Pennsylvania Ghost Towns
By Susan Hutchison Tassin
Stackpole Books, 5067 Ritter Road, Mechanicsburg, PA  17055-6921

Cemeteries, abandoned buildings, and roads to nowhere are all that remain of several once-thriving towns in Pennsylvania. This guidebook profiles 46 locations that have been abandoned or left to ruin, and some that have seen new life as historic sites, with discussions on their history, daily life, fall, and current condition.

Rebellion in the Ranks
By John Nagy
Westholme Publishing, 8 Harvey Avenue, Yardley, PA  19067

Mutiny has always been a threat to the integrity of armies, particularly under trying circumstances, and since Concord and Lexington, mutiny had been the Continental Army's constant traveling companion. It was not because the soldiers lacked resolve to overturn British rule or had a lack of faith in their commanders. It was the scarcity of food—during winter months it was not uncommon for soldiers to subsist on a soup of melted snow, a few peas, and a scrap of fat—money, clothing, and proper shelter, that forced soldiers to desert or organize resistance. Mutiny was not a new concept for George Washington. During his service in the French and Indian War he had tried men under his command for the offense and he knew that disaffection and lack of morale in an army was a greater danger than an armed enemy.
In Rebellion in the Ranks: Mutinies of the American Revolution, author John Nagy mines previously ignored British and American primary source documents and reexamines other period writings.  Nagy has corrected misconceptions about known events, such as the Pennsylvania Line Mutiny, while identifying for the first time previously unknown mutinies. Covering both the army and the navy, Nagy relates American officers' constant struggle to keep up the morale of their troops, while highlighting British efforts to exploit this potentially fatal flaw.

Pre-empted for LIVE Election 2008 Coverage

Wild Yankees
by Paul B. Moyer
Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East Sage St., Ithaca NY  14850

Northeast Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley was truly a dark and bloody ground, the site of murders, massacres, and pitched battles. The valley's turbulent history was the product of a bitter contest over property and power known as the Wyoming controversy. This dispute, which raged between the mid-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, intersected with conflicts between whites and native peoples over land, a jurisdictional contest between Pennsylvania and Connecticut, violent contention over property among settlers and land speculators, and the social tumult of the American Revolution. In its later stages, the controversy pitted Pennsylvania and its settlers and speculators against “Wild Yankees”—frontier insurgents from New England who contested the state's authority and soil rights.

Never Give In
By Sen. Arlen Specter
Thomas Dunne Books, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010

In early 2004, Senator Specter was in the midst of a grueling primary race, facing significant opposition from the right as he worked to win his party’s nomination to run for reelection for his Pennsylvania senate seat. It would be the most difficult election in his quarter-century career in the Senate. Following on its heels were two more challenges---the general-election race and opposition to his elevation as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, his lifelong ambition. He overcame all three challenges in time for his seventy-fifth birthday.
But exhaustion and fatigue---initially thought to be the aftereffects of months of vigorous campaigning---were found to be far more serious. After a series of tests and consultation with several doctors, Specter was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease, Stage IVB, the most advanced stage.

War of the Bloods in My Veins
By DaShaun “Jiwe” Morris
Simon and Schuster, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

“War of the Bloods in My Veins” begins in Phoenix, where ten-year-old DaShaun Morris is put in a car, given a gun and told to point it and squeeze the trigger at a group of men standing on a sidewalk deep in Crips territory. He goes on to live the life of a gang banger- selling drugs, robbing, and continuously waging war with rival gang members- all between school and football practice.  Years later in college- and after the lives of many of his friends and brothers are lost- on the edge of being drafted by the NFL, he is charged with attempted murder.  Morris vividly recounts the relentless storm of abandonment, violence, crime, death, and the endless rush toward complete and utter self- annihilation in a true story about choosing a better life. 

