the Machine Age—stark paintings and photographs of skyscrapers, factories, and power plants—that he created while working in the 1920s and 1930s. Less known, and even lesser studied, is that he worked from 1926 to 1931 as a fashion and portrait photographer for Condé Nast. The body of work he produced during this time, mainly for Vanity Fair and Vogue, has been almost universally dismissed by scholars of American modernism as purely commercial, the results of a painter's "day job," and nothing more. Charles Sheeler contends that Sheeler's fashion and portrait photography was instrumental to the artist's developing modernist aesthetic. Over the course of his time at Condé Nast, Sheeler's fashion photography increasingly incorporated the structural design of abstraction: rhythmic patterning, dramatic contrast, and abstract compositions. The subjects of Sheeler's fashion and portrait photography appear pared down to their barest essentials, as sculptural objects composed of line, form, and light. The objective, distant, and rigorously formal style that Sheeler developed at Condé Nast would eventually be applied to all of his artistic forays: architectural, industrial, and vernacular. Kirsten Jensen is the Gerry and Marguerite Lenfest Chief Curator at the James A. Michener Art Museum. Shawn Waldron is the former Senior Director of Archives and Records at Conde Nast. Description courtesy of University of Pennsylvania Press.

Renowned as a printer, scientist, and diplomat, Benjamin Franklin also published more works on religious topics than any other eighteenth-century American layperson. Born to Boston Puritans, by his teenage years Franklin had abandoned the exclusive Christian faith of his family and embraced deism. But Franklin, as a man of faith, was far more complex than the "thorough deist" who emerges in his autobiography. As Thomas Kidd reveals, deist writers influenced Franklin's beliefs, to be sure, but devout Christians in his life—including George Whitefield, the era's greatest evangelical preacher; his parents; and his beloved sister Jane—kept him tethered to the Calvinist creed of his Puritan upbringing. Based on rigorous research into Franklin's voluminous correspondence, essays, and almanacs, this fresh assessment of a well-known figure unpacks the contradictions and conundrums faith presented in Franklin's life. Thomas S. Kidd is distinguished professor of history and associate director of the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University. Description courtesy of Yale University Press.

Based on a comprehensive amount of research at the Library of Congress, the collections at Mount Vernon, and rare book archives scattered across the country, Kevin Hayes reconstructs in vivid detail the active intellectual life that has gone largely unnoticed in conventional narratives of Washington. Despite being a lifelong reader, Washington felt an acute sense of embarrassment about his relative lack of formal education and cultural sophistication, and in this sparkling literary biography, Hayes illustrates just how tirelessly Washington worked to improve. Beginning with the primers, forgotten periodicals, conduct books, and classic eighteenth-century novels such as Tom Jones that shaped Washington's early life, Hayes studies Washington's letters and journals, charting the many ways the books of his upbringing affected decisions before and during the Revolutionary War. The final section of the book covers the voluminous reading that occurred during Washington's presidency and his retirement at Mount Vernon. Throughout, Hayes examines Washington's writing as well as his reading, from The Journal of Major George Washington through his Farewell Address. The sheer breadth of titles under review here allow readers to glimpse Washington's views on foreign policy, economics, the law, art, slavery, marriage, and religion-and how those views shaped the young nation. Kevin Hayes, Emeritus Professor at the University of Central Oklahoma, now lives and writes in Toledo, Ohio. He is the author of several books including "The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson" and "A Journey through American Literature." Description courtesy of Oxford University Press.

This major retrospective catalogue explores the impact of time and place on the work of beloved American painter Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009). While previous publications have mainly analyzed Wyeth's work thematically, this publication places him fully in the context of the long 20th century, tracing his creative development from World War I through the new millennium. Published to coincide with the centenary of Wyeth's birth, the book looks at four major chronological periods in the artist's career: Wyeth as a product of the interwar years, when he started to form his own "war memories" through military props and documentary photography he discovered in his father's art studio; the change from his "theatrical" pictures of the 1940s to his own visceral responses to the landscape around Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and his family's home in Maine; his sudden turn, in 1968, into the realm of erotic art, including a completely new assessment of Wyeth's "Helga pictures"—a series of secret, nude depictions of his neighbor Helga Testorf—within his career as a whole; and his late, self-reflective works, which includes the discussion of his previously unknown painting entitled Goodbye, now believed to be Wyeth's last work. Audrey Lewis is curator at the Brandywine River Museum of Art. Christine Podmaniczky is curator of the N.C. Wyeth Collections and Historic Properties at the Brandywine River Museum of Art. Description courtesy of Yale University Press.

