Pennsylvania Paperbacks – serie

An outstanding collection of Benjamin Franklin's scientific correspondence, The Ingenious Dr. Franklin has long been unavailable yet deserves a place beside his Autobiography as essential reading for everyone interested in history, wit, and invention. Portioned into three sections, "Practical Schemes and Suggestions," "Diverse Experiments and Observations," and "Scientific Deductions and Conjectures," these letters discuss an extraordinary range of topics, including the art of procuring pleasant dreams, choosing eye glasses, the first human flight, the character of clouds, the behavior of oil and water, smallpox and cancer, the cause of colds, charting the Gulf Stream, and prehistoric animals of the Ohio.Culled from ponderous volumes of collected works or private collections, these engaging and unabridged letters were assembled to allow readers to discover for themselves Benjamin Franklin's vigorous personality, his humanity, and his penetrating intelligence.

The industrial city of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, was originally settled in colonial times by Moravians from southeastern Germany. These religious utopians were noted for urban planning. In this large-format, richly illustrated volume, historian William Murtagh compares more than 20 Bethlehem landmarks with other Moravian communities for a fascinating glimpse into a part of America's past.

The Delaware River flows out of New York's Catskill Mountains and winds its way through woodland and rural farmland, through the great Water Gap ravine, and finally past one of the world's most industrialized riverfronts. Yet it remains one of the country's last undammed rivers, with a natural life as rich and varied as its human history.In Natural Lives, Modern Times, Bruce Stutz has written a thoroughly modern natural history, blending keen observations of the nature of the Delaware's enduring complex of river, glacial streams, marshlands, and forest with glimpses of history and folklore and with luminous portraits of those whose lives are sustained by the river. The Delaware was the waterway of the nation's first mercantile, philosophical, scientific, cultural, and industrial heartland, hosting immigrants from Europe, Africa, and the Mediterranean, all looking for new lives along the ancient river.In this always entertaining and often haunting intertwining of human and natural history, Bruce Stutz discovers those who regret what has been lost and those passionate about preserving what remains. Most of all, however, he lets us see what's at stake in a wonderfully diverse world. Not since Mark Twain has anyone taken such a freewheeling river journey.

Although much has been written about elite Philadelphians, only in recent decades have historians paid attention to the Jews and working-class blacks, the immigrant Irish, Italians, and Poles who settled in the city and gave such sections as Moyamensing, Southwark, South Philadelphia, and Kensington their vitality. In this classic of social and ethnic history, the authors draw on census schedules, court records, city directories, and tax records as well as newspaper files and other sources to give a picture of the ways in which these less-privileged groups of Philadelphians lived. What emerges is a picture of Philadelphia radically different from the conventional portrait of a staid old city.

The revolutionary patriot known as Henry Free had come to America as the boy Henner Dellicker-his new life as different as his name and the childhood he left behind in Germany. He had traveled to colonial Philadelphia in a ship crowded with starving emigrants, only to discover that it was indentured servitude, not freedom, to which he sailed.Conrad Richter's 1943 novel, now restored to print, tells the rousing story of Free's journey, of his time in service, and of his struggle for freedom-his own, and that of the young nation of which he becomes a part. In the process of telling this story, Richter reveals many details about everyday life in eighteenth-century Philadelphia and highlights the little-known part played by the founding fathers of the Pennsylvania Dutch in America's growth to nationhood.

The Perennial Philadelphians tells the story of the city's inherited aristocracy-of Wanamakers and Drexels, of Biddles and Cadwaladers. Drawing on history, genealogy, politics, economics, the fine arts, private diaries, and the impressions and anecdotes of myriad living witnesses, Nathaniel Burt paints a fascinating portrait of Old Philadelphians. He traces the succession of a dynasty of doctors or lawyers, explores the country club scene, and takes us to regattas on the Schuylkill, fox hunts in Radnor, and horse shows in Devon.First published in 1963, this classic text has lost none of its timeliness. An adept social commentator, Burt cuts aside the centuries-old protective coloration in which Old Philadelphians have wrapped themselves, and reveals who these people are and how they manage to perpetuate themselves from generation to generation.

How did working people find jobs in the past? How has the process changed over time for various groups of job seekers? Are outcomes influenced more by general economic circumstances, by discriminatory practices in the labor market, or by personal initiative and competence?To tackle these questions, Walter Licht uses intensive primary-source research-including surveys of thousands of workers conducted in the decades from the 1920s to the 1950s-on a major industrial city for a period of over one hundred years. He looks at when and how workers secured their first jobs, schools and work, apprenticeship programs, unions, the role of firms in structuring work opportunities, the state as employer and as shaper of employment conditions, and the problem of losing work. Licht also examines the disparate labor market experiences of men and women and the effects of race, ethnicity, age, and social standing on employment.

Brotherly Love is a long poem that evokes William Penn's luminous vision of America and shows what has become of it as the intractable conflicts of our history-struggles over the land, keeping faith with the Indians, the uses and abuses of power-threaten Penn's ideal.Daniel Hoffman began writing Brotherly Love while he was Poet Laureate of the United States, in 1973-74 (the appointment then called Consultant in Poetry of the Library of Congress). Widely hailed, the book was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1981. It is adapted as the libretto for Ezra Laderman's music in the oratorio Brotherly Love, premiered by the Philadelphia Singers in March 2000.

Mastering Wartime is the first comprehensive study of a Northern city during the Civil War. J. Matthew Gallman argues that, although the war posed numerous challenges to Philadelphia's citizens, the city's institutions and traditions proved to be sufficiently resilient to adjust to the crisis without significant alteration. Following the wartime actions of individuals and groups-workers, women, entrepreneurs-he shows that while the war placed pressure on private and public organizations to centralize, Philadelphia's institutions remained largely decentralized and tradition bound.Gallman explores the war's impact on a wide range of aspects of life in Philadelphia. Among the issues addressed are recruitment and conscription of soldiers, individual responses to wartime separation and death, individual and institutional benevolence, civic rituals, crime and disorder, government contracting, and long-term economic development. The book compares the wartime years to the antebellum period and discusses the war's legacies in the postwar decade.