PA BOOKS on PCN

For more than 25 years as a reporter with the Philadelphia Inquirer George Anastasia has made tracking the American Mafia his regular beat, writing investigates pieces, profiles and slices of underworld life. Mobfiles is a compilation of his best work -- stories told from street level and often based on insights and access provided by investigators, prosecutors and the mobsters themselves. Mobfiles provides the true stories around which classics like The Godfather and The Sopranos have been built.

George Anastasia, a veteran reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, is the grandson of Sicilian immigrants who settle in South Philadelphia. He is the author of five books of nonfiction, including Blood and Honor, which Jimmy Breslin called the "best gangster book ever written." He has won many awards for investigative journalism and magazine writing.

"Old-Time" music could be loosely described as that body of music containing fiddle tunes, banjo tunes, ballads, and ensemble pieces in various instrumental combinations including the guitar, mandolin, autoharp, dulcimer, mouth harp, jaw harp, dobro, piano, and other related non-electrified instruments. "Old-Time" music has often been preserved before the industrial age in the relative isolation of the Appalachian mountains. "The Milliner-Koken Collection of American Fiddle Tunes" contains transcriptions of over 1400 fiddle tunes. The book includes an artist profiles section with brief bios of the 347 fiddlers/bands represented in the book. A majority of these fiddlers were born before 1900. The collection also contains a comments section with interesting information about the tunes and fiddlers.

Walt Koken began playing the five string banjo in 1959. He has played the banjo and fiddle in a variety of groups including "The Busted Toe Mudthumpers," "Fat City," "The Highwoods Stringband," and the "Orpheus Supertones." In the late 70's, he retired from the old-time music business and worked as a carpenter. In the early 1990's, he began playing banjo again, released several CD's, and formed Mudthumper Music. The company is dedicated to the preservation of non-electrified, fiddle-banjo oriented music.

Clare Milliner grew up in Chester County, Pennsylvania, not far from the original site of the Brandywine Friends of Old Time Music's annual Mountain Music Festival. She studied piano and violin, but when she heard fiddle tunes at the Old Fiddler's Picnic at Lenape Park near her home, it changed her approach to playing. She plays often for square dances, usually with the "Cacklin' Hens and Roosters Too," and she and Walt play double fiddles, as well as fiddle-banjo duets.

In the 1950s and 1960s, as the white residents, real estate agents, and municipal officials of many American cities fought to keep African Americans out of traditionally white neighborhoods, Philadelphia's West Mount Airy became one of the first neighborhoods in the nation where residents came together around a community-wide mission toward intentional integration. As West Mount Airy experienced transition, homeowners fought economic and legal policies that encouraged white flight and threatened the quality of local schools, seeking to find an alternative to racial separation without knowing what they would create in its place. In Making Good Neighbors, Abigail Perkiss tells the remarkable story of West Mount Airy, drawing on archival research and her oral history interviews with residents to trace their efforts, which began in the years following World War II and continued through the turn of the twenty-first century.

Abigail Perkiss is Assistant Professor of History at Kean University and lives in West Mount Airy.

Making Ideas Matter is a primer on mobilizing political power to achieve enlightened goals in a democracy. This is a book about how good politicians can compromise without abandoning moral principles. This is a book that will inspire future political leaders to hold on to their idealism rather than spiral into a cynical distrust of politics and government. Pennsylvania State Rep. Dwight Evans shows us that politics is a noble art, and with enough research, hard work and knowledge of the legislative process, politics can be the art of the possible.

Dwight Evans is a Democratic member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. He has represented the 203rd District (Philadelphia County) since 1981.

Few people in the history of art and architecture have planted a seed of inspiration that grew to become a towering oak of lasting influence. There are those, particularly colleagues and students of Louis I. Kahn, who would say that he was one of these people. Certainly Kahn was one of the foremost architects of the twentieth century, designing such famous landmarks as the National Assembly Building in Dhaka, Bangladesh; the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California; and the Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.

In this commemorative volume, Charles E. Dagit, Jr. shows the power and influence that Kahn displayed at the University of Pennsylvania department of architecture in the 1960s. Since Dagit knew Kahn personally, this is a factual history as well as a glimpse into Kahn's personal wisdom and humanity.

Charles E. Dagit, Jr. taught at Temple University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Drexel University, where he is now a thesis advisor as well as conductor of a seminar on American Architectural History. Awarded the American Institute of Architects Pennsylvania's Medal of Distinction, his work has been published in Progressive Architect, Interiors Magazine, and Yale Perspecta.

"Lost Triumph: Lee's Real Plan at Gettysburg and Why It Failed"

Tom Carhart has been a lawyer and historian or the Department of the Army in Washington, DC. He is a graduate of West Point, a twice-wounded Vietnam veteran, and has earned a Ph.D. in American and Military History from Princeton University. He authored four previous books of military history and is Adjunct Professor of History at the University of Mary Washington near his home in the Washington DC area.