A mostly forgotten episode of US history is brought to life in fascinating detail by historian and author Deborah deBilly dit Courville. Working from primary sources such as letters and household accounts, she has reconstructed the rhythm and rationale of daily life at the 18th century French immigrant colony along the Susquehanna River known as Azilum. Told through the fortunes and fates of one of the colony's founding families, the LaPortes, the novel explores the attitudes, desires and motivations of the French nobles who sought refuge in the New World: people who, much as we do today, struggled, loved, mourned and planned for their futures, all against the backdrop of the French Revolution and the politics and vast uncharted wilderness that was the fledgling United States. Deborah deBilly dit Courville is a member of the Board of Directors of French Azilum and is a historical interpreter at the LaPorte House located near Towanda, PA. Description courtesy of Samothrace Press.

"Gettysburg Rebels" is the gripping true story of five young men who grew up in Gettysburg, moved south to Virginia in the 1850s, joined the Confederate army – and returned "home" as foreign invaders for the great battle in July 1863. Drawing on rarely-seen documents and family histories, as well as military service records and contemporary accounts, Tom McMillan delves into the backgrounds of Wesley Culp, Henry Wentz and the three Hoffman brothers in a riveting tale of Civil War drama and intrigue. Tom McMillan is the author of "Flight 93: The Story, The Aftermath and The Legacy of American Courage on 9/11." He has spent a lifetime in communications as a newspaper sports writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, among others, as a radio talk show host, and, for the past 21 years as VP of Communications for the Pittsburgh Penguins. Description courtesy of Regnery History.

Historian Kathleen Waters Sander tells the story of B&O Railroad President John W. Garrett and the B&O's plan to build a rail line from Baltimore over the Allegheny Mountains to the Ohio River. The B&O's success ignited "railroad fever" and helped to catapult railroading to America's most influential industry in the nineteenth century. After the Civil War, John W. Garrett became one of the first of the famed Gilded Age tycoons, rising to unimagined power and wealth. Sander explores how—when he was not fighting fierce railroad wars with competitors—Garrett steered the B&O into highly successful entrepreneurial endeavors, quadrupling track mileage to reach important commercial markets, jumpstarting Baltimore's moribund postwar economy, and constructing lavish hotels in Western Maryland to open tourism in the region. Kathleen Waters Sander teaches history at the University of Maryland University College. She is the author of "The Business of Charity: The Woman's Exchange Movement, 1832–1900" and "Mary Elizabeth Garrett: Society and Philanthropy in the Gilded Age." Description courtesy of Johns Hopkins University Press.

When the Revolutionary War ended in 1783, the newly independent United States savored its victory and hoped for a great future. And yet the republic soon found itself losing an escalating military conflict on its borderlands. In 1791, years of skirmishes, raids, and quagmire climaxed in the grisly defeat of American militiamen by a brilliantly organized confederation of Shawnee, Miami, and Delaware Indians. With nearly one thousand U.S. casualties, this was the worst defeat the nation would ever suffer at native hands. Americans were shocked, perhaps none more so than their commander in chief, George Washington, who saw in the debacle an urgent lesson: the United States needed an army. "Autumn of the Black Snake: The Creation of the U.S. Army and the Invasion That Opened the West" tells the overlooked story of how Washington achieved his aim. In evocative and absorbing prose, William Hogeland conjures up the woodland battles and the hardball politics that formed the Legion of the United States, our first true standing army. His memorable portraits of leaders on both sides—from the daring war chiefs Blue Jacket and Little Turtle to the doomed commander Richard Butler and a steely, even ruthless Washington—drive a tale of horrific violence, brilliant strategizing, stupendous blunders, and valorous deeds. This sweeping account, at once exciting and dark, builds to a crescendo as Washington and Alexander Hamilton, at enormous risk, outmaneuver Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and other skeptics of standing armies—and Washington appoints the seemingly disreputable Anthony Wayne, known as Mad Anthony, to lead the legion. Wayne marches into the forests of the Old Northwest, where the very Indians he is charged with defeating will bestow on him, with grudging admiration, a new name: the Black Snake. William Hogeland is the author of three books on founding U.S. history—"The Whiskey Rebellion," "Declaration," and "Founding Finance"—as well as a collection of essays, "Inventing American History." Born in Virginia and raised in Brooklyn, he lives in New York City.

