PA BOOKS on PCN

Joe Farrell, Joe Farley, and Lawrence Knorr have traveled across the eastern USA to the graves of over 200 founding fathers (and mothers) responsible for the birth of the United States of America. This special volume about Pennsylvania includes those that lived, worked, and or died in Pennsylvania. Included in this volume are biographies and grave information for 44 of these luminaries who made significant contributions to the Revolutionary cause.

Lawrence Knorr has authored or co-authored over 20 books, mostly on history or biography. He is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), the Sons of the American Revolution, and numerous other historical organizations. He enjoys most writing about the formerly famous and his beloved Pennsylvania Dutch culture. He is a lifetime Penn State alum.

Joe Farrell was born in Brooklyn and raised on the mean streets of Queens. He attended and graduated from Catholic schools in New York and went on to College at St. Vincent College where he graduated with a degree in Psychology. He studied Clinical Psychology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and Public Administration at Shippensburg.

Joe Farley was born and raised in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. He attended Bloomsburg University where he graduated with a degree in education. In 1975 Mr. Farley began a 35-year public service career working for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Upon his retirement in 2010, he began work on the Keystone Tombstone series with his coauthor Joe Farrell. To date, there are thirteen volumes in that series. Farley and Farrell have also authored Gotham Graves Volumes One and Two. Mr. Farley also penned "Song Poems in Search of Music" in 2014 He and his wife Sharon reside in New Cumberland, Pennsylvania. They have three children.

Description courtesy of Sunbury Press.

Harriet Tubman is best known as one of the most famous conductors on the Underground Railroad. As a leading abolitionist, her bravery and selflessness has inspired generations in the continuing struggle for civil rights. Now, National Book Award nominee Erica Armstrong Dunbar presents a fresh take on this American icon blending traditional biography, illustrations, photos, and engaging sidebars that illuminate the life of Tubman as never before. Not only did Tubman help liberate hundreds of slaves, she was the first woman to lead an armed expedition during the Civil War, worked as a spy for the Union Army, was a fierce suffragist, and was an advocate for the aged. She Came to Slay reveals the many complexities and varied accomplishments of one of our nation's true heroes and offers an accessible and modern interpretation of Tubman's life that is both informative and engaging. Filled with rare outtakes of commentary, an expansive timeline of Tubman's life, photos (both new and those in public domain), commissioned illustrations, and sections including "Harriet By the Numbers" (number of times she went back down south, approximately how many people she rescued, the bounty on her head) and "Harriet's Homies" (those who supported her over the years), She Came to Slay is a stunning and powerful mix of pop culture and scholarship and proves that Harriet Tubman is well deserving of her permanent place in our nation's history.

Erica Armstrong Dunbar is the Charles and Mary Beard Professor of History at Rutgers University.

Description courtesy of Simon & Schuster.

Pittsburgh's explosive industrial and population growth between the mid-nineteenth century and the Great Depression required constant attention to city-building. Private, profit-oriented firms, often with government involvement, provided necessary transportation, energy resources, and suitable industrial and residential sites. Meeting these requirements in the region's challenging hilly topographical and riverine environment resulted in the dramatic reshaping of the natural landscape. At the same time, the Pittsburgh region's free market, private enterprise emphasis created socio-economic imbalances and badly polluted the air, water, and land. Industrial stagnation, temporarily interrupted by wars, and then followed deindustrialization inspired the formation of powerful public-private partnerships to address the region's mounting infrastructural, economic, and social problems. The sixteen essays in Making Industrial Pittsburgh Modern examine important aspects of the modernizing efforts to make Pittsburgh and Southwestern Pennsylvania a successful metropolitan region. The city-building experiences continue to influence the region's economic transformation, spatial structure, and life experience.

Edward K. Muller is emeritus professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh, where he was a former chair of the Department of History, former director of the urban studies program, and a Fulbright Research Scholar in New Zealand. He is founding member and former chair of the Board of Trustees of the Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area.

Joel A. Tarr is the Caliguiri University Professor of History and Policy at Carnegie Mellon University where he has taught for over fifty years. He is the recipient of CMU's Robert Doherty Prize for "substantial and sustained contributions to excellence in education" (1992), the Leonardo da Vinci Medal of the Society of the History of Technology (2008), the American Environmental History Association Distinguished Service Award (2015), and the Founders Award, National Council on Public History (2018).

Description courtesy of University of Pittsburgh Press.

The Joseph Horne Company, popularly known as Horne's, was a beloved and integral part of Pittsburghers' lives for generations. It was the first department store in the Steel City, staking its ground at the landmark flagship store on Penn Avenue and Stanwix Street. Starting as a small dry goods store, the company expanded into a regional retail powerhouse with a reputation for selling high-quality goods in elegant spaces. Horne's succumbed to the fate of other department stores amid changing consumer habits, and a short-lived stint as a Lazarus store was the final chapter in more than 140 years of history. The community still enjoys the tree on the corner of the former Horne's building, now Highmark, that is lit each year to usher in Pittsburgh's holiday season.

In 1871, Jacob and Isaac Kaufmann created a classic Pittsburgh institution. The business grew from a small store on the South Side to a mammoth clothing house downtown that outfitted the community. The removal of the original freestanding clock upset customers, so Kaufmann's added its iconic version in 1913. A redesign of the store's first floor attracted national attention in the 1930s. While most Pittsburghers remember and celebrate the downtown store, others recall the suburban branches--miniatures of the expansive flagship store. Join Letitia Stuart Savage on a journey to a time of leisurely shopping for the latest fashions complete with a side of Mile High Ice Cream Pie from the Tic Toc Restaurant.

