Americana Insights 2025, edited by Lisa Minardi

Posted by on Aug 13, 2026 in | Comments Off on Americana Insights 2025, edited by Lisa Minardi Americana Insights 2025 edited by Lisa Minardi Americana Insights, distributed by University of Pennsylvania Press, 321 pp., hardcover $64.95 It’s not often that a monumental tome comes along to update and correct the hundred-year-old record of a folk art form. Devoted exclusively to Pennsylvania German redware pottery, volume three of the Americana Insights series examines the work of the most...
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Pittsburgh in 50 Maps by Stentor Danielson

Posted by on Aug 13, 2026 in | Comments Off on Pittsburgh in 50 Maps by Stentor Danielson Pittsburgh in 50 Maps by Stentor Danielson Belt Publishing, 136 pp., hardcover $30 If a picture says a thousand words, what might we say about a map, or more to the point, 50 maps, professing to explore and reveal the patterns and contours of a single city? Based on the specimens gathered together in this highly informative, often surprising, and relentlessly original volume by Stentor...
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Andy Warhol’s Mother by Elaine Rusinko

Posted by on Aug 13, 2026 in | Comments Off on Andy Warhol’s Mother by Elaine Rusinko Andy Warhol’s Mother The Woman Behind the Artist by Elaine Rusinko University of Pittsburgh Press, 528 pp., hardcover $40; paperback $24 Born Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh in 1928, the man better known as Andy Warhol went on to become one of the most enduringly prominent American artists of his generation. Warhol’s legacy has been turned to repeatedly in recent biographies, docuseries and...
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William Bartram’s Visual Wonders by Elizabeth A. Athens

Posted by on Aug 13, 2026 in | Comments Off on William Bartram’s Visual Wonders by Elizabeth A. Athens William Bartram’s Visual Wonders The Drawings of an American Naturalist by Elizabeth A. Athens University of Pittsburgh Press, 264 pp., paperback $26 The Bartrams’ fascinating place in American natural history is the starting point for Athens’ sumptuous volume. Readers will gain a wide knowledge of the family of painters and how they influenced humans’ increasing understanding of the natural...
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Theatres of the Body: Dance and Discourse in Antebellum Philadelphia by Lynn Matluck Brooks

Posted by on Apr 17, 2026 in | Comments Off on Theatres of the Body: Dance and Discourse in Antebellum Philadelphia by Lynn Matluck Brooks Theatres of the Body Dance and Discourse in Antebellum Philadelphia by Lynn Matluck Brooks Temple University Press, 306 pages, hardcover $119.50, paperback $36.95 With Theatres of the Body, Lynn Matluck Brooks weaves together two seemingly disparate histories — blackface minstrelsy and the increasingly female art of ballet — to analyze embodied performance in 19th-century Philadelphia. Brooks, a...
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Bettis: Where Pittsburgh Aviation Took Off by Brian Butko and Sue Morris

Posted by on Jan 14, 2026 in | Comments Off on Bettis: Where Pittsburgh Aviation Took Off by Brian Butko and Sue Morris Bettis Where Pittsburgh Aviation Took Off by Brian Butko and Sue Morris Senator John Heinz History Center, 124 pp., paperback $19.95 Most of the 9 million people flying to or through Pittsburgh know only Pittsburgh International Airport, a sprawling, 10,000-acre facility, the largest civil-aviation field in Pennsylvania today. But in fact, it’s only the latest in a succession of four major...
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William Penn: A Radical, Conservative Quaker by J. William Frost

Posted by on Jan 14, 2026 in | Comments Off on William Penn: A Radical, Conservative Quaker by J. William Frost William Penn A Radical, Conservative Quaker by J. William Frost Pennsylvania State University Press, 258 pp., hardcover $119.95, paperback $29.99 In this learned and revealing study of William Penn’s Quaker ideas, identity and interests, J. William Frost provides close readings and brilliant exegesis of Penn’s many and varied writings, preachments and speeches that dispel several myths and...
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The History of Silver Lake by Scott and Kathleen Webb

Posted by on Sep 8, 2025 in | Comments Off on The History of Silver Lake by Scott and Kathleen Webb The History of Silver Lake As Told Through Its Deeds by Scott and Kathleen Webb GWN Publishing, 155 pp., hardcover $39.99, paperback $29.99 Silver Lake is an ancient body of water adjacent to Lewisberry, York County, just 13 miles south of Harrisburg. Once the prehistoric home of reptiles and amphibians, the lake was used as a mill pond in the late 18th and 19th centuries and was developed into...
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The World War One Diary & Art of Doughboy Cpl. Harold W. Pierce, edited by William J. Welch

Posted by on Sep 8, 2025 in | Comments Off on The World War One Diary & Art of Doughboy Cpl. Harold W. Pierce, edited by William J. Welch The World War One Diary & Art of Doughboy Cpl. Harold W. Pierce Duty, Terror and Survival edited by William J. Welch Pen & Sword, 224 pp., hardcover $37.95 Cpl. Harold Pierce’s diary is a fascinating glimpse of army life in a combat division in the First World War. Born and raised in Pennsylvania, Pierce joined the 28th “Keystone” Division in 1917 and served through the armistice in...
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Raising Philadelphia by Justin McHenry

Posted by on Sep 8, 2025 in | Comments Off on Raising Philadelphia by Justin McHenry Raising Philadelphia The Making of America’s First Great City, 1750–1775 by Justin McHenry Brookline Books, 224 pages, hardcover $32.95 McHenry’s appetite for research and his passion for storytelling combine here to illuminate threads of history and biography into readable stories for a broad audience. Focusing on Philadelphia’s transformation into a cultural and political epicenter...
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