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PA BOOKS on PCN episodes

June 12, 2017 "Silk Stockings and Socialism" with Sharon McConnell-Sidorick
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 federations like the Congress of Industrial Organizations and government programs like the New Deal did not spring from the heads of union leaders or policy experts but were instead nurtured by grassroots social movements across America.

Sharon McConnell-Sidorick is an independent scholar and lives in the Philadelphia area.
54 min
June 05, 2017 "Keystone Fly Fishing" with Henry Ramsay, Dave Rothrock and Len Lichvar
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 a contract fly designer for Umpqua Feather Merchants. He lives in Birdsboro, Pennsylvania.

Dave Rothrock is a part-time guide and fly fishing and casting instructor (Salmo Trutta Enterprises). His articles have appeared in Fly Fisherman, American Angler, and Pennsylvania Angler magazines as well as other publications. His fly patterns have graced the pages of various publications, books, and calendars. He has presented programs on fly-fishing related topics to groups throughout the eastern U.S. and Canada and was previously an instructor in the L. L. Bean fly fishing schools. He lives in Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania.

Len Lichvar is the District Manager of the Somerset Conservation District, District 4 Commissioner, professional freelance outdoor writer/photographer published in local, state, and national publications, and the Outdoors Correspondent for the Somerset Daily American. A long time member of the Pennsylvania Outdoor Writers Association, he is also an active member of many local and state sportsmen's groups, as well as conservation and civic improvement organizations. Len resides in Boswell, Pennsylvania. Along with wife, Becky, he has two children, Laurel and Logan, and a granddaughter, Mackenzie.
1 hr
June 05, 2017 "Sesqui!: Greed, Graft, and the Forgotten World's Fair of 1926" with Thomas Keels
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. Vare-against the transformations taking place in America during the 1920s. Keels provides a comprehensive account of the Sesqui as a meeting ground for cultural changes sweeping the country: women's and African-American rights, anti-Semitism, eugenics, Prohibition, and technological advances.

Thomas H. Keels is a historian and lecturer who has authored or co-authored seven books and numerous articles on Philadelphia history. A confirmed taphophile, Keels has been a tour guide at Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia's premier Victorian necropolis, for two decades.
59 min
June 05, 2017 "Embattled Freedom: Chronicle of a Fugitive-Slave Haven in the Wary North" with Jim Remsen
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 Teaoga" (Sunbury, 2014). Since retiring as Religion Editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, Jim has pursued his keen interest in history, with a focus on underappreciated aspects of our nation's local histories. Being a native of Waverly, Pa., he is pleased to be bringing his old hometown's remarkable black and abolitionist period to light.
59 min
May 30, 2017 "The Life of Louis Kahn: You Say to Brick" with Wendy Lesser
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.
59 min
May 15, 2017 "Africans in New Sweden: The Untold Story" with Abdullah Muhammad
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.
58 min
May 08, 2017 "The Schenley Experiment: A Social History of Pittsburgh's First Public High School" with Jake Oresick
"The Schenley Experiment" is the story of Pittsburgh’s first public high school, a social incubator in a largely segregated city that was highly—even improbably—successful throughout its 156-year existence. Established in 1855 as Central High School and reorganized in 1916, Schenley High School was a model of innovative public education and an ongoing experiment in diversity. Its graduates include Andy Warhol, actor Bill Nunn, and jazz virtuoso Earl Hines, and its prestigious academic program (and pensions) lured such teachers as future Pulitzer Prize winner Willa Cather. The subject of investment as well as destructive neglect, the school reflects the history of the city of Pittsburgh and provides a study in both the best and worst of urban public education practices there and across the Rust Belt.
59 min
April 18, 2017 "Last Don Standing: The Secret Life of Mob Boss Ralph Natale" with Larry McShane and Dan Pearson
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 that covers a half-century of mob lore.
58 min
April 11, 2017 "Shanghai Faithful: Betrayal and Forgiveness in a Chinese Christian Family" with Jennifer Lin
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.
57 min
April 04, 2017 "Frontier Country" with Patrick Spero
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."
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.