The Pennsylvania Turnpike, From Tollbooths to Tunnels: Rediscovering America’s First Superhighway at 75

Posted by on Apr 12, 2016 in | Comments Off on The Pennsylvania Turnpike, From Tollbooths to Tunnels: Rediscovering America’s First Superhighway at 75 Few Pennsylvania-born celebrities have made the kind of splash that the Pennsylvania Turnpike did when it first arrived on the scene in October 1940. Its 160 miles of limited-access, four-lane paved highway across the Alleghenies were hailed as America’s answer to the Autobahn, Germany’s highly regarded network of high-speed “super roads.” After the war, as the United States’ population expanded...
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The Man Who Bought Alice in Wonderland

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Man Who Bought Alice in Wonderland On April 3, 1928, a slightly tipsy world, still reeling through the heady Twen­ties, focused its attention on Sotheby’s in London, where one of history’s most famous and beloved of all books was about to be auctioned. Through Sotheby’s dark pas­sages, an excited throng tum­bled into the large auction gallery to see who would offer the winning bid for Lewis Carroll’s...
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Berks County: Diamond of the Schuylkill Valley

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Berks County: Diamond of the Schuylkill Valley Since 1811, when Schuylkill County was created to include part of what had been northern Berks County, Berks has been distinguishable by its diamond shape. It approxi­mates a geometric diamond or lozenge – an equilateral paral­lelogram without right angles. Its history also seems diamond-like, as it has com­bined a very hard, cutting, and persistently pragmatic charac­teristic with a...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Charles Sheeler in Doylestown: American Modernism and the Pennsylvania Tradition by Karen Lucic Allentown Art Museum, 1997 (120 pages, paper, $30.00) This remarkable book traces the development of artist Charles Sheeler’s modernist treatment of a highly familiar theme, the Bucks County barn. Charles Sheeler (1883-1965) was born in Philadelphia and as a young man lived in the Bucks County...
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The UMWA Wins America’s Approval: John Mitchell and the Anthracite Strike of 1902

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on The UMWA Wins America’s Approval: John Mitchell and the Anthracite Strike of 1902 Labor leader John Mitchell’s reputation seemed to precede him no matter where he traveled during the summer of 1902. Coal miners throughout northeastern Pennsylvania’s anthracite region referred to the boyish-looking thirty-two-year-old president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) as their beloved “Johnny d’Mitch.” His photograph hung in their homes beside...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Wealth, Waste, and Alienation: Growth and Decline in the Connellsville Coke Industry By Kenneth Warren University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001 (297 pages, cloth, $30.00) In less than three-quarters of a century, the Connellsville coke industry, situated in southwestern Pennsylvania, mushroomed from slight beginnings into a key supplier essential to the iron and steel industries. It then fell victim...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Pennsylvania: A History of the Commonwealth By Randall M. Miller and William Pencak, editors Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002 (688 pages; cloth, $49.95; paper, $24.95) Pennsylvania: A History of the Commonwealth is the first comprehensive history of the Keystone State in thirty years. Nearly a decade in the making, this weighty tome...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Carnegie By Peter Krass John Wiley and Company, Inc., 2002 (612 pages, cloth $35.00) The name Carnegie, like several others of its day – Westing­house, Morgan, Ford, Rockefeller, Winchester, Chrysler, Du Pont, Edison, Hershey – stands apart, apparently requiring lit­tle, if any, introduction. Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) stands next to J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller as one of the...
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Current and Coming

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Current and Coming Inventing Old America A Harvard-educated Congregational minister, Wallace Nutting (1861-1941) abandoned the ecclesiastical pulpit in 1904 to preach a gospel in which he proselytized romanticized views of the American past. Despite his staunch stance as anti-modernist, Nutting built a symbiotic business empire by embracing contemporary technology – photography, mass-­market publishing, the...
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Out and About

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Out and About Soul Soldiers The Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center recently unveiled the most comprehensive exhibition ever to explore the issues of the Vietnam War from an African American perspective. “Soul Soldiers: African Americans and the Vietnam Era” tells the story of the Vietnam War’s impact on African American life and culture by examining both the war and the civil rights...
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