PA BOOKS on PCN

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PA BOOKS on PCN episodes

May 07, 2018 “Pennsylvania Farming: A History in Landscapes” with Sally McMurry
Pennsylvania Farming presents the first history of Pennsylvania agriculture in more than sixty years. Sally McMurry goes beyond a strictly economic approach and considers the diverse forces that helped shape the farming landscape, from physical factors to cultural repertoires to labor systems. Above all, the people who created and worked on Pennsylvania’s farms are placed at the center of attention. More than 150 photographs inform the interpretation, which offers a sweeping look at the evolution of Pennsylvania’s agricultural landscapes right up to the present day.
Sally McMurry is professor emerita of history at Pennsylvania State University, and former president of the Agricultural History Society.
Description courtesy of University of Pittsburgh Press.
58 min
April 30, 2018 "Hinsonville's Heroes: Black Civil War Soldiers in Chester County, PA" with Cheryl Renée Gooch
The free black community of Hinsonville sent its sons to serve the Union when called on. As members of the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Volunteers, brothers Wesley, William and George Jay survived the bloody battle at Fort Wagner, South Carolina, memorialized in the film Glory. George W. Duffy and Stephen J. Ringgold were part of the only black regiment to lead President Lincoln's funeral procession in Washington. William B. Fitzgerald, Abraham Stout, Samuel H. Blake and Isaac A. Hollingsworth fought with troops who cornered Robert E. Lee's army, forcing surrender at Appomattox Court House.

Cheryl Renée Gooch is dean of Arts, Humanities, Developmental Studies at Cumberland County College.

Description courtesy of The History Press.
59 min
April 23, 2018 "Looking Up: From the ABA to the NBA, the WNBA to the NCAA" with Jim O'Brien
In April 2003, Jim O'Brien was the first Pittsburgher inducted into the U.S. Basketball Writers Hall of Fame. This book is a celebration of 60th anniversary of a career as a professional sports writer. O'Brien was the founding editor of Street & Smith's Basketball Yearbook in 1970 and continued to be associated with the magazine for more than 35 years. It became the No. 1 selling annual of its kind in the country and the official NBA pre-season magazine. O'Brien also edited The Complete Handbook of Pro Basketball and wrote a column on pro basketball for The Sporting News for nine years. In "Looking Up," O'Brien tells inside stories of great basketball players, coaches, administrators, writers, and fans. It's about time spent with tall men, giants of the game, looking up from the best seat in the house.

Description courtesy of James P. O'Brien Publications.
59 min
April 16, 2018 "Prohibition Pittsburgh" with Richard Gazarik
When Prohibition hit the Steel City, it created a level of violence and corruption residents had never witnessed. Illegal producers ran stills in kitchens, basements, bathroom tubs, warehouses and even abandoned distilleries. War between gangs of bootleggers resulted in a number of murders and bombings that placed Pittsburgh on the same level as New York City and Chicago in criminal activity. John Bazzano ordered the killing of the Volpe brothers but did so without the permission of Mafia bosses. His battered body was later found on the street in Brooklyn. Author Richard Gazarik details the shady side of the Steel City during a tumultuous era.

Richard Gazarik has been a journalist in western Pennsylvania for more than forty years.

