PA BOOKS on PCN

In this poignant and personal history of one of America’s oldest theaters, Leslie Stainton captures the story not just of an extraordinary building but of a nation’s tumultuous struggle to invent itself. Built in 1852 and in use ever since, the Fulton Theatre in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, is uniquely ghosted. Its foundations were once the walls of a colonial jail that in 1763 witnessed the massacre of the last surviving Conestoga Indians. Those same walls later served to incarcerate fugitive slaves. Staging Ground explores these tragic events and their enduring resonance in a building that later became a town hall, theater, and movie house—the site of minstrel shows, productions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, oratory by the likes of Thaddeus Stevens and Mark Twain, performances by Buffalo Bill and his troupe of “Wild Indians,” Hollywood Westerns, and twenty-first-century musicals.

Interweaving past and present, private anecdote and public record, Stainton unfolds the story of this emblematic space, where for more than 250 years Americans scripted and rescripted their history. 

Leslie Stainton is the author of Lorca: A Dream of Life, which received the Society of Midland Authors Award for Biography. Her work has appeared in The New York Times,Washington Post, Opera News, American Theatre, Michigan Quarterly Review, and River Teeth, among many other journals.

For months they made news: Two suburban mothers whose only children were violently snatched away. Lynn Shiner’s family dominated the news beginning on Christmas day in 1994 when her ex-husband murdered Jen and Dave, her two young children.

Nancy Chavez returned from a cruise in 2003 to learn that her only daughter, Randi, had been stabbed to death in her garage. Months later she would learn that the murderer had been hired by her daughter’s husband.

In their new book, Stabbed in the Heart, Lynn Shiner and Nancy Chavez discuss the dark, months and years that followed these horrific crimes. Readers walk with them as they bury their children and observe them as they wallow in depression almost too deep to imagine. Somehow, from the depths of their despair, they uncovered the focus, drive, and commitment to helping others that is their gift back to their children.

Lynn Shiner turned her efforts toward other victims. Today she is the Director of the Office of Victims’ Services with the PA Commission on Crime and Delinquency. In 2004, she was presented with the National Crime Victim Service Award by Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Nancy Chavez, also a long-time employee of the state of Pennsylvania, channels her efforts toward her dream of building Randi’s House of Angels, a healing place for children who are exposed to and/ or are the victims of domestic violence. Randi’s House of Angels, established in October 2011, currently works in conjunction with domestic violence service providers in five counties in Pennsylvania.

Stabbed in the Heart was written in conjunction with Nancy Eshelman, a long-time journalist and author of a weekly column that appears in The Harrisburg Patriot-News.

For months they made news: Two suburban mothers whose only children were violently snatched away. Lynn Shiner’s family dominated the news beginning on Christmas day in 1994 when her ex-husband murdered Jen and Dave, her two young children.

Nancy Chavez returned from a cruise in 2003 to learn that her only daughter, Randi, had been stabbed to death in her garage. Months later she would learn that the murderer had been hired by her daughter’s husband.

In their new book, Stabbed in the Heart, Lynn Shiner and Nancy Chavez discuss the dark, months and years that followed these horrific crimes. Readers walk with them as they bury their children and observe them as they wallow in depression almost too deep to imagine. Somehow, from the depths of their despair, they uncovered the focus, drive, and commitment to helping others that is their gift back to their children.

Lynn Shiner turned her efforts toward other victims. Today she is the Director of the Office of Victims’ Services with the PA Commission on Crime and Delinquency. In 2004, she was presented with the National Crime Victim Service Award by Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Nancy Chavez, also a long-time employee of the state of Pennsylvania, channels her efforts toward her dream of building Randi’s House of Angels, a healing place for children who are exposed to and/ or are the victims of domestic violence. Randi’s House of Angels, established in October 2011, currently works in conjunction with domestic violence service providers in five counties in Pennsylvania.

Stabbed in the Heart was written in conjunction with Nancy Eshelman, a long-time journalist and author of a weekly column that appears in The Harrisburg Patriot-News.

Despite the thousands of books and articles written about Gettysburg, Tom Ryan's groundbreaking Spies, Scouts, and Secrets in the Gettysburg Campaign: How the Critical Role of Intelligence Impacted the Outcome of Lee's Invasion of the North, June - July 1863 is the first to offer a unique and incisive comparative study of intelligence operations during what many consider the war's decisive campaign.

