PA BOOKS on PCN
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Top 10 PA BOOKS on PCN Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best PA BOOKS on PCN episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to PA BOOKS on PCN for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite PA BOOKS on PCN episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
"Hidden History of Pittsburgh" with Len Barcousky
PA BOOKS on PCN
06/24/16 • 58 min
When Mark Twain visited in 1884, he claimed to spy a little bit of hell in Pittsburgh’s smoky appearance. Twain’s observations are among the many riveting firsthand accounts and anecdotes to be found in the archives of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The Great War hit home after the sinking of the Lusitania, which carried more than a dozen Pittsburgh residents. A few years later, cheering throngs of black and white residents lined downtown streets to welcome African American soldiers returning home from the conflict. The Ringling Brothers Circus held its last outdoor performance here in 1956 and left eight hundred show workers without jobs in the city. With these stories from the archives and more, veteran journalist Len Barcousky shines a light on the hidden corners of Pittsburgh’s history.
Until his retirement in 2015, Len Barcousky had been a longtime editor and reporter at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the oldest newspaper west of the Allegheny Mountains. He covered the city’s history in his “Eyewitness” columns, and he received his BA from Penn State and MBA from Columbia University.
1 Listener
11/29/22 • 57 min
Gen. Robert E. Lee began moving part of his Army of Northern Virginia from the Old Dominion toward Pennsylvania on June 3, 1863. Lee believed his army needed to win a major victory on Northern soil if the South was to have a chance at winning the war. Transferring the fighting out of war-torn Virginia would allow the state time to heal while he supplied his army from untapped farms and stores in Maryland and the Keystone State. Lee had also convinced Pres. Jefferson Davis that his offensive would interfere with the Union effort to take Vicksburg in Mississippi. The bold movement would trigger extensive cavalry fighting and a major battle at Winchester before culminating in the bloody three-day battle at Gettysburg. As the Virginia army moved north, the Army of the Potomac responded by protecting the vital roads to Washington, D.C., in case Lee turned to threaten the capital. Opposing presidents Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, meanwhile, kept a close watch on the latest and often conflicting military intelligence gathered in the field. Throughout northern Virginia, central Maryland, and south-central Pennsylvania, meanwhile, civilians and soldiers alike struggled with the reality of a mobile campaign and the massive logistical needs of the armies. Thousands left written accounts of the passage of the long martial columns. Mingus and Wittenberg mined hundreds of primary accounts, newspapers, and other sources to produce this powerful and gripping account. As readers will quickly learn, much of it is glossed over in other studies of the campaign, which cannot be fully understood without a firm appreciation of what the armies (and civilians) did on their way to the small crossroads town in Pennsylvania.
Scott L. Mingus Sr. is a scientist and consultant in the global pulp and paper industry. Scott is the author of nearly two dozen books and numerous articles. His biography Confederate General William "Extra Billy" Smith won multiple awards, including the 2013 Dr. James I. Robertson, Jr. Literary Award for Confederate history. Scott is also the author of many articles for a wide variety of publications, including Gettysburg Magazine.
Eric J. Wittenberg is an accomplished American Civil War cavalry historian and author. The Ohio attorney has authored nearly two dozen books on various Civil War subjects, with particular focus on cavalry operations, as well as three dozen articles in popular magazines, such as North & South, Blue & Gray, America's Civil War, and Gettysburg Magazine. His first book, Gettysburg's Forgotten Cavalry Actions, won the prestigious 1998 Bachelder-Coddington Literary Award. Wittenberg speaks widely, leads tours of various battlefields, and is an active preservationist.
1 Listener
George Marshall's "Memoirs of My Services in the World War, 1917-1918" with Tom Bruscino
PA BOOKS on PCN
06/27/23 • 113 min
George Marshall was one of America's most significant statesmen during the mid twentieth century. He was born and raised in Uniontown, PA and attended VMI before earning a commission in the U.S. Army in 1902. During World War II he led the Army as Chief of Staff and after the war served as Secretary of State where he initiated the Marshall Plan for the recovery of Europe. In this episode, Army War College professor Tom Bruscino joins us to talk about Marshall's memoir of his service as a staff officer with the American forces in Europe during World War I.
1 Listener
"The Whiskey Rebellion" with Brady Crytzer
PA BOOKS on PCN
06/05/23 • 57 min
In March 1791 Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton shocked the western frontier when he proposed a domestic excise tax on whiskey to balance America's national debt. As the months passed however the people of Western Pennsylvania grew restless with the inadequacy of the government's response and they soon turned to more violent means of political expression. Take a journey through Western Pennsylvania, following the routes of both the rebels and the U.S. Army to place this important event into context.
1 Listener
"Smalltime" with Russell Shorto
PA BOOKS on PCN
04/19/21 • 56 min
"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 brother-in-law, "Little Joe," operate a gambling empire and effectively run the town. "Smalltime" is an American immigrant story that travels back to Risorgimento Sicily, to the ancient, dusty, hill-town home of Antonino Sciotto, the author's great-grandfather, who leaves his wife and children in grinding poverty for a new life—and wife—in a Pennsylvania mining town. It's a tale of Italian Americans living in squalor and prejudice, and of the rise of Russ, who, like thousands of other young men, created a copy of the American establishment that excluded him. "Smalltime" draws an intimate portrait of a mobster and his wife, sudden riches, and the toll a lawless life takes on one family. But it is something more. The author enlists his ailing father—Tony, the mobster's son—as his partner in the search for their troubled patriarch. As secrets are revealed and Tony's health deteriorates, the book become an urgent and intimate exploration of three generations of the American immigrant experience.
