PA BOOKS on PCN

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 here in "Physician Soldier: The South Pacific Letters of Captain Fred Gabriel" from the 39th Station Hospital. Like most wartime hospitals, the 39th Station Hospital was positioned in a rear area and saw limited direct action. And like most wartime hospitals, the 39th Station Hospital spent each day confronting the injuries and casualties of frontline combat. Gabriel supervised a ward and oversaw the unit's laboratory, serving a hospital that provided care to four hundred patients at a time. Gabriel's letters home capture this experience and more, providing a revealing look into day-to-day life in the Pacific theater. He discusses the training of medical officers and female nurses, recreational activities such as Bob Hope's USO show, and even his thoughts on the death of FDR, the end of the war in Europe, and ultimately the horrors of the atomic bomb.

Michael P. Gabriel is professor of history at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania.

Description courtesy of Texas A & M University Press.

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 several decades that were paramount in the artistic learning and growth of a Brandywine Valley inheritor of the Wyeth legacy. From the first meeting between Karl Kuerner and Carolyn Wyeth in 1970 until her death in 1994 and Andy's passing in 2009 we are made privy to intimate conversations, discussions and anecdotes that have heretofore never been published. Carolyn recognized the talent that was hidden in the mind of Karl Kuerner almost from their first meeting and worked steadily to cultivate what has become a major artistic force. Carolyn was the primary player in the grooming of Karl J. Kuerner but Andrew was also a moving presence along with Frolic Weymouth and several other Chadds Ford personae. Included in this reflective work are over 65 paintings, drawings and illustrations, many never before seen in print. There are images by Karl, Carolyn and Andy and of Karl's great uncle, Christoph, from Germany. This marvelously detailed account of an artist's life is a must have for any student of the Wyeth family or for that matter any student of the Brandywine Valley and its rich history as an incubator of outstanding art and its creation.

Description courtesy of Cedar Tree Books.

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 distinctive urban center it is today. "Salut!" provides a history of Philadelphia seen through a particular cultural lens. The authors chronicle the French influence during colonial and revolutionary times. They highlight the contributions of nineteenth-century French philanthropists, such as Stephen Girard and the Dupont family. And they showcase the city's vibrant visual arts community featuring works from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Rodin Museum, the Barnes Foundation, and the Joan of Arc sculpture, as well as studies of artists Thomas Eakins, Mary Cassatt, and Henry Ossawa Tanner. There is also a profile of renowned Le Bec-Fin chef Georges Perrier, who made Philadelphia a renowned culinary destination in the twentieth century.

Lynn Miller is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Temple University.

Therese Dolan is Professor Emerita of Art History at Temple University's Tyler School of Art and Architecture.

Description courtesy of Temple University Press.

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 present day. Drawing from oral histories and the archives of the LGBT Center of Central PA History Project, this book recounts the innovative ways that LGBTQ central Pennsylvanians organized to demand civil rights and to improve their quality of life in a region that often rejected them.

William Burton is an author based in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Barry Loveland is retired from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and is the cofounder and chair of the LGBT Center of Central PA History Project.

Description courtesy of Penn State Press.

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 superseded musical traditions such as song and hymnody. Complex biophonic, geophonic, and anthrophonic acoustic environments―or soundscapes―characterized daily life in Moravian settlements such as Bethlehem, Nain, Gnadenhütten, and Friedenshütten. Through detailed analyses and historically informed recreations of Moravian communal, environmental, and religious soundscapes and their attendant hymn traditions, "Moravian Soundscapes" explores how sounds―musical and nonmusical, human and nonhuman―shaped the Moravians' religious culture. Combined with access to an interactive website that immerses the reader in mid-18th century Pennsylvania, and framed with an autobiographical narrative, Moravian Soundscapes recovers the roles of sound and music in Moravian communities and provides a road map for similar studies of other places and religious traditions in the future.

Sarah Eyerly is Associate Professor of Musicology and Director of the Early Music Program at the Florida State University.

"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—between them boasting an incredible twenty-six Pro Football Hall of Famers—collided in the playoffs five straight seasons and in the AFC title game three consecutive years.

Ed Gruver is an award-winning sportswriter and the author of several books.

Jim Campbell has worked at the Pro Football Hall of Fame and was a member of the Steelers' organization during their dynasty decade in the 1970s. He has written for numerous NFL publications and has authored several books on the NFL.

Description courtesy of University of Nebraska Press.

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 "conservatives" and repurposed Jacksonian Democracy as a tool for local majorities of white men to police racial and gender boundaries by democratically withholding rights. With the policy of "popular sovereignty," Democrats left slavery's expansion to white men's democratic decision-making. They also promised white men local democracy and individual autonomy regarding temperance, religion, and nativism. Translating white men's household mastery into political power over all women and Americans of color, Democrats united white men nationwide and made democracy a conservative assertion of white manhood. Democrats thereby turned traditional Jacksonian principles—grassroots democracy, liberal individualism, and anti-statism—into staples of conservatism.

Joshua A. Lynn is Assistant Professor of History at Eastern Kentucky University.

Description courtesy of the University of Virginia Press.

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 waterway now has cooler flows creating a self-sustaining wild trout population and establishing a modern-day fishing and boating industry to fuel the economy of the Upper Delaware River communities. Focusing on both the history and the author's personal story in helping preserve the fishery, this book gives readers a colorful and unique perspective of what it's like to fish the Delaware and how important it is to protect the cold-water fishery that is so valuable to the economy of the region.

Lee Hartman lives along the Upper Delaware River in Equinunk, PA. He is a 45-year veteran on the Delaware system and former owner of Indian Springs Fly Fishing Camp in Lordville, New York. Lee continues to guide on the river and host anglers to great fly-fishing destinations throughout the world.

Description courtesy of Stackpole Books.

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 radical sculptural imagination shaped the minimalist and kinetic art movements that emerged in the 1960s. And we see, as well, that through everything–their ever-expanding friendships with artists and writers of all stripes; working to end the war in Vietnam; hosting riotous dance parties at their Connecticut home; seeing the "mobile," Calder's essential artistic invention, find its way into Webster's dictionary–Calder and Louisa remained the risk-taking, singularly bohemian couple they had been since first meeting at the end of the Roaring Twenties. The biography ends with Calder's death in 1976 at the age of seventy-eight–only weeks after an encyclopedic retrospective of his work opened at the Whitney Museum in New York–but leaves us with a new, clearer understanding of his legacy, both as an artist and a man.

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. His previous books include Magicians and Charlatans, Antoine's Alphabet, and New Art City, which was a New York Times Notable Book and an Atlantic Book of the Year. He lives in New York City.

Description courtesy of Penguin Random House.

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 National Heritage Corridor. This is where geography, geology, and human genius met to begin the building of modern America. With maps, illustrations, and historic photographs, this book traces the development of the innovative industries that were founded in the Corridor as a result of this confluence of waterways, minerals, and minds – industries that became dominant in the nation and even the world during the past 200 years. As well, we see the people – some famous, some forgotten – whose persistence, determination, and hard work built those industries.

Martha Capwell Fox is a life-long student of American and Lehigh Valley industrial history, and now serves as the archivist and historian for the Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor.

Description courtesy of Canal History & Technology Press.