Based upon years of indefatigable research, the author evaluates how Gen. Robert E. Lee used intelligence resources, including cavalry, civilians, newspapers, and spies to gather information about Union activities during his invasion of the North in June and July 1863, and how this intelligence influenced General Lee's decisions. Simultaneously, Ryan explores the effectiveness of the Union Army of the Potomac's intelligence and counterintelligence operations. Both Maj. Gens. Joe Hooker and George G. Meade relied upon cavalry, the Signal Corps, and an intelligence staff known as the Bureau of Military Information that employed innovative concepts to gather, collate, and report vital information from a variety of sources.

Thomas Ryan is the former president of the Central Delaware Civil War Round Table, and a longtime member of the Gettysburg Foundation and the Civil War Trust. He has published more than 125 articles and book reviews on Civil War subjects, many dealing with intelligence operations, and writes a bi-weekly column called “Civil War Profiles” for Coastal Point, a Delaware newspaper. He is the author of Essays on Delaware during the Civil War: A Political, Military and Social Perspective (2012). Ryan served three years in the United States Army and more than three decades with the U.S. Department of Defense in various intelligence operations-related capacities. Now retired, he and his wife live in Bethany Beach, Delaware.

Despite the thousands of books and articles written about Gettysburg, Tom Ryan's groundbreaking Spies, Scouts, and Secrets in the Gettysburg Campaign: How the Critical Role of Intelligence Impacted the Outcome of Lee's Invasion of the North, June - July 1863 is the first to offer a unique and incisive comparative study of intelligence operations during what many consider the war's decisive campaign.

Based upon years of indefatigable research, the author evaluates how Gen. Robert E. Lee used intelligence resources, including cavalry, civilians, newspapers, and spies to gather information about Union activities during his invasion of the North in June and July 1863, and how this intelligence influenced General Lee's decisions. Simultaneously, Ryan explores the effectiveness of the Union Army of the Potomac's intelligence and counterintelligence operations. Both Maj. Gens. Joe Hooker and George G. Meade relied upon cavalry, the Signal Corps, and an intelligence staff known as the Bureau of Military Information that employed innovative concepts to gather, collate, and report vital information from a variety of sources.

Thomas Ryan is the former president of the Central Delaware Civil War Round Table, and a longtime member of the Gettysburg Foundation and the Civil War Trust. He has published more than 125 articles and book reviews on Civil War subjects, many dealing with intelligence operations, and writes a bi-weekly column called “Civil War Profiles” for Coastal Point, a Delaware newspaper. He is the author of Essays on Delaware during the Civil War: A Political, Military and Social Perspective (2012). Ryan served three years in the United States Army and more than three decades with the U.S. Department of Defense in various intelligence operations-related capacities. Now retired, he and his wife live in Bethany Beach, Delaware.

This book explores the history of Pittsburghese, the language of the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area as it is imagined and used by Pittsburghers. Pittburghese is linked to local identity so strongly that it is alluded to almost every time people talk about what Pittsburgh is like, or what it means to be a Pittsburgher. But what happened during the second half of the 20th century to reshape a largely unnoticed way of speaking into this highly visible urban "dialect"? In this book, sociolinguist Barbara Johnstone focuses on this question. Treating Pittsburghese as a cultural product of talk, writing, and other forms of social practice, Johnstone shows how non-standard pronunciations, words, and bits of grammar used in the Pittsburgh area were taken up into a repertoire of words and phrases and a vocal style that has become one of the most resonant symbols of local identity in the United States today.

Barbara Johnstone is Professor of Rhetoric and Linguistics at Carnegie Mellon University. She is the author of Repetition in Arabic Discourse (Benjamins, 1990), Stories, Community, and Place: Narratives from Middle America (Indiana UP, 1990), The Linguistic Individual (Oxford, 1996), and two textbooks. Her research has explored how people evoke and shape places in talk and what can be learned by taking the perspective of the individual on language and discourse.

This book explores the history of Pittsburghese, the language of the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area as it is imagined and used by Pittsburghers. Pittburghese is linked to local identity so strongly that it is alluded to almost every time people talk about what Pittsburgh is like, or what it means to be a Pittsburgher. But what happened during the second half of the 20th century to reshape a largely unnoticed way of speaking into this highly visible urban "dialect"? In this book, sociolinguist Barbara Johnstone focuses on this question. Treating Pittsburghese as a cultural product of talk, writing, and other forms of social practice, Johnstone shows how non-standard pronunciations, words, and bits of grammar used in the Pittsburgh area were taken up into a repertoire of words and phrases and a vocal style that has become one of the most resonant symbols of local identity in the United States today.

