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“On the Edge of Freedom” In “On the Edge of Freedom,” David Smith breaks new ground by illuminating the unique development of antislavery sentiment in south central Pennsylvania—a border region of a border state with a complicated history of slavery, antislavery activism, and unequal freedom. During the antebellum decades every single fugitive slave escaping by land east of the Appalachian Mountains had to pass through the region, where they faced both significant opportunities and substantial risks. While the hundreds of fugitives traveling through south central Pennsylvania (defined as Adams, Franklin, and Cumberland counties) during this period were aided by an effective Underground Railroad, they also faced slave catchers and informers. “Underground” work such as helping fugitive slaves appealed to border antislavery activists who shied away from agitating for immediate abolition in a region with social, economic, and kinship ties to the South. And, as early antislavery protests met fierce resistance, ar

This first volume in the new Stories of the Susquehanna Valley series describes the Native American presence in the Susquehanna River Valley, a key crossroads of the old Eastern Woodlands between the Great Lakes and the Chesapeake Bay in northern Appalachia. Combining archaeology, history, cultural anthropology, and the study of contemporary Native American issues, contributors describe what is known about the Native Americans from their earliest known presence in the valley to the contact era with Europeans. They also explore the subsequent consequences of that contact for Native peoples, including the removal, forced or voluntary, of many from the valley, in what became a chilling prototype for attempted genocide across the continent. Euro-American history asserted that there were no native people left in Pennsylvania (the center of the Susquehanna watershed) after the American Revolution. But with revived Native American cultural consciousness in the late twentieth century, Pennsylvanians of native ancestr

On Nov. 28, 1969, Betsy Aardsma, a 22-year-old graduate student in English at Penn State, was stabbed to death in the stacks of Pattee Library at the university’s main campus in State College.  For more than forty years, her murder went unsolved, though detectives with the Pennsylvania State Police and local citizens worked tirelessly to find her killer. The mystery was eventually solved—after the death of the murderer. This book will reveal the story behind what has been a scary mystery for generations of Penn State students and explain why the Pennsylvania State Police failed to bring her killer to justice. More than a simple true crime story, the book weaves together the events, culture, and attitudes of the late 1960s, memorializing Betsy Aardsma and her time and place in history. David DeKok is the author of Fire Underground: The Ongoing Tragedy of the Centralia Mine Fire (Globe Pequot Press), which previously appeared as Unseen Danger. A former award-winning investigative reporter for the Patriot-News 

Although the framers gave the president little authority, Washington knew whatever he did would set precedents for generations of his successors. To ensure their ability to defend the nation, he simply ignored the Constitution when he thought it necessary and reshaped the presidency into what James Madison called a monarchical presidency. Modern scholars call it the “imperial presidency.” A revealing new look at the birth of American government, "Mr. President" describes George Washington’s assumption of office in a time of continual crisis, as riots, rebellion, internecine warfare, and attacks by foreign enemies threatened to destroy the new nation. Drawing on rare documents and letters, Unger shows how Washington combined political cunning, daring, and sheer genius to seize ever-widening powers to solve each crisis. In a series of brilliant, but unconstitutional, maneuvers, Washington forced Congress to cede control of the four pillars of executive power: war, finance, foreign affairs, and law enforcement.

For more than 25 years as a reporter with the Philadelphia Inquirer George Anastasia has made tracking the American Mafia his regular beat, writing investigates pieces, profiles and slices of underworld life. Mobfiles is a compilation of his best work -- stories told from street level and often based on insights and access provided by investigators, prosecutors and the mobsters themselves. Mobfiles provides the true stories around which classics like The Godfather and The Sopranos have been built. George Anastasia, a veteran reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, is the grandson of Sicilian immigrants who settle in South Philadelphia. He is the author of five books of nonfiction, including Blood and Honor, which Jimmy Breslin called the "best gangster book ever written." He has won many awards for investigative journalism and magazine writing.