"Chief Engineer" tells the story of Washington Roebling, the engineer known for building one of the most iconic American structures, the Brooklyn Bridge. "Chief Engineer" reveals that his father, John-a renowned engineer who made his life in America after humble beginnings in Germany-was a tyrannical presence in Washington's life, so his own adoption of that career was hard won. A young man when the Civil War broke out, Washington joined the Union Army, building bridges that carried soldiers across rivers and seeing action in many pivotal battles, from Antietam to Gettysburg-aspects of his life never before fully brought to light. Safely returned, he married the remarkable Emily Warren Roebling, who would play a crucial role in the construction of the unprecedented Brooklyn Bridge. It would be Washington Roebling's grandest achievement, but by no means the only one. Erica Wagner was literary editor of The Times for seventeen years, and she is now a contributing writer for New Statesman and consulting literary editor for Harper's Bazaar, as well as writing for many publications in Britain and the United States.

In the deciding game of the 1992 National League Championship Series against the Atlanta Braves, the Pittsburgh Pirates suffered the most dramatic and devastating loss in team history when former Pirate Sid Bream slid home with the winning run. Bream's infamous slide ended the last game played by Barry Bonds in a Pirates uniform and sent the franchise reeling into a record twenty-season losing streak. "The Slide" tells the story of the myriad events, beginning with the aftermath of the 1979 World Series, which led to the fated 1992 championship game and beyond. Richard "Pete" Peterson is the author and editor of several baseball books, including "The Pirates Reader," "Growing Up With Clemente," "Pops: The Willie Stargell Story," and "Extra Innings: Writing on Baseball." A Pittsburgh native, Peterson is professor emeritus of English at Southern Illinois University. Stephen Peterson has worked as a teacher and screenwriter for the last ten years. He resides in Los Angeles, CA.

Founded in 1682 by a society that had no military, eschewed violence as a means of solving conflicts, and tolerated a wide variety of religions, Pennsylvania began as a "peaceable kingdom"—but war was essential to both Pennsylvania's founding and its history. Pennsylvania was the site of some of the most important military events in American history, including the destruction of the Braddock Expedition, the battles of Brandywine and Germantown, Valley Forge, the Whiskey Rebellion, and the Battle of Gettysburg. Pennsylvania was also a leader in America's modern wars, with the Pennsylvania-based 28th Infantry Division serving with distinction in both world wars as well as in Iraq, and the state's industry, particularly steel production and ship building, being essential to the natinal effort. Complete with a list of historical sites and a comprehensive bibliography, "Pennsylvania: A Military History" is an important reference for those interested in the role of the Keystone State in our nation's wars. Barbara Gannon is associate professor of history at the University of Central Florida. Christian Keller is a professor in the Department of National Security and Strategy at the U. S. Army War College in Carlisle, PA.

Pittsburgh's drinking culture is a story of its people: vibrant, hardworking and innovative. During Prohibition, the Hill District became a center of jazz, speakeasies and creative cocktails. In the following decades, a group of Cuban bartenders brought the nightlife of Havana to a robust café culture along Diamond Street. Disco clubs gripped the city in the 1970s, and a music-centered nightlife began to grow in Oakland with such clubs as the Electric Banana. Today, pioneering mixologists are forging a new and exciting bar revival in the South Side and throughout the city. Cody McDevitt is an award-winning journalist who works full time for the Somerset Daily American. His work has appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Table Magazine and Pittsburgh Quarterly. Sean Enright is one of the founding fathers of the craft cocktail movement in Pittsburgh. He has managed many of Pittsburgh's most prestigious restaurants and helped found the Pittsburgh Chapter of the United States Bartenders' Guild. Sean has also been active in the Pittsburgh art community, where he produced a literary art magazine called yawp.

The 1920s Jazz Age is remembered for flappers and speakeasies, not for the success of a declining labor movement. A more complex story was unfolding among the young women and men in the hosiery mills of Kensington, the working-class heart of Philadelphia. Their product was silk stockings, the iconic fashion item of the flapper culture then sweeping America and the world. Although the young people who flooded into this booming industry were avid participants in Jazz Age culture, they also embraced a surprising, rights-based labor movement, headed by the socialist-led American Federation of Full-Fashioned Hosiery Workers (AFFFHW). In this first history of this remarkable union, Sharon McConnell-Sidorick reveals how activists ingeniously fused youth culture and radical politics to build a subculture that included dances and parties as well as picket lines and sit-down strikes, while forging a vision for social change. In documenting AFFFHW members and the Kensington community, McConnell-Sidorick shows how labor federations like the Congress of Industrial Organizations and government programs like the New Deal did not spring from the heads of union leaders or policy experts but were instead nurtured by grassroots social movements across America. Sharon McConnell-Sidorick is an independent scholar and lives in the Philadelphia area.

