PA BOOKS on PCN

After his December 2003 arrest, registered nurse Charlie Cullen was quickly dubbed “The Angel of Death” by the media. But Cullen was no mercy killer, nor was he a simple monster. He was a favorite son, husband, beloved father, best friend, and celebrated caregiver. Implicated in the deaths of as many as 300 patients, he was also perhaps the most prolific serial killer in American history. Cullen’s murderous career in the world’s most trusted profession spanned sixteen years and nine hospitals across New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Charles Graeber has written for Wired, GQ, The New Yorker, New York, Outside, Bloomberg Businessweek, and the New York Times, among others. His work has received numerous awards including the 2011 Ed Cunningham Award for outstanding international journalism from the Overseas Press Club and a New York Press Club prize. Born in Iowa, he lives in Nantucket, MA, and Brooklyn, NY.

America in 1775 was on the verge of revolution—or, more likely, disastrous defeat. After the bloodshed at Lexington and Concord, England’s King George sent hundreds of ships westward to bottle up American harbors and prey on American shipping. Colonists had no force to defend their coastline and waterways until John Adams of Massachusetts proposed a bold solution: The Continental Congress should raise a navy.
 
The idea was mad. The Royal Navy was the mightiest floating arsenal in history, with a seemingly endless supply of vessels. More than a hundred of these were massive “ships of the line,” bristling with up to a hundred high-powered cannon that could level a city. The British were confident that His Majesty’s warships would quickly bring the rebellious colonials to their knees.

Tim McGrath is the author of the critically-acclaimed biography “John Barry: An American Hero in the Age of Sail.” An avid sailor, McGrath has published articles in Naval History magazine. He lives outside of Philadelphia.

Brady Crytzer holds an MA in history from Slippery Rock University. He has served on the faculties of Robert Morris University and Southern New Hampshire University. He is the author of “Major Washington’s Pittsburgh and the Mission to Fort Le Boeuf.”

Every man has his price. For disgruntled US soldier Robert Stephan Lipka, all it took to betray his country was an offer of four hundred dollars. Few Americans know of Lipka, but in September of 1965 he began the wholesale theft of top secret information from the National Security Agency, selling classified documents to the KGB for small sums of money, and causing untold damage to national security and endangering US operations across the globe. Two years later, he quit the espionage business as his military enlistment period expired. He then disappeared into obscurity before the FBI could gather evidence needed for arrest. His case would remain open for over thirty years.

Decades after Lipka’s betrayal, a KGB officer sought asylum in the West, fearing reprisal in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse. In return for protection he offered important documents stolen from KGB archives. Hidden within these documents was vital proof of Lipka’s guilt. One traitor’s actions led to another’s conviction

Author John Whiteside is the dedicated FBI agent who led the Lipka case.

In Dr. Mütter’s Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine, author Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz chronicles the remarkable life of Dr. Thomas Dent Mütter (1811-1859): a dazzling, young American surgeon who was so flamboyant and audacious that he wore colorful silk suits to perform surgery, embellished his last name with an umlaut, and was described as the “[P.T.] Barnum of the surgery room.” Rising to the challenges of performing surgery on the severely deformed while they remained awake (as was the standard practice) — and when others viewed them as only as “monsters” — Mütter was a revolutionary figure whose compassion-based philosophies and innovative surgical ideas and breakthroughs clashed with the constraints of his time. The vast collection of medical oddities he amassed to serve as teaching tools for his enormously popular lectures as a professor of medicine would later become the foundation for one of the most (in)famous museums in the world: Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum.

Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz was born and raised in Philadelphia, and first visited the Mütter Museum during a class trip in the fourth grade. A decade and half later, her feature-length biographical screenplay, Mütter, won screenwriting awards at the Hampton International Film Festival and Philadelphia Film Festival, and earned her a Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, directly inspiring her to research and write this book. She is the author of six books of poetry, most recently The Year of No Mistakes, as well as the nonfiction book, Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam. Her recent awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, the ArtsEdge Writer-in-Residency at the University of Pennsylvania and the Amy Clampitt House residency. She lives in Austin, TX.