Barbara Johnstone is Professor of Rhetoric and Linguistics at Carnegie Mellon University. She is the author of Repetition in Arabic Discourse (Benjamins, 1990), Stories, Community, and Place: Narratives from Middle America (Indiana UP, 1990), The Linguistic Individual (Oxford, 1996), and two textbooks. Her research has explored how people evoke and shape places in talk and what can be learned by taking the perspective of the individual on language and discourse.

Sensational tales of true-life crime, the devastation of the Irish potato famine, the upheaval of the Civil War, and the turbulent emergence of the American labor movement are connected in a captivating exploration of the roots of the Molly Maguires. A secret society of peasant assassins in Ireland that re-emerged in Pennsylvania’s hard-coal region, the Mollies organized strikes, murdered mine bosses, and fought the Civil War draft. Their shadowy twelve-year duel with all powerful coal companies marked the beginning of class warfare in America. But little has been written about the origins of this struggle and the folk culture that informed everything about the Mollies.

A rare book about the birth of the secret society, The Sons of Molly Maguire delves into the lost world of peasant Ireland to uncover the astonishing links between the folk justice of the Mollies and the folk drama of the Mummers, who performed a holiday play that always ended in a mock killing. The link not only explains much about Ireland’s Molly Maguires—where the name came from, why the killers wore women’s clothing, why they struck around holidays—but also sheds new light on the Mollies’ re-emergence in Pennsylvania.

The book follows the Irish to the anthracite region, which was transformed into another Ulster by ethnic, religious, political, and economic conflicts. It charts the rise there of an Irish secret society and a particularly political form of Mummery just before the Civil War, shows why Molly violence was resurrected amid wartime strikes and conscription, and explores how the cradle of the American Mollies became a bastion of later labor activism. Combining sweeping history with an intensely local focus, The Sons of Molly Maguire is the captivating story of when, where, how, and why the first of America’s labor wars began.

Sensational tales of true-life crime, the devastation of the Irish potato famine, the upheaval of the Civil War, and the turbulent emergence of the American labor movement are connected in a captivating exploration of the roots of the Molly Maguires. A secret society of peasant assassins in Ireland that re-emerged in Pennsylvania’s hard-coal region, the Mollies organized strikes, murdered mine bosses, and fought the Civil War draft. Their shadowy twelve-year duel with all powerful coal companies marked the beginning of class warfare in America. But little has been written about the origins of this struggle and the folk culture that informed everything about the Mollies.

A rare book about the birth of the secret society, The Sons of Molly Maguire delves into the lost world of peasant Ireland to uncover the astonishing links between the folk justice of the Mollies and the folk drama of the Mummers, who performed a holiday play that always ended in a mock killing. The link not only explains much about Ireland’s Molly Maguires—where the name came from, why the killers wore women’s clothing, why they struck around holidays—but also sheds new light on the Mollies’ re-emergence in Pennsylvania.

The book follows the Irish to the anthracite region, which was transformed into another Ulster by ethnic, religious, political, and economic conflicts. It charts the rise there of an Irish secret society and a particularly political form of Mummery just before the Civil War, shows why Molly violence was resurrected amid wartime strikes and conscription, and explores how the cradle of the American Mollies became a bastion of later labor activism. Combining sweeping history with an intensely local focus, The Sons of Molly Maguire is the captivating story of when, where, how, and why the first of America’s labor wars began.

Historians acknowledge that World War II touched every man, woman, and child in the United States. In Small Town America in World War II, Ronald E. Marcello uses oral history interviews with civilians and veterans to explore how the citizens of Wrightsville, Pennsylvania, responded to the war effort. Interviews with citizens and veterans are organized in sections on the home front; the North African-Italian, European, and Pacific theatres; stateside military service; and occupation in Germany. Throughout Marcello provides introductions and contextual narrative on World War II as well as annotations for events and military terms.

Overseas the citizens of Wrightsville turned into soldiers. A veteran of the Battle of the Bulge, Edward Reisinger, remembered, “Replacements had little chance of surviving. They were sent to the front one day, and the next day they were coming back with mattress covers over them.” Tanker Mervin Haugh recalls, “The next thing we knew, the German tanks attacked us. They knocked out five of our tanks quickly, and they all burned up in flames.”

Born in Wrightsville, Pennsylvania, Ronald E. Marcello earned his Ph.D. at Duke University. He is professor emeritus of history at the University of North Texas and the co-author/editor of Warriors and Scholars: A Modern War Reader and Remembering Pearl Harbor: Eye-Witness Accounts of American Men and Women.