Kategoria BISAC: History >> United States - State & Local - Middle Atlantic (DC, DE, MD, NJ, NY, PA)

Rural Pennsylvania's landscapes are evocative, richly textured testimonies to the lives and skills of generations of builders--architects as well as local builders and craft workers. Farmhouses and barns, silos and fences, even field patterns attest to how residents over the years have had a sense of place that was not only functional but also comfortable and aesthetically appropriate for the time. From Sugar Camps to Star Barns tells the story of one such place, a landscape that evolved in southwestern Pennsylvania's Somerset County.

Sally McMurry traces the rural life and...

The Keystone State, so nicknamed because it was geographically situated in the middle of the thirteen original colonies and played a crucial role in the founding of the United States, has remained at the heart of American history. Created partly as a safe haven for people from all walks of life, Pennsylvania is today the home of diverse cultures, religions, ethnic groups, social classes, and occupations. Many ideas, institutions, and interests that were first formed or tested in Pennsylvania spread across America and beyond, and continue to inform American culture, society, and politics....

Published in 1916, this illustrated edition of Penn's Grandest Cavern begins with several legends of Penn's Cave and the surrounding area, followed by a description and history, all compiled and written by Henry W. Shoemaker. His description of the caverns reads like a travel guide, with information about not only the cave but also its formations, such as "The Lobster's Claw," "Statue of Liberty," and "Garden of the Gods." Shoemaker provided his readership with advice on the best ways to travel to the cave, including appropriate trains to take, and a review of the accommodations...

This Metalmark volume combines two of Henry W. Shoemaker's pamphlets, both published by Shoemaker's Times Tribune Co., which also published his newspaper, the Altoona Tribune. Pennsylvania Lion or Panther, published in 1914, provides a narrative look into the history and romance of Pennsylvania's mountain lion. Hunting lore and legends mix with local and natural history and Shoemaker's musings on the disappearance of this once prevalent animal. The pages are dedicated to J. T. Rothrock, whose description of the mountain lion's haunting cry graces the pages of this text....

Published in 1924, More Allegheny Episodes is the last of twelve volumes in Henry Shoemaker's Pennsylvania Folklore Series, published during the first three decades of the twentieth century. This volume is a companion and sequel to the author's 1922 Allegheny Episodes, containing more stories compiled from across Central and Western Pennsylvania. This collection includes twenty-eight tales recounted in Shoemaker's typical literary style.

In September 1787 the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia proposed a new Federal Constitution to replace the beleaguered Articles of Confederation. Each state then had to call a convention of its own to vote on ratification. Pennsylvania, like many states, was deeply divided over the new constitution. For six months Federalists and Antifederalists fought a bitter and, on occasion, violent political battle, with the Federalists ultimately prevailing.

In this detailed study of Pennsylvania, the first in fifty years, Owen S. Ireland argues that the overwhelming majority of voters...

Co-published with the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania German Society

Fifteenth-century Germany was the birthplace of movable type and of one of its powerful consequences, the broadside. These mass-produced printed sheets allowed both the Renaissance and the Reformation to spread with previously unimaginable speed, and when German immigrants made their way to North America, the cultural significance of the broadside followed. Don Yoder's The Pennsylvania German Broadside examines the history and legacy of these printed sheets within the Pennsylvania...

Three Mile Island burst into the nation's headlines twenty-five years ago, forever changing our view of nuclear power. The dramatic accident held the world's attention for an unsettling week in March 1979 as engineers struggled to understand what had happened and brought the damaged reactor to a safe condition. Much has been written since then about TMI, but it is not easy to find up-to-date information that is both reliable and accessible to the nonscientific reader. TMI 25 Years Later offers a much-needed "one-stop" resource for a new generation of citizens, students, and policy...

Published in 1891, Forty Years Among the Old Booksellers of Philadelphia contains the memoirs of William Brotherhead, a dealer in old and rare books. This remarkable volume offers valuable insights into literary society in nineteenth-century Philadelphia as well as the antiquarian book business. In addition to an overview of his own life in this changing profession, Brotherhead provides brief commentaries on more than thirty of his peers in the trade.

Forty Years Among the Old Booksellers of Philadelphia gives the reader a glimpse of the professional,...

Written after the lumber industry shifted westward out of the necessity of supply, Rafting Days in Pennsylvania presents numerous recollections of the days when Pennsylvania's lumber traveled by mighty river raft, across the state and beyond. This elite but dangerous trade had all but disappeared by the time the volume was published in 1922, but the industry loomed large in the memories of Pennsylvanians and the idea of "the last raft" became almost legendary.

