“Smiling Banjo”

Attended by tens of thousands of people each August, the Philadelphia Folk Festival is the longest continually running folk festival in America. These pages capture 55 years of its beloved, creatively charged atmosphere. Over 800 photos from 1962 to today feature the more than 825 performers and bands who have taken the stage, including Jackson […]

PA Books: Rush

In the summer of 1776, fifty-six men put their quills to a dangerous document they called the Declaration of Independence. Among them was a thirty-year-old doctor named Benjamin Rush. One of the youngest signatories, he was also, among stiff competition, one of the most visionary. From improbable beginnings as the son of a Philadelphia blacksmith, […]

“Stealing Wyeth”

Andrew Wyeth was one of the best known American artists in the world in the 20th century with his works being sought after by serious art collectors worldwide. A gang of thieves decided to steal an original Wyeth painting for their “retirement” and engaged a professional cat burglar (who was responsible for more than 1,500 […]

“Lee is Trapped and Must be Taken”

“Lee is Trapped and Must be Taken” focuses on the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg and addresses how Maj. Gen. George G. Meade organized and motivated his Army of the Potomac in response to President Abraham Lincoln’s mandate to bring about the “literal or substantial destruction” of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s retreating Army […]

“Little Italy in the Great War”

The Great War challenged all who were touched by it. Italian immigrants, torn between their country of origin and country of relocation, confronted political allegiances that forced them to consider the meaning and relevance of Americanization. In his engrossing study, “Little Italy in the Great War,” Richard Juliani focuses on Philadelphia’s Italian community to understand […]

“Bosom Friends”

In “Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King,” Thomas J. Balcerski explores the lives of these two politicians and discovers one of the most significant collaborations in American political history. He traces the parallels in the men’s personal and professional lives before elected office, including their failed romantic courtships and […]

“Targeted Tracks”

The Civil War was the first conflict in which railroads played a major role. The Cumberland Valley Railroad, for example, played an important strategic role by connecting Hagerstown, Maryland to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Its location enhanced its importance during some of the Civil War’s most critical campaigns. Because of its proximity to major cities in the […]

“Franz Kline in Coal Country”

“Franz Kline in Coal Country” is the first biography to examine Kline’s formative years in Lehighton, Philadelphia, Boston, and London, before he became a founding member of the New York School, the ragtag group who stole the art world away from Paris after WWII. This book, according to Kline’s sister, Dr. Louise Kline-Kelly, sets the […]

“Jefferson, Madison, and the Making of the Constitution”

Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, and James Madison, “Father of the Constitution,” were two of the most important Founders of the United States as well as the closest of political allies. Yet historians have often seen a tension between the idealistic rhetoric of the Declaration and the more pedestrian language of the […]

“The Disaffected”

Elizabeth and Henry Drinker of Philadelphia were no friends of the American Revolution. Yet neither were they its enemies. The Drinkers were a merchant family who, being Quakers and pacifists, shunned commitments to both the Revolutionaries and the British. They strove to endure the war uninvolved and unscathed. They failed. In 1777, the war came […]