If the Mason-Dixon Line could talk, here are the stories. It would tell. Pulitzerprize winning reporter and travel writer Bill Ecenbarger has walked the Mason-Dixon line - from its beginning on Fenwick Island, Delaware, to its end at Brown's Hill, Pennsylvania - diverting left and right to Interview the people who live along its border. The line was surveyed between 1763 and 1768 by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon to settle a dispute between Robert Penn and Lord Calvert, whose family owned what is now the state of Maryland. In 1780, Pennsylvania passed a law to abolish slavery, making the...

From the Pulitzer Prizewinning Philadelphia Inquirer reporter William Ecenbarger comes the expose of a shocking scandal that ruined thousands of young livesin paperback for the first time. As the Boston Globe wrote, "The story is incredible: Thousands of children wrongfully sentenced to juvenile detention centers, many without legal representation and after cursory hearings, by two rogue judges in northern Pennsylvania who received millions of dollars in bribes from the private institutions' owners." The story has all the elements of a true-crime legal thrillermafia connections,...

With a biting mix of wonder and pride, William Ecenbarger observes that in the quirky state of Pennsylvania, the town of Mauch Chunk changed its name to Jim Thorpe even though the famous Indian athlete never set foot in it.
A former journalist for the Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine, and author of the bestseller Kids for Cash, Ecenbarger has collected a dozen of his fascinating articles showcasing the Keystone State in Pennsylvania Stories Well Told. He provides a history of the pencil, and considers why the first day of Pennsylvania s deer hunting season the...