Letitia Stuart Savage is a freelance writer who has contributed to local and national publications including Country Journal, Kitchen Garden, Dog Fancy and The Chronicle of the Horse. She earned a BS in biology and established environmental education programs in several Allegheny County parks before becoming an environmental consultant. In the past, she has contributed history articles to Pennsylvania Heritage.

Description courtesy of The History Press.

In this authoritative and engrossing full-scale biography, Walter Isaacson, bestselling author of Einstein and Steve Jobs, shows how the most fascinating of America's founders helped define our national character.

Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us, the one who seems made of flesh rather than marble. In a sweeping narrative that follows Franklin's life from Boston to Philadelphia to London and Paris and back, Walter Isaacson chronicles the adventures of the runaway apprentice who became, over the course of his eighty-four-year life, America's best writer, inventor, media baron, scientist, diplomat, and business strategist, as well as one of its most practical and ingenious political leaders. He explores the wit behind Poor Richard's Almanac and the wisdom behind the Declaration of Independence, the new nation's alliance with France, the treaty that ended the Revolution, and the compromises that created a near-perfect Constitution.

In this colorful and intimate narrative, Isaacson provides the full sweep of Franklin's amazing life, showing how he helped to forge the American national identity and why he has a particular resonance in the twenty-first century.

Description courtesy of Amazon

"The Life and Loves of Thaddeus Stevens" is an insightful look at one of the most misunderstood figures of the 19th Century. Stevens, the driving force behind landmark civil rights laws, education policy, and economic development initiatives, is presented in this book as both an uncompromising politician and a vulnerable human shaped by his own passions. The book captures the highlights of Stevens's career at the local, state, and federal levels but does not shy away from the story of his relationships with several paramours. These relationships, whispered about during his lifetime and long after his death, denied him his proper place as a true historical figure, a key counselor to Presidents, and a visionary leader who lived and died for the basic right of equality for all men and women.

Mark Singel was lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania from 1987 through 1995 and, for a period of time, Acting Governor.

Description courtesy of Sunbury Press.

Among experts, Oscar Charleston is regarded as the best player in Negro Leagues history. During his prime he became a legend in Cuba and one of black America's most popular figures. Yet even among serious sports fans, Oscar Charleston is virtually unknown today. In a long career spanning from 1915 to 1954, Charleston played against, managed, befriended, and occasionally fought men such as Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Lefty Grove, Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Jesse Owens, Roy Campanella, and Branch Rickey. He displayed tremendous power, speed, and defensive instincts along with a fierce intelligence and commitment to his craft. Charleston's competitive fire sometimes brought him trouble, but more often it led to victories, championships, and profound respect. While Charleston never played in the Major Leagues, he was a trailblazer who became the first black man to work as a scout for a Major League team when Branch Rickey hired him to evaluate players for the Dodgers in the 1940s. From the mid‑1920s on, he was a player‑manager for several clubs. In 1932 he joined the Pittsburgh Crawfords and would manage the club many consider the finest Negro League team of all time, featuring five future Hall of Famers, including himself, Cool Papa Bell, Josh Gibson, Judy Johnson, and Satchel Paige.

Jeremy Beer is a founding partner at American Philanthropic in Phoenix. He is the author of The Philanthropic Revolution: An Alternative History of American Charity and his writing on sports, society, and culture has appeared in the Washington Post, National Review, First Things, and the Baseball Research Journal.

Description courtesy of the University of Nebraska Press.

Winch has written the first full-length biography of James Forten, a hero of African American history and one of the most remarkable men in 19th-century America.

Born into a free black family in 1766, Forten served in the Revolutionary War as a teenager. By 1810 he had earned the distinction of being the leading sailmaker in Philadelphia. Soon after Forten emerged as a leader in Philadelphia's black community and was active in a wide range of reform activities. Especially prominent in national and international antislavery movements, he served as vice-president of the American Anti-Slavery Society and became close friends with William Lloyd Garrison to whom he lent money to start up the Liberator. His family were all active abolitionists and a granddaughter, Charlotte Forten, published a famous diary of her experiences teaching ex-slaves in South Carolina's Sea Islands during the Civil War.

This is the first serious biography of Forten, who stands beside Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and Martin Luther King, Jr., in the pantheon of African Americans who fundamentally shaped American history.

Description courtesy of Amazon

In 1919, the steel industry of Pittsburgh was on the brink of war. Years of labor strife broke out into open conflict as steel workers launched the biggest strike to date in the United States, paralyzing mills from Youngstown to Johnstown and beyond. Radical unionists, anarchists and Bolshevik sympathizers set bombs, planned for revolution and fought police in violent battles. As the postwar Red Scare began to sweep the nation, federal agents used the strikes as an excuse to comb Pittsburgh's immigrant neighborhoods looking for communists. Author Ryan C. Brown details the harrowing days of the Great Steel Strike of 1919 that rocked Pittsburgh and its seemingly impregnable "principality of steel."

Ryan C. Brown is a journalist and writer based in Pittsburgh.

Description courtesy of the History Press.