PA Books: “Never To Be Forgotten” with Jim McClure

To borrow an image from a sage historian, York County, Pa.’s story is a stream that bears the things that historians record – pivotal events, breakthrough achievements and regrettable misjudgments. James McClure’s expanded and updated “Never To Be Forgotten” tells the story of this stream but also takes a keen interest in what is happening […]

PA Books: William Trent: Factor of Ambition with Jason Cherry

William Trent was the son of a Philadelphia shipping merchant and the namesake for the capital of New Jersey, Trent’s own legacy as a gentleman, throughout the latter half of the eighteenth century was always remembered for his controversial role at Fort Pitt in “gifting” smallpox blankets to the Indians that early summer of 1763. […]

PA Books: “Telling of the Anthracite” with Philip Mosley (2024)

“Telling of the Anthracite” explores the various ways in which anthracite history has been represented and remembered since 1960, the chosen date for the start of the “posthistorical” era coinciding approximately with the Knox mine disaster (1959) and the beginning of the Centralia mine fire (1962-), two cataclysmic and fateful events that symbolize the beginning […]

PA Books: “Harrisburg in WWI and the 1918 Pandemic” with Rodney Ross

In 1917, at the start of World War I, among global war and a global pandemic, Harrisburgers stepped up, surffered and served. They mustered municipal agencies, associations, churches, clubs and corporations as well as fraternal and female organizations to address the multiple challenges presented by the global events. Women volunteered for the Red Cross and […]

PA Books: “George Washington in the French & Indian War” with Scott Patchan

George Washington has frequently been criticized for his first military campaign, which sparked the French and Indian War. This backwoods campaign between British and French colonials eventually grew into the Seven Years’ War, a global conflict between these European empires. In 1754 Washington was an ambitious yet inexperienced young officer, eager to carry out his […]

PA Books: “Smalltime” with Russell Shorto (2021)

“Smalltime” is a mob story straight out of central casting—but with a difference, for the small-town mob, which stretched from Schenectady to Fresno, is a mostly unknown world. The location is the brawny postwar factory town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The setting is City Cigar, a storefront next to City Hall, behind which Russ and his […]

PA Books: “Philadelphia’s Germans” with Richard Juliani (2022)

In “Philadelphia’s Germans: From Colonial Settlers to Enemy Aliens,” Richard N. Juliani examines the social, cultural, and political life, along with the ethnic consciousness, of Philadelphia’s Germans, from their participation in the founding of the colony of Pennsylvania to the entry of the United States into World War I. This book focuses on their paradoxical […]

PA Books: “The Game That Saved the NHL” with Ed Gruver

In late 1975 and early 1976, at the height of the Cold War, two of the Soviet Union’s long-dominant national hockey teams traveled to North America to play an eight-game series against the best teams in the National Hockey League. The culmination of the “Super Series” was reigning Soviet League champion HC CSKA Moscow’s face-off […]