Description courtesy of The History Press.
53 min
April 10, 2018 "The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist" with Marcus Rediker
In The Fearless Benjamin Lay, renowned historian Marcus Rediker chronicles the transatlantic life and times of a singular man—a Quaker dwarf who demanded the total, unconditional emancipation of all enslaved Africans around the world. Mocked and scorned by his contemporaries, Lay was unflinching in his opposition to slavery, often performing colorful guerrilla theater to shame slave masters, insisting that human bondage violated the fundamental principles of Christianity. He drew on his ideals to create a revolutionary way of life, one that embodied the proclamation "no justice, no peace." Lay was born in 1682 in Essex, England. His philosophies, employments, and places of residence—spanning England, Barbados, Philadelphia, and the open seas—were markedly diverse over the course of his life. He worked as a shepherd, glove maker, sailor, and bookseller. His worldview was an astonishing combination of Quakerism, vegetarianism, animal rights, opposition to the death penalty, and abolitionism. While in Abington, Philadelphia, Lay lived in a cave-like dwelling surrounded by a library of two hundred books, and it was in this unconventional abode where he penned a fiery and controversial book against bondage, which Benjamin Franklin published in 1738. Always in motion and ever confrontational, Lay maintained throughout his life a steadfast opposition to slavery and a fierce determination to make his fellow Quakers denounce it, which they finally began to do toward the end of his life. With passion and historical rigor, Rediker situates Lay as a man who fervently embodied the ideals of democracy and equality as he practiced a unique concoction of radicalism nearly three hundred years ago. Rediker resurrects this forceful and prescient visionary, who speaks to us across the ages and whose innovative approach to activism is a gift, transforming how we consider the past and how we might imagine the future.

Marcus Rediker is Distinguished Professor of Atlantic History at the University of Pittsburgh and Senior Research Fellow at the Collège d'études mondiales in Paris.

Description courtesy of Beacon Press.
59 min
April 02, 2018 “Smoketown: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance” with Mark Whitaker
The other great renaissance of black culture, influence, and glamour burst forth joyfully in what may seem an unlikely place—Pittsburgh, PA—from the 1920s through the 1950s. Today black Pittsburgh is known as the setting for August Wilson’s famed plays about noble but doomed working-class strivers. But this community once had an impact on American history that rivaled the far larger black worlds of Harlem and Chicago. It published the most widely read black newspaper in the country, urging black voters to switch from the Republican to the Democratic Party and then rallying black support for World War II. It fielded two of the greatest baseball teams of the Negro Leagues and introduced Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers. Pittsburgh was the childhood home of jazz pioneers Billy Strayhorn, Billy Eckstine, Earl Hines, Mary Lou Williams, and Erroll Garner; Hall of Fame slugger Josh Gibson—and August Wilson himself. Some of the most glittering figures of the era were changed forever by the time they spent in the city, from Joe Louis and Satchel Paige to Duke Ellington and Lena Horne. Mark Whitaker’s Smoketown is a captivating portrait of this unsung community and a vital addition to the story of black America. It depicts how ambitious Southern migrants were drawn to a steel-making city on a strategic river junction; how they were shaped by its schools and a spirit of commerce with roots in the Gilded Age; and how their world was eventually destroyed by industrial decline and urban renewal.
Mark Whitaker is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, My Long Trip Home, and Smoketown. The former managing editor of CNN Worldwide, he was previously the Washington bureau chief for NBC News and a reporter and editor at Newsweek, where he rose to become the first African-American leader of a national newsweekly.
Description courtesy of Simon & Schuster.
1 hr
April 02, 2018 “Smoketown: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance” with Mark Whitaker
The other great renaissance of black culture, influence, and glamour burst forth joyfully in what may seem an unlikely place—Pittsburgh, PA—from the 1920s through the 1950s. Today black Pittsburgh is known as the setting for August Wilson’s famed plays about noble but doomed working-class strivers. But this community once had an impact on American history that rivaled the far larger black worlds of Harlem and Chicago. It published the most widely read black newspaper in the country, urging black voters to switch from the Republican to the Democratic Party and then rallying black support for World War II. It fielded two of the greatest baseball teams of the Negro Leagues and introduced Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers. Pittsburgh was the childhood home of jazz pioneers Billy Strayhorn, Billy Eckstine, Earl Hines, Mary Lou Williams, and Erroll Garner; Hall of Fame slugger Josh Gibson—and August Wilson himself. Some of the most glittering figures of the era were changed forever by the time they spent in the city, from Joe Louis and Satchel Paige to Duke Ellington and Lena Horne. Mark Whitaker’s Smoketown is a captivating portrait of this unsung community and a vital addition to the story of black America. It depicts how ambitious Southern migrants were drawn to a steel-making city on a strategic river junction; how they were shaped by its schools and a spirit of commerce with roots in the Gilded Age; and how their world was eventually destroyed by industrial decline and urban renewal.
Mark Whitaker is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, My Long Trip Home, and Smoketown. The former managing editor of CNN Worldwide, he was previously the Washington bureau chief for NBC News and a reporter and editor at Newsweek, where he rose to become the first African-American leader of a national newsweekly.
Description courtesy of Simon & Schuster.
1 hr
March 26, 2018 "The Senate Will Come To Order!" with Sen. Robert Jubelirer
Sen. Robert Jubelirer was first elected to the Pennsylvania Senate in 1974. Watergate was a deep wound on voter psyche, and Jubelirer was the lone Republican freshman Senator elected. Until his loss in a primary election in 2006, Jubelirer would serve skillfully and energetically, making a political career out of his willingness to fight in the face of long odds. Jubelirer was admired and respected on both sides of the political aisle, and while his views an actions were sometimes questioned, his integrity and commitment were never doubted. From the memorable people with whom he served to the media, lobbyists, and other political influencers, Jubelirer paints a picture of members of a political process that, while not always succeeding, strives to serve the needs of Pennsylvanians. He evaluates and grades the six governors he served under with honesty and candor and recounts his time as the longest-serving senate president pro tempore.