“Old-Time" music could be loosely described as that body of music containing fiddle tunes, banjo tunes, ballads, and ensemble pieces in various instrumental combinations including the guitar, mandolin, autoharp, dulcimer, mouth harp, jaw harp, dobro, piano, and other  related non-electrified instruments. "Old-Time" music has often been preserved before the industrial age in the relative isolation of the Appalachian mountains. “The Milliner-Koken Collection of American Fiddle Tunes” contains transcriptions of over 1400 fiddle tunes. The book includes an artist profiles section with brief bios of the 347 fiddlers/bands represented in the book. A majority of these fiddlers were born before 1900. The collection also contains a comments section with interesting information about the tunes and fiddlers. Walt Koken began playing the five string banjo in 1959. He has played the banjo and fiddle in a variety of groups including “The Busted Toe Mudthumpers,” “Fat City,” “The Highwoods Stringband,” and the “Orpheus Su

In the 1950s and 1960s, as the white residents, real estate agents, and municipal officials of many American cities fought to keep African Americans out of traditionally white neighborhoods, Philadelphia's West Mount Airy became one of the first neighborhoods in the nation where residents came together around a community-wide mission toward intentional integration. As West Mount Airy experienced transition, homeowners fought economic and legal policies that encouraged white flight and threatened the quality of local schools, seeking to find an alternative to racial separation without knowing what they would create in its place. In Making Good Neighbors, Abigail Perkiss tells the remarkable story of West Mount Airy, drawing on archival research and her oral history interviews with residents to trace their efforts, which began in the years following World War II and continued through the turn of the twenty-first century. Abigail Perkiss is Assistant Professor of History at Kean University and lives in West Mou

Making Ideas Matter is a primer on mobilizing political power to achieve enlightened goals in a democracy. This is a book about how good politicians can compromise without abandoning moral principles. This is a book that will inspire future political leaders to hold on to their idealism rather than spiral into a cynical distrust of politics and government. Pennsylvania State Rep. Dwight Evans shows us that politics is a noble art, and with enough research, hard work and knowledge of the legislative process, politics can be the art of the possible. Dwight Evans is a Democratic member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. He has represented the 203rd District (Philadelphia County) since 1981.

Few people in the history of art and architecture have planted a seed of inspiration that grew to become a towering oak of lasting influence. There are those, particularly colleagues and students of Louis I. Kahn, who would say that he was one of these people. Certainly Kahn was one of the foremost architects of the twentieth century, designing such famous landmarks as the National Assembly Building in Dhaka, Bangladesh; the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California; and the Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. In this commemorative volume, Charles E. Dagit, Jr. shows the power and influence that Kahn displayed at the University of Pennsylvania department of architecture in the 1960s. Since Dagit knew Kahn personally, this is a factual history as well as a glimpse into Kahn’s personal wisdom and humanity. Charles E. Dagit, Jr. taught at Temple University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Drexel University, where he is now a thesis advisor as well as conductor of a seminar on American Architectural History.

“Lost Triumph: Lee’s Real Plan at Gettysburg and Why It Failed” Conventional wisdom holds that General Robert E. Lee risked everything at Gettysburg. Victory would have virtually ensured Confederate triumph in the war, forcing the Union into submission. In “Lost Triumph: Lee’s Real Plan at Gettysburg and Why It Failed” West Point graduate and military historian Tom Carhart asserts that Lee had an as-yet undiscovered plan for victory at Gettysburg. Drawing from institutional records, official reports, and private correspondence, Carhart painstakingly recreates the events of those crucial days, shedding new light on Lee’s dramatic failure. Tom Carhart has been a lawyer and historian or the Department of the Army in Washington, DC. He is a graduate of West Point, a twice-wounded Vietnam veteran, and has earned a Ph.D. in American and Military History from Princeton University. He authored four previous books of military history and is Adjunct Professor of History at the University of Mary Washington near

When the United States government passed the Bill of Rights in 1791, its uncompromising protection of speech and of the press were unlike anything the world had ever seen before. But by 1798, the once-dazzling young republic of the United States was on the verge of collapse: Partisanship gripped the weak federal government, British seizures threatened American goods and men on the high seas, and war with France seemed imminent as its own democratic revolution deteriorated into terror. Suddenly, the First Amendment, which protected harsh commentary of the weak government, no longer seemed as practical. So that July, President John Adams and the Federalists in control of Congress passed an extreme piece of legislation that made criticism of the government and its leaders a crime punishable by heavy fines and jail time. In Liberty’s First Crisis, writer Charles Slack tells the story of the 1798 Sedition Act, the crucial moment when high ideals met real-world politics and the country’s future hung in the balance.