In Dr. Mütter’s Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine, author Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz chronicles the remarkable life of Dr. Thomas Dent Mütter (1811-1859): a dazzling, young American surgeon who was so flamboyant and audacious that he wore colorful silk suits to perform surgery, embellished his last name with an umlaut, and was described as the “[P.T.] Barnum of the surgery room.” Rising to the challenges of performing surgery on the severely deformed while they remained awake (as was the standard practice) — and when others viewed them as only as “monsters” — Mütter was a revolutionary figure whose compassion-based philosophies and innovative surgical ideas and breakthroughs clashed with the constraints of his time. The vast collection of medical oddities he amassed to serve as teaching tools for his enormously popular lectures as a professor of medicine would later become the foundation for one of the most (in)famous museums in the world: Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum.

Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz was born and raised in Philadelphia, and first visited the Mütter Museum during a class trip in the fourth grade. A decade and half later, her feature-length biographical screenplay, Mütter, won screenwriting awards at the Hampton International Film Festival and Philadelphia Film Festival, and earned her a Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, directly inspiring her to research and write this book. She is the author of six books of poetry, most recently The Year of No Mistakes, as well as the nonfiction book, Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam. Her recent awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, the ArtsEdge Writer-in-Residency at the University of Pennsylvania and the Amy Clampitt House residency. She lives in Austin, TX.

“The Cookie Doctor” is the personal memoir of Dr. Peter Pugliese, a collection of true life experiences that reveal the pivotal obstacles and miracles he faced, leading to a fascinating career and life path. Currently, at age 88, Dr. Pugliese is actively specializing his research into the hormonal mechanisms of aging, and continues to write.

Peter Pugliese, MD practiced family medicine in rural Pennsylvania for two decades, retiring in 1978. He received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania and earned his BS from Franklin and Marshall College. He also holds a PhD in Skin Physiology, and is recognized as an authority in the field of anti-aging research.

“The Cookie Doctor” is the personal memoir of Dr. Peter Pugliese, a collection of true life experiences that reveal the pivotal obstacles and miracles he faced, leading to a fascinating career and life path. Currently, at age 88, Dr. Pugliese is actively specializing his research into the hormonal mechanisms of aging, and continues to write.

Peter Pugliese, MD practiced family medicine in rural Pennsylvania for two decades, retiring in 1978. He received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania and earned his BS from Franklin and Marshall College. He also holds a PhD in Skin Physiology, and is recognized as an authority in the field of anti-aging research.

...under Brigadier General Albert Gallatin Jenkins. After occupying Mechanicsburg for two days, Jenkins’s troops skirmished with Union militia near Harrisburg. Jenkins then reported back to Ewell that Harrisburg was vulnerable...

Fairmount Park is the municipal park system of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It consists of more than one hundred parks, squares, and green spaces totaling about 11,000 acres, and is one of the largest landscaped urban park systems in the world. In City in a Park, James McClelland and Lynn Miller provide an affectionate and comprehensive history of this 200-year-old network of parks.

Originated in the nineteenth century as a civic effort to provide a clean water supply to Philadelphia, Fairmount Park also furnished public pleasure grounds for boat races and hiking, among other activities. Millions travel to the city to view its eighteenth-century villas, attend boat races on the Schuylkill River, hike the Wissahickon Creek, visit the Philadelphia Zoo, hear concerts in summer, stroll the city’s historic squares and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, and enjoy its enormous collection of public art. Green initiatives flower today; Philadelphia lives amidst its parks.

James McClelland is a freelance writer whose work focuses on the arts. He is Executive Director Emeritus of the Philadelphia Art Alliance and the author of The Martinos: A Legacy of Art and Fountains of Philadelphia: A Guide.

Lynn Miller is Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Temple University. He is the author of Global Order: Values and Power in International Politics and Crossing the Line (a novel), and the co-author (with Annette H. Emgarth) of French Philadelphia: The French Cultural & Historical Presence in the Delaware Valley.