A graduate of Penn State University and the Penn State Dickinson School of Law, Sen. Robert Jubelirer served eight consecutive terms in the Pennsylvania Senate from 1974 to 2006. Jubelirer is now head of the government relations division of the law firm Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell & Hippel.
59 min
March 19, 2018 “Trumpet Call to Victory: The Final Years of Hazleton Saint Gabriel's Basketball” with Joe Farley
Trumpet Call to Victory tells the story of a small parochial high school located in the Pennsylvania coalfields that reached the summit of basketball glory in the late 1960s. Glorious victories and heartbreaking defeats are chronicled on Saint Gabriel’s path to capturing multiple state championships. Unsung heroes and scholastic superstars take center stage during what, in the last five years of the school’s existence, can only be described as a ‘golden age.' The feats of the greatest player in the region’s history are chronicled as is the beginning of a career for a coach who arranged to have a young Bobby Knight address his state championship team at the school’s sports banquet. That coach, Richard “Digger” Phelps, recently recalled his first head coaching job in a tweet which read, “St. Gabes was my first step to ND. They made it happen.”
Joe Farley was born and raised in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. He was a member of the last class to graduate from Hazleton Saint Gabriel’s High School where he demonstrated his academic prowess by graduating thirty-seventh in his class of forty. While attending Saint Gabriel’s, Mr. Farley was the starting point guard on the school’s 1970 state championship basketball team. He then attended Bloomsburg State University where he graduated with a degree in education.
Description courtesy of Sunbury Press.
59 min
March 19, 2018 “Trumpet Call to Victory: The Final Years of Hazleton Saint Gabriel's Basketball” with Joe Farley
Trumpet Call to Victory tells the story of a small parochial high school located in the Pennsylvania coalfields that reached the summit of basketball glory in the late 1960s. Glorious victories and heartbreaking defeats are chronicled on Saint Gabriel’s path to capturing multiple state championships. Unsung heroes and scholastic superstars take center stage during what, in the last five years of the school’s existence, can only be described as a ‘golden age.' The feats of the greatest player in the region’s history are chronicled as is the beginning of a career for a coach who arranged to have a young Bobby Knight address his state championship team at the school’s sports banquet. That coach, Richard “Digger” Phelps, recently recalled his first head coaching job in a tweet which read, “St. Gabes was my first step to ND. They made it happen.”
Joe Farley was born and raised in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. He was a member of the last class to graduate from Hazleton Saint Gabriel’s High School where he demonstrated his academic prowess by graduating thirty-seventh in his class of forty. While attending Saint Gabriel’s, Mr. Farley was the starting point guard on the school’s 1970 state championship basketball team. He then attended Bloomsburg State University where he graduated with a degree in education.
Description courtesy of Sunbury Press.
59 min

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PA Books features authors of books about Pennsylvania-related topics. These hour-long conversations allow authors to discuss both their subject matter and inspiration behind the books.