Lenape Country is a sweeping narrative history of the multiethnic society of the Delaware Valley in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. After Swanendael, the Natives, Swedes, and Finns avoided war by focusing on trade and forging strategic alliances in such events as the Dutch conquest, the Mercurius affair, the Long Swede conspiracy, and English attempts to seize land. Drawing on a wide range of sources, author Jean R. Soderlund demonstrates that the hallmarks of Delaware Valley society—commitment to personal freedom, religious liberty, peaceful resolution of conflict, and opposition to hierarchical government—began in the Delaware Valley not with Quaker ideals or the leadership of William Penn but with the Lenape Indians, whose culture played a key role in shaping Delaware Valley society. The first comprehensive account of the Lenape Indians and their encounters with European settlers before Pennsylvania's founding, Lenape Country places Native culture at the center of this part of North America

There’s more than one way to fight the Civil War The 1863 Battle of Gettysburg resulted in horrific slaughter that ultimately ended the Confederate invasion of Pennsylvania. But after the Allied victory of World War I in 1918, people began to wonder what if some of the post-world war military technology had been available to the armies during the American Civil War? The marine officers who were debating these questions had the capability to test their theories. The purpose and results were supposed to be safe. The exercises and associated reenactments were meant to merely serve as being training maneuvers, along with strikingly realistic, horrific battle, by substituting their “modern-day” military equipment for that which had been used during the Civil War. On June 19, 1922, more than 5,000 marines left Quantico, heading north to the battlefield of Gettysburg. They would reach the battlefield on June 26, but their arrival would be marred by the sudden, tragic deaths of two of their numbers, when a de Havilla

Layle Lane was an educator, a social activist, and a political leader. She was a key organizer of the first march on Washington, D.C., which led to the creation of the Fair Employment Practices Act and Commission after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s executive order in 1941. Lane also played a major role in the March on Washington Movement, headed by A. Philip Randolph. In 1948, Lane encouraged President Harry Truman to desegregate the American military through her involvement in the movement. After taking on Washington, D.C., Lane ran for political office in New York City where she played a major role in the city’s social changes. During the 1950s, she ran a camp for inner city boys in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, to expose them to a way of life different from the city streets. It is on this property that a street presently runs through called Layle Lane—the first street named after an African American woman in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. La Citadellechronicles the life of a real American hero who paved t

This study examines Ku Klux Klan activities in Pennsylvania’s twenty-five western-most counties, where the state organization enjoyed greatest numerical strength. The work covers the period between the Klan’s initial appearance in the state in 1921 and its virtual disappearance by 1928, particularly the heyday of the Invisible Empire, 1923–1925. This book examines a wide variety of KKK activities, but devotes special attention to the two large and deadly Klan riots in Carnegie and Lilly, as well as vigilantism associated with the intolerant order. Klansmen were drawn from a pool of ordinary Pennsylvanians who were driven, in part, by the search for fraternity, excitement, and civic betterment. However, their actions were also motivated by sinister, darker emotions and purposes. Disdainful of the rule of law, the Klan sought disorder and mayhem in pursuit of a racist, nativist, anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish agenda. John M. Craig is a professor of history from Slippery Rock University. Golden Arms: Six Hall of Fa

Keystone Corruption: A Pennsylvania Insider s View of a State Gone Wrong traces the cyclical nature of misconduct in Pennsylvania government over the course of the last hundred years. Most of the book focuses on corruption since the 1970s, when the author had a front-row seat during the unprecedented scandals of 2007 through 2012. Bumsted witnessed the prosecutions of current and former lawmakers for the theft of some $14 million in taxes, and he provides an insightful analysis of the rise and fall of several of Pennsylvania s most colorful political characters, including Boies Penrose, Matt Quay, R. Budd Dwyer, John Perzel, William DeWeese, Al Benedict, Ernie Preate, Jeffrey Habay, Vincent Fumo, Mike Veon, Michael Manzo and state Supreme Court Justice Joan Orie Melvin.