The definitive, up-to-date guide to Pennsylvania's best fly fishing by regional experts and guides. Includes over 200 rivers and streams across the state as well as information on where to fish for trout, smallmouth bass, and other game fish species. First ever guidebook to the state written by a group of regional experts (professional guides, fly fishing instructors, lecturers, fly tiers) to provide insider knowledge to the best fishing opportunities. Stunning color photographs, accurate maps (created with GIS), and over 200 local fly patterns are featured. Henry Ramsay is a part-time guide, instructor, writer, and photographer. He is author of Matching Major Eastern Hatches: New Patterns for Selective Trout (Stackpole/Headwater) and has written for Eastern Fly Fishing and Fly Fisherman magazines. His flies have appeared in a number of magazines and books, and he presents at many shows, clubs, and Trout Unlimited chapters in the eastern U.S. He is a pro staff member for Daiichi Hooks and Regal Vises, and is a contract fly designer for Umpqua Feather Merchants. He lives in Birdsboro, Pennsylvania. Dave Rothrock is a part-time guide and fly fishing and casting instructor (Salmo Trutta Enterprises). His articles have appeared in Fly Fisherman, American Angler, and Pennsylvania Angler magazines as well as other publications. His fly patterns have graced the pages of various publications, books, and calendars. He has presented programs on fly-fishing related topics to groups throughout the eastern U.S. and Canada and was previously an instructor in the L. L. Bean fly fishing schools. He lives in Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania. Len Lichvar is the District Manager of the Somerset Conservation District, District 4 Commissioner, professional freelance outdoor writer/photographer published in local, state, and national publications, and the Outdoors Correspondent for the Somerset Daily American. A long time member of the Pennsylvania Outdoor Writers Association, he is also an active member of many local and state sportsmen's groups, as well as conservation and civic improvement organizations. Len resides in Boswell, Pennsylvania. Along with wife, Becky, he has two children, Laurel and Logan, and a granddaughter, Mackenzie.

In 1916, department store magnate and Grand Old Philadelphian John Wanamaker launched plans for a Sesqui-Centennial International Exposition in his hometown in 1926. It would be a magnificent world's fair to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Wanamaker hoped that the "Sesqui" would also transform sooty, industrial Philadelphia into a beautiful Beaux-Arts city. However, when the Sesqui opened on May 31, 1926, in the remote, muddy swamps of South Philadelphia, the first visitors were stunned to find an unfinished fair, with a few shabbily built and mostly empty structures. Crowds stayed away in droves: fewer than five million paying customers attended the Sesqui, costing the city millions of dollars. Philadelphia became a national scandal—a city so corrupt that one political boss could kidnap an entire world's fair. In his fascinating history Sesqui!, noted historian Thomas Keels situates this ill-fated celebration—a personal boondoggle by the all-powerful Congressman William S. Vare-against the transformations taking place in America during the 1920s. Keels provides a comprehensive account of the Sesqui as a meeting ground for cultural changes sweeping the country: women's and African-American rights, anti-Semitism, eugenics, Prohibition, and technological advances. Thomas H. Keels is a historian and lecturer who has authored or co-authored seven books and numerous articles on Philadelphia history. A confirmed taphophile, Keels has been a tour guide at Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia's premier Victorian necropolis, for two decades.

Rural Northeastern Pennsylvania was a bucolic farming region in the 1800s—but political tensions churned below the surface. When a group of fugitive slaves dared to settle in the Underground Railroad village of Waverly, near Scranton, before the Civil War, they encountered a mix of support from abolitionists and animosity from white supremacists. Once the war came, 13 of Waverly's black fathers and sons returned south, into the bowels of slavery, to fight for the Union. Their valor under fire helped to change many minds about blacks. "Embattled Freedom" lifts these 13 remarkable lives out of the shadows, while also shedding light on the racial politics and social codes they and their people endured in the divided North. The men had found a safe haven in Waverly, but like other people of color in the 1800s and early 1900s, their freedom was uneasy, their battle for respect never-ending. Jim Remsen is a journalist and author of two prior books, "The Intermarriage Handbook" (HarperCollins, 1988) and "Visions of Teaoga" (Sunbury, 2014). Since retiring as Religion Editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, Jim has pursued his keen interest in history, with a focus on underappreciated aspects of our nation's local histories. Being a native of Waverly, Pa., he is pleased to be bringing his old hometown's remarkable black and abolitionist period to light.