Russell Shorto is the best-selling author of The Island at the Center of the World, Amsterdam, and Revolution Song, and a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine. He lives in Cumberland, Maryland.
Description courtesy of W. W. Norton & Company.
"An Early History of the Wyoming Valley" with Kathleen Earle
PA BOOKS on PCN
06/14/22 • 44 min
When Connecticut Yankees began to settle the Wyoming Valley in the 1760s, both the local Pennsylvanians and the powerful native Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) strenuously objected. The Connecticut Colony and William Penn had been granted the same land by King Charles II of England, resulting in the instigation of the Yankee-Pennamite Wars. In 1788, during ongoing conflict, a band of young Yankee ruffians abducted Pennsylvania official Timothy Pickering, holding him hostage for nineteen days. Some kidnappers were prosecuted, and several fled to New York's Finger Lakes as the political incident motivated state leaders to resolve the fighting. Bloody skirmishes, the American Revolution and the Sullivan campaign to destroy the Iroquois all formed the backdrop to the territorial dispute. Author Kathleen A. Earle covers the early history of colonial life, war and frontier justice in the Wyoming Valley.
Kathleen Earle is a native New Yorker whose ancestral roots go back to Pennsylvania. She is an author, artist, former professor and former director of research at the National Indian Child Welfare Association in Portland, Oregon. She attended Cornell University and the Rockefeller College of the State University of New York-Albany, where she received a PhD in 1996. She has written and illustrated several award-winning children's books and many peer-reviewed articles in the areas of mental health and child abuse. She lives in Maine with her husband, Stan Fox.
“Marley & Me” with John Grogan
PA BOOKS on PCN
02/10/16 • 57 min
John Grogan, a metropolitan columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and his wife, Jenny, were newlyweds when they brought home an irresistible yellow Labrador retriever puppy and named him after a mellow reggae star. But Marley soon would grow into a 97-pound powerhouse of nervous, pulsating intensity and mischief. Marley, the incorrigible, excitable, destructive, and intensely loyal creature that graced the Grogan home for thirteen years, was not the mellow, well-behaved pet his owners had envisioned. His slobber was legendary, his manners appalling, and his fear of thunderstorms expensive. He decimated walls, screen doors, car upholstery, and dinner parties. Evan as the Grogans tried everything to mold him to their will, Marley, with his utter devotion and unharnessed zeal for life, helped shape them into the family they would become. He was kicked out of obedience training, and the veterinarian prescribed tranquilizers to no effect. But his heart was pure. As he crashed through life, he taught two newlyweds about faithfulness and commitment, two parents about patience and perseverance, and a five-person family about the greatest gift of all- the gift of unconditional love.
Award-winning journalist John Grogan is a columnist with the Philadelphia Inquirer and former metropolitan columnist and urban-sprawl reporter for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. He is also a former editor of the magazine Organic Gardening. He lives with his family in Pennsylvania.
05/10/16 • 58 min
Carrying to the plate baseball's heaviest and loudest bat as well as the burden of being the club's first African American superstar, Allen found both hits and controversy with ease and regularity as he established himself as the premier individualist in a game that prided itself on conformity. As one of his managers observed, "I believe God Almighty hisself would have trouble handling Richie Allen." A brutal pregame fight with teammate Frank Thomas, a dogged determination to be compensated on par with the game's elite, an insistence on living life on his own terms and not management's: what did it all mean? Journalists and fans alike took sides with ferocity, and they take sides still.
Mitchell Nathanson presents Allen's life against the backdrop of organized baseball's continuing desegregation process. Drawing out the larger generational and business shifts in the game, he shows how Allen's career exposed not only the racial double standard that had become entrenched in the wake of the game's integration a generation earlier but also the forces that were bent on preserving the status quo. In the process, God Almighty Hisself unveils the strange and maddening career of a man who somehow managed to fulfill and frustrate expectations all at once.
Mitchell Nathanson is Professor of Law at Villanova University School of Law. He is author of “A People's History of Baseball” and coauthor of “Understanding Baseball: A Textbook.”
"Pennsylvania Dutch" with Mark L. Louden
PA BOOKS on PCN
05/18/16 • 58 min
In this probing study, Mark L. Louden, himself a fluent speaker of Pennsylvania Dutch, provides readers with a close look at the place of the language in the life and culture of two major subgroups of speakers: the "Fancy Dutch," whose ancestors were affiliated mainly with Lutheran and German Reformed churches, and conservative Anabaptist sectarians known as the "Plain people"—the Old Order Amish and Mennonites. Drawing on scholarly literature, three decades of fieldwork, and ample historical documents—most of which have never before been made accessible to English-speaking readers—this is the first book to offer a comprehensive look at this unlikely linguistic success story.
Mark L. Louden is a professor of Germanic linguistics and co-director of the Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
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FAQ
How many episodes does PA BOOKS on PCN have?
PA BOOKS on PCN currently has 396 episodes available.
What topics does PA BOOKS on PCN cover?
The podcast is about History, Podcasts, Books and Arts.
What is the most popular episode on PA BOOKS on PCN?
The episode title '"If We Are Striking for Pennsylvania" with Scott Mingus & Eric Wittenberg' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on PA BOOKS on PCN?
The average episode length on PA BOOKS on PCN is 57 minutes.
How often are episodes of PA BOOKS on PCN released?
Episodes of PA BOOKS on PCN are typically released every 6 days, 22 hours.
When was the first episode of PA BOOKS on PCN?
The first episode of PA BOOKS on PCN was released on Feb 9, 2016.
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