Pa Books On Pcn

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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 th

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

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 Com

In Wounded Lions, acclaimed sport historian and longtime Penn State professor Ronald A. Smith heavily draws from university archives to answer the How? and Why? at the heart of the scandal. The Sandusky case was far from the first example of illegal behavior related to the football program or the university's attempts to suppress news of it. As Smith shows, decades of infighting among administrators, alumni, trustees, faculty, and coaches established policies intended to protect the university, and the football team considered synonymous with its name, at all costs.

More than 150 years ago, 27-year-old Irish immigrant Josiah Moore met 19-year-old Jennie Lindsay, a member of one of Peoria, Illinois's most prominent families. The Civil War had just begun, Josiah was the captain of the 17th Illinois Infantry, and his war would be a long and bloody one. Their courtship and romance, which came to light in a rare and unpublished series of letters, forms the basis of Gene Barr's memorable “A Civil War Captain and His Lady: A True Story of Love, Courtship, and Combat.”

The Life and Songs of Stephen Foster offers an engaging reassessment of the life, politics, and legacy of the misunderstood father of American music. Once revered the world over, Foster’s plantation songs, like “Old Folks at Home” and “My Old Kentucky Home,” fell from grace in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement due to their controversial lyrics. Foster embraced the minstrel tradition for a brief time, refining it and infusing his songs with sympathy for slaves, before abandoning the genre for respectable parlor music. The youngest child in a large family, he grew up in the shadows of a successful older brother and his president brother-in-law, James Buchanan, and walked a fine line between the family’s conservative politics and his own pro-Lincoln sentiments. Foster lived most of his life just outside of industrial, smoke-filled Pittsburgh and wrote songs set in a pastoral South—unsullied by the grime of industry but tarnished by the injustice of slavery. JoAnne O’Connell has a background in history and c

When George Washington was elected president, he reluctantly left behind his beloved Mount Vernon to serve in Philadelphia, the temporary seat of the nation’s capital, after a brief stay in New York. In setting up his household he took Tobias Lear, his celebrated secretary, and nine slaves, including Ona Judge, about which little has been written. As he grew accustomed to Northern ways, there was one change he couldn’t get his arms around: Pennsylvania law required enslaved people be set free after six months of residency in the state. Rather than comply, Washington decided to circumvent the law. Every six months he sent the slaves back down south just as the clock was about to expire. Though Ona Judge lived a life of relative comfort, the few pleasantries she was afforded were nothing compared to freedom, a glimpse of which she encountered first-hand in Philadelphia. So, when the opportunity presented itself one clear and pleasant spring day in Philadelphia, Judge left everything she knew to escape to New En

Considering Baltimore and Philadelphia as part of a larger, Mid-Atlantic borderland, “The Politics of Black Citizenship” shows that the antebellum effort to secure the rights of American citizenship was central to black politics—it was an effort that sought to exploit the ambiguities of citizenship and negotiate the complex national, state, and local politics in which that concept was determined. In this book Andrew Diemer examines the diverse tactics that free blacks employed in defense of their liberties—including violence and the building of autonomous black institutions—as well as African Americans' familiarity with the public policy and political struggles that helped shape those freedoms in the first place. Andrew K. Diemer is assistant professor of history at Towson University. His work has been published in the Journal of Military History, Slavery and Abolition, and the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. Description courtesy of University of Georgia Press.

In “Playing Through the Whistle,” celebrated sportswriter S. L. Price tells the story of a remarkable place, its people, its players, and, through it, a wider story of American history from the turn of the twentieth century. Aliquippa has been many things—a rigidly controlled company town, a booming racial and ethnic melting pot, a battleground for union rights, and, for a brief time, a sort of workers’ paradise. Price expertly traces this history, following the growth and decline of industry and the struggles and triumphs of Eastern European immigrants and blacks from the South willing to trade their grueling labor for a better life for their families. S. L. Price, a senior writer at Sports Illustrated since 1994, is the author of three previous books: Heart of the Game; Pitching Around Fidel, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Far Afield. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his family. Description courtesy of Grove Atlantic.