Wendy Lesser's "You Say to Brick: The Life of Louis Kahn" is a major exploration of the architect's life and work. Born in Estonia 1901 and brought to America in 1906, the architect Louis Kahn grew up in poverty in Philadelphia. By the time of his mysterious death in 1974, he was widely recognized as one of the greatest architects of his era. Yet this enormous reputation was based on only a handful of masterpieces, all built during the last fifteen years of his life. Kahn, perhaps more than any other twentieth-century American architect, was a "public" architect. Rather than focusing on corporate commissions, he devoted himself to designing research facilities, government centers, museums, libraries, and other structures that would serve the public good. But this warm, captivating person, beloved by students and admired by colleagues, was also a secretive man hiding under a series of masks.

Historian Abdullah R. Muhammad examines a previously little-known and virtually untold aspect of Delaware's history—the hidden role of Africans in the often brutal mercantile expansionism by European colonizers in the 17th century. Swedish and Finnish communities on the East Coast, called New Sweden, played a significant role in forming the foundation upon which Delaware was eventually built.

As the last Don of the Philadelphia mob, Ralph Natale, the first-ever mob boss to turn state's evidence, provides an insider's perspective on the mafia. Natale's reign atop the Philadelphia and New Jersey underworlds brought the region's mafia back to prominence in the 1990s. Smart, savvy, and articulate, Natale came up in the mob and saw first-hand as it hatched its plan to control Atlantic City's casino unions. Later on, after spending 16 years in prison, he reclaimed the family as his own after a bloody mob war that left bodies scattered across South Philly. He forged connections around the country, invigorated the family with more allies than it had in two decades, and achieved a status within the mob never seen before or since until he was betrayed by his men and decided to testify against them in a stunning turn of events. With the full cooperation of Natale, New York Daily News reporter Larry McShane and producer Dan Pearson uncover the deadly reign of the last great mob boss of Philadelphia, a tale that covers a half-century of mob lore.

Veteran journalist Jennifer Lin takes readers from remote nineteenth-century mission outposts to Philadelphia and to the thriving house churches and cathedrals of today's China. The Lin family—and the book's central figure, the Reverend Lin Pu-chi—offer witness to China's tumultuous past, up to and beyond the betrayals and madness of the Cultural Revolution, when the family's resolute faith led to years of suffering. Forgiveness and redemption bring the story full circle. With its sweep of history and the intimacy of long-hidden family stories, Shanghai Faithful offers a fresh look at Christianity in China—past, present, and future.

In "Frontier Country," Patrick Spero addresses one of the most important and controversial subjects in American history: the frontier. Countering the modern conception of the American frontier as an area of expansion, Spero employs the eighteenth-century meaning of the term to show how colonists understood it as a vulnerable, militarized boundary. The Pennsylvania frontier, Spero argues, was constituted through conflicts not only between colonists and Native Americans but also among neighboring British colonies. These violent encounters created what Spero describes as a distinctive "frontier society" on the eve of the American Revolution that transformed the once-peaceful colony of Pennsylvania into a "frontier country."

On the morning of September 8, 1756, a band of about three hundred volunteers of a newly created Pennsylvania militia led by Lt. Col. John Armstrong crept slowly through the western Pennsylvania brush. The night before they had reviewed a plan to quietly surround and attack the Lenape, or Delaware, Indian village of Kittanning. The Pennsylvanians had learned that several prominent Delaware who had led recent attacks on frontier settlements as well as a number of white prisoners were at the village. Seeking reprisal, Armstrong's force successfully assaulted Kittanning, killing one of the Delaware they sought, but causing most to flee—along with their prisoners. Armstrong then ordered the village burned. The raid did not achieve all of its goals, but it did lead to the Indians relocating their villages further away from the frontier settlements. However, it was a major victory for those Pennsylvanians—including Quaker legislators—who believed the colony must be able to defend itself from outside attack, whether from the French, Indians, or another colony.

The Martin Archives is a unique inside look into C.F. Martin & Co.'s reign as America's oldest and most revered guitarmaker – viewed through a selection of images, correspondence, documents, and reproduced artifacts chosen from some 700,000 items the company has amassed over nearly two centuries. Many of these have lain unseen in the Martins' attic or vault for generations. From the concert halls of the pre-Civil War United States to the Grand Ole Opry stage to Woodstock, Coachella, and beyond, Martin's instruments have been on hand to give voice to the human spirit. The Martin Archives offers insights into those instruments and the persons who made them, as well as the times the Martins lived through. While some guitarmakers predate the advent of the business computer, Martin predates the typewriter, electric lights, and even the steam locomotive, and its archives reveal what an interesting ride that's been. Dick Boak is the director of the museum, archives, and special projects for the Martin Guitar Company. Description courtesy of Hal Leonard Books.