PA BOOKS on PCN

John S.D. Eisenhower modestly explains General Ike as "a son's view of a great military leader -- highly intelligent, strong, forceful, kind, yet as human as the rest of us." It is that, and more: a portrait of the greatest Allied military leader of the Second World War, by the man who knew Ike best.

If the railroads won the Gilded Age, the coal industry lost it. Railroads epitomized modern management, high technology, and vast economies of scale. By comparison, the coal industry was embarrassingly primitive. Miners and operators dug coal, bought it, and sold it in 1900 in the same ways that they had for generations. In the popular imagination, coal miners epitomized anti-modern forces as the so-called "Molly Maguire" terrorists.

Andrew Arnold is Chair of the History Department at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania.

William Hogeland is one of my all-time favorite guests on PA Books. In "Founding Finance" he tells how America's early economic system was established. It's a lot more interesting than it sounds.

Hogeland writes about the little-remembered election of May 1776 in which Pennsylvanians elected a General Assembly that was anti-independence and how, between then an July 4, mobs in Philadelphia overthrew the elected government and installed a pro-independence assembly. Without that coup, Pennsylvania might not have supported independence.

It's a fascinating story.

Hogeland has also appeared on PA Books for "The Whiskey Rebellion" and "Declaration," both fascinating books.

The passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11, 2001 have earned their rightful place among the pantheon of American heroes. Flight 93 provides a riveting narrative based on interviews, oral histories, transcripts, recordings, personal tours of the crash site, and voluminous trial evidence made public only in recent years. There also is plenty of chilling new detail for readers who think they know the story of the flight. Utilizing research tools that were not available in the years immediately after the crash, the book offers the most complete account of what actually took place aboard United 93 – from its delayed takeoff at Newark International Airport to the moment it plunged upside-down at 563 miles per hour into an open field in rural Somerset County, Pennsylvania.

Tom McMillan has spent a lifetime in media and communications: as a newspaper sports writer, radio talk-show host, and for the past 17 years as Vice President of Communications for the Pittsburgh Penguins of the National Hockey League. He's written on deadline, interviewed superstars, traveled the world, grilled guests on radio shows, issued official statements, developed social media strategy, counseled millionaire owners and faced withering questions from TV reporters about his organization's controversial bankruptcy case. For three years he served as the Penguins' VP of Marketing in addition to VP of Communications. He is also a volunteer at the Flight 93 National Memorial, where he helps to orient visitors to the crash site.

The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission today announced the publication of "First Pennsylvanians: The Archaeology of Native Americans in Pennsylvania." The first comprehensive review of Native American archaeology in Pennsylvania for a general audience, the book is based on recent findings and previously unpublished research. With more than 240 illustrations of lifestyles, sites and artifacts, "First Pennsylvanians" discusses developments in the cultures of Native Americans who lived in the Delaware, Susquehanna and Ohio River basins from the Paleoindian period of 10,000 to 16,500 years ago to the time of first contact with Europeans.

Authors Kurt W. Carr, Ph.D., Senior Curator of Archaeology at The State Museum of Pennsylvania, and Roger W. Moeller, Ph.D., an archaeologist who has conducted significant archaeological research in Pennsylvania and other parts of the country, characterize each period by environmental conditions, tools, food, settlement patterns and social organization.

Although many books on Gettysburg have addressed the role played by Brig. Gen. John Buford and his First Cavalry Division troops, there is not a single book-length study devoted entirely to the critical delaying actions waged by Buford and his dismounted troopers and his horse artillerists on the morning of July 1, 1863. Award-winning Civil War historian Eric J. Wittenberg rectifies this glaring oversight with "The Devil's to Pay": John Buford at Gettysburg. A History and Walking Tour.

This comprehensive tactical study examines the role Buford and his horse soldiers played from June 29 through July 2, 1863, including the important actions that saved the shattered remnants of the First and Eleventh Corps. Wittenberg relies upon scores of rare primary sources, including many that have never before been used, to paint a detailed picture of the critical role the quiet and modest cavalryman known to his men as "Honest John" or "Old Steadfast" played at Gettysburg.

An integral component of the transportation system that the D&H created to transport that coal to market was the Gravity Railroad that the company established between Carbondale and Honesdale. In order to meet market needs for anthracite coal, which increased dramatically in the course of the nineteenth century, the D&H established five different configurations of that Gravity Railroad between 1829 and 1899.

Dr. S. Robert Powell, a retired college teacher of the humanities, was born and raised in the anthracite coal region of northeastern Pennsylvania, where the fuel that made possible the industrial revolution in America was mined, beginning in the early years of the nineteenth century. Given his passion for local history he has focused, throughout his professional life, on documenting the history of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company and its rail lines and canal, which were established to market that coal. For over thirty years, he has served as president of the Carbondale Historical Society and Museum.

"The Delaware and Hudson Canal Company Gravity Railroad, Volumes 1-5"constitute the most detailed and comprehensive history of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company's Gravity Railroad that has ever been published.

S. Robert Powell is the President of the Carbondale Historical Society.

The Philadelphia Athletics dominated the first fourteen years of the American League, winning six pennants through 1914 under the leadership of their founder and manager, Connie Mack. But beginning in 1915, where volume 2 in Norman L. Macht's biography picks up the story, Mack's teams fell from pennant winners to last place and, in an unprecedented reversal of fortunes, stayed there for seven years. World War I robbed baseball of young players, and Mack's rebuilding efforts using green youngsters of limited ability made his teams the objects of public ridicule.

At the age of fifty-nine and in the face of widespread skepticism and seemingly insurmountable odds, Connie Mack reasserted his genius, remade the A's, and rose again to the top, even surpassing his earlier success. Baseball biographer and historian Macht recreates what may be the most remarkable chapter in this larger-than-life story. He shows us the man and his time and the game of baseball in all its nitty-gritty glory of the 1920s, and how Connie Mack built the 1929–1931 champions of Foxx, Simmons, Cochrane, Grove, Earnshaw, Miller, Haas, Bishop, Dykes—a team many consider baseball's greatest ever.

Norman Macht is the author of more than thirty books, including Connie Mack and the Early Years of Baseball.