PA Books: “Benjamin Franklin: The Religious Life of a Founding Father”

Renowned as a printer, scientist, and diplomat, Benjamin Franklin also published more works on religious topics than any other eighteenth-century American layperson. Born to Boston Puritans, by his teenage years Franklin had abandoned the exclusive Christian faith of his family and embraced deism. But Franklin, as a man of faith, was far more complex than […]

PA Books: “George Washington: A Life in Books”

Based on a comprehensive amount of research at the Library of Congress, the collections at Mount Vernon, and rare book archives scattered across the country, Kevin Hayes reconstructs in vivid detail the active intellectual life that has gone largely unnoticed in conventional narratives of Washington. Despite being a lifelong reader, Washington felt an acute sense […]

PA Books: The LaPorte Inheritance

A mostly forgotten episode of US history is brought to life in fascinating detail by historian and author Deborah deBilly dit Courville. Working from primary sources such as letters and household accounts, she has reconstructed the rhythm and rationale of daily life at the 18th century French immigrant colony along the Susquehanna River known as […]

PA Books: Therese Rocco: Pittsburgh’s First Female Assistant Police Chief

Therese Rocco is known to her colleagues as “The Rock.” At the age of nineteen, she began her career in law enforcement as a clerk in a small, all-female missing persons unit of the Pittsburgh Police Department. Her career ended nearly fifty years later as an honored and acclaimed Assistant Police Chief—the first woman in […]

PA Books: “Gettysburg Rebels”

“Gettysburg Rebels” is the gripping true story of five young men who grew up in Gettysburg, moved south to Virginia in the 1850s, joined the Confederate army – and returned “home” as foreign invaders for the great battle in July 1863. Drawing on rarely-seen documents and family histories, as well as military service records and […]

PA Books: “John W. Garrett and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad”

Historian Kathleen Waters Sander tells the story of B&O Railroad President John W. Garrett and the B&O’s plan to build a rail line from Baltimore over the Allegheny Mountains to the Ohio River. The B&O’s success ignited “railroad fever” and helped to catapult railroading to America’s most influential industry in the nineteenth century. After the […]

PA Books: “Autumn of the Black Snake”

When the Revolutionary War ended in 1783, the newly independent United States savored its victory and hoped for a great future. And yet the republic soon found itself losing an escalating military conflict on its borderlands. In 1791, years of skirmishes, raids, and quagmire climaxed in the grisly defeat of American militiamen by a brilliantly […]

PA Books: “Chief Engineer: Washington Roebling, The Man Who Built the Brooklyn Bridge”

“Chief Engineer” tells the story of Washington Roebling, the engineer known for building one of the most iconic American structures, the Brooklyn Bridge. “Chief Engineer” reveals that his father, John-a renowned engineer who made his life in America after humble beginnings in Germany-was a tyrannical presence in Washington’s life, so his own adoption of that […]

It’s History!: Castle Halloween Museum

The Castle Halloween Museum in Altoona features more than 35,000 Halloween-related items. Museum founder and curator Pamela E. Apkarian-Russell has been collecting Halloween memorabilia for nearly 50 years. The collection includes folk art, sculptures, Halloween-themed product packaging, pottery face jugs, voodoo flags, and more. Come along with It’s History! and explore the Castle Halloween Museum. […]