This collection, edited by J. Herbert Walker, not only preserves the recollections and commemorations of the lumber...

The Civilian Conservation Corps was one of the most popular programs of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Over the nine years of the program, from 1933 to 1942, over two and one-half million unemployed young men found work on conservation projects across Depression-stricken America. "Roosevelt's Tree Army," as the CCC men were sometimes called, planted billions of trees, fought forest fires, did historic preservation work, and constructed recreational facilities in state and national parks. At Work in Penn's Woods offers a rich and compelling portrait of Pennsylvania's...

Allegheny Episodes is the eleventh of twelve volumes in Henry Shoemaker's Pennsylvania Folklore Series. Published in 1922--years before Shoemaker's time as Pennsylvania's first state folklorist--Allegheny Episodes includes twenty-five stories written in his typical literary style. Some tales recall famous hunters and loggers who made their way through Pennsylvania's rough country; others center on rivalry and lost love, ghosts and other supernatural phenomena, and the wilderness itself.

Shoemaker saw Pennsylvania's folklore as a melding of Native American and...

In the decades before the Civil War, the miserable living conditions of New York City's lower east side nurtured the gangs of New York. This book tells the story of the Bowery Boys, one gang that emerged as part urban legend and part street fighters for the city's legions of young workers. Poverty and despair led to a gang culture that was easily politicized, especially under the leadership of Mike Walsh who led a distinct faction of the Bowery Boys that engaged in the violent, almost anarchic, politics of the city during the 1840s and 1850s. Amid the toppled ballot boxes and battles for...

In 1832, 57 Irish Catholic workers were brought to the United States to lay one of the most difficult miles of American railway, Duffy's Cut of the Pennsylvania Railroad. These men were chosen because, in the eyes of the railroad company that hired them, they were expendable. Deaths were common during the building of the railway but this stretch was worse than most. When cholera swept the camp basic medical attention and community support was denied to them. In the end all 57 men--the entire work crew--died and were buried in a mass unmarked grave. Their families in Ireland were never...

The grave robbing of one of the country's wealthiest Gilded Age merchants--Alexander T. Stewart, the Merchant Prince of Manhattan--set off a firestorm in the media, and one of the most celebrated police investigations in the city's history. Immortalized in Mark Twain's humorous story, The Stolen White Elephant, this crime captured the imagination of the American public. Against the backdrop of high society Manhattan, and Gilded Age decadence, this book chronicles the case of the missing body of the Merchant of Manhattan and reveals some of the more unseemly and unusual sides of nineteenth...

For over two hundred years, the Catskill Mountains have been repeatedly and dramatically transformed by New York City. In Making Mountains, David Stradling shows the transformation of the Catskills landscape as a collaborative process, one in which local and urban hands, capital, and ideas have come together to reshape the mountains and the communities therein. This collaboration has had environmental, economic, and cultural consequences.

Early on, the Catskills were an important source of natural resources. Later, when New York City needed to expand its water supply,...

Cosmopolitan visions

Terry A. Cooney traces the evolution of the "Partisan Review"-often considered to be the most influential little magazine ever published in America-during its formative years, giving a lucid and dispassionate view of the magazine and its luminaries who played a leading role in shaping the public discourse of American intellectuals. Included are Lionel Trilling, Philip Rahv, William Phillips, Dwight Macdonald, F. W. Dupee, Mary McCarthy, Sidney Hook, Harold Rosenberg, and Delmore Schwartz, among others.
"An excellent book, which works at each level on which it...

"A small pearl of a book . . . a great tale of the growth of a modern city as seen through the rise and fall of the lowly oyster."
-Rocky Mountain News

Award-winning author Mark Kurlansky tells the remarkable story of New York by following the trajectory of one of its most fascinating inhabitants-the oyster.
For centuries New York was famous for this particular shellfish, which until the early 1900s played such a dominant a role in the city's life that the abundant bivalves were...

Luc Sante's Low Life is a portrait of America's greatest city, the riotous and anarchic breeding ground of modernity. This is not the familiar saga of mansions, avenues, and robber barons, but the messy, turbulent, often murderous story of the city's slums; the teeming streets--scene of innumerable cons and crimes whose cramped and overcrowded housing is still a prominent feature of the cityscape.

Low Life voyages through Manhattan from four different directions. Part One examines the actual topography of Manhattan from 1840 to 1919; Part Two, the era's opportunities...