Long-time fans of the National Pastime have known Moyer's name for more than 25 years. That's because he's been pitching in the bigs for all those years. With his trademark three pitches - slow, slower, and slowest - the left-handed Moyer is a pinpoint specialist whose won-lost record actually got better as he got older -- from his 20s to his 30s and into 40s. He's only a few wins shy of 300 for his amazing career.

But this is where the book takes an unusual turn. Moyer was just about finished as a big leaguer in his mid-20s until he fatefully encountered a gravel-voiced, highly confrontational sports psychologist named Harvey Dorfman. Listening to the "in-your-face" insights of Dorfman, Moyer began to re-invent himself and reconstruct his approach to his game. Moyer went on to become an All-Star and also a World Series champion. Yogi Berra once observed that "Half of this game is 90% mental." And Moyer's memoir proves it. Jamie Moyer turned 50 this past fall, and by all accounts, he has now finished his

“James Buchanan and the Coming of the Civil War” As James Buchanan took office in 1857, the United States found itself at a crossroads. Dissolution of the Union had been averted and the Democratic Party maintained control of the federal government, but the nation watched to see if Pennsylvania's first president could make good on his promise to calm sectional tensions. Despite Buchanan's central role in a crucial hour in U.S. history, few presidents have been more ignored by historians. In assembling the essays for this volume, Michael Birkner and John Quist have asked leading scholars to reconsider whether Buchanan’s failures stemmed from his own mistakes or from circumstances that no president could have overcome. 
Buchanan's dealings with Utah shed light on his handling of the secession crisis. His approach to Dred Scott reinforces the image of a president whose doughface views were less a matter of hypocrisy than a thorough identification with southern interests. Essays on the secession crisis provide f

Composer of more than 100 jazz pieces, three-time Grammy nominee, and performer on more than 125 albums, saxophonist Jimmy Heath has earned a place of honor in the history of jazz. Over his long career, Heath knew many jazz giants, such as Charlie Parker, and played with other innovators, including John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and especially Dizzy Gillespie. Along the way, Heath won both their respect and their friendship. In his autobiography, the legendary Heath creates a “dialogue” with musicians and family members. As in jazz, where improvisation by one performer prompts another to riff on the same theme, I Walked with Giants juxtaposes Heath’s account of his life and career with recollections from jazz giants about life on the road and making music on the world’s stages. His memories of playing with his equally legendary brothers, Percy and Albert (aka “Tootie”), dovetail with their recollections. Heath reminisces about a South Philadelphia home filled with music and a close-knit family that hosted music

“Ike’s Bluff” Upon assuming the presidency in 1953, Dwight Eisenhower came to be seen by many as a doddering lightweight. Yet behind the bland smile and apparent simplemindedness was a brilliant, intellectual tactician. As Evan Thomas reveals in his provocative examination of Ike's White House years, Eisenhower was a master of calculated duplicity. As with his bridge and poker games he was eventually forced to stop playing after leaving too many fellow army officers insolvent, Ike could be patient and ruthless in the con, and generous and expedient in his partnerships. Facing the Soviet Union, China, and his own generals, some of whom believed a first strike was the only means of survival, Eisenhower would make his boldest and riskiest bet yet, one of such enormity that there could be but two outcomes: the survival of the world, or its end. This is the story of how he won. Evan Thomas is the author of several bestselling works of history and biography, including The War Lovers and Sea of Thunder. He was a w