The 33-Year-Old Rookie
By Chris Coste
Random House, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019

Chris Coste dreamed of playing major-league baseball from the age of seven. But after eleven grueling years in the minors, a spot on a major-league roster still seemed just out of his reach–until that fateful call came from the Philadelphia Phillies in May 2006. At age thirty-three (“going on eighty”), Coste was finally heading to the big time. But that year, during the Phillies’ major-league spring training, Coste was demoted to the minors at the last minute to make room for a utility outfielder, despite having hit a blistering .463 and earning the trust of the team’s pitchers. Later that season, though, Coste finally got the call-up, and he hit .364 during the Phillies’ furious battle to nail down the final postseason berth.  Coste takes us through the 2006 spring training season and into his first season as a major-league catcher with the Phillies. From tense stretch-run games that kept Phillies’ fans on the edge of their seats to moments of intimate personal reflection, Coste’s saga offers baseball aficionados an inside look at a remarkable life and career.

Lincoln and the Decision for War
By Russell McClintock
University of North Carolina Press, P.O. Box 2288, Chapel Hill, NC 27515-2288,

When Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860 prompted several Southern states to secede, the North was sharply divided over how to respond. In this groundbreaking book, the first major study in over fifty years of how the North handled the secession crisis, Russell McClintock follows the decision-making process from bitter partisan rancor to consensus.  From small towns to big cities and from state capitals to Washington, D.C., McClintock highlights individuals both powerful and obscure to demonstrate the ways ordinary citizens, party activists, state officials, and national leaders interacted to influence the Northern response to what was essentially a political crisis. He argues that although Northerners' reactions to Southern secession were understood and expressed through partisan newspapers and officials, the decision fell into the hands of an ever-smaller handful of people until finally it was Abraham Lincoln alone who would choose whether the future of the American republic was to be determined through peace or a sword.

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Pioneers of Cable Television
By Don Sarvey
McFarland Publishing, 960 NC Hwy 88W, Jefferson, NC 28640

A great deal of the ingenuity that developed cable into today’s multibillion dollar industry came from Pennsylvania. In this state was developed the community antenna television system, the forerunner of the cable we know today. “Pioneers of Cable Television” traces the history of cable television through biographical sketches of those who were instrumental in bringing this technology to rural Pennsylvania. The contributions of such men as John Walson, Bob Tarleton, George Gardner, and Ralph Roberts are discussed and their relationships to each other examined. Information drawn from interviews with these men or people who knew them brings history to life. Topics include the roots of cable television, problems of early cable systems and the advent of HBO and its consequences. An appendix offers a commemorative history of the Pennsylvania Cable Network.

Don Sarvey is an independent writer and a communications consultant for Editorial Enterprises, Inc., based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

The Second Nine Months
by Vicki Glembocki
DaCapo Press, Eleven Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA  02142

I want to walk out of Target and leave Blair there, wailing.... Nice people work at Target. Surely someone would take her home and care for her and buy her pretty things. So begins Vicki Glembocki’s brutally honest memoir of her agonizing transition into motherhood. Why agonizing? Because no one told her how tough it would be. Finally, Glembocki lays out the truth about those first months with baby: the certainty that you’re doing everything wrong; the desire to kill your husband, your mother, your dog; the struggle to balance who you were with whom you’ve become-a mother. Unlike any other book on motherhood, Glembocki breaks the New Mother Code of Silence, proving that “maternal bliss” is not innate, but learned. Funny and wise, she connects with new moms on a shockingly intimate level, letting them know that they are not alone.

Blue Skies: A History of Cable Television
by Patrick Parsons
Temple University Press, 1601 North Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19122-6099

Cable television is arguably the dominant mass media technology in the U.S. today. “Blue Skies”  traces its history in detail, depicting the important events and people that shaped its development, from the pre-cursors of cable TV in the 1920s and 1930s to the first community antenna systems in the 1950s, from the creation of the national satellite-distributed cable networks in the 1970s to the current incarnation of "info-structure" that dominates our lives. Author Patrick Parsons also considers the ways that economics, public perception, public policy, entrepreneurial personalities, the social construction of the possibilities of cable, and simple chance all influenced the development of cable TV.  

Pre-empted for the PA Academic Challenge

Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties
by Steven Watson
Pantheon Books, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY  10019

Andy Warhol's Silver Factory was a collaboration of artists that came together to produce more than 500 movies, the music of the Velvet Underground, and the paintings and sculpture that would influence the future art world.  Author Steven Watson tells the story of the unusual interaction between Andy Warhol and his fellow artists at Silver Factory, including Edie Sedgwick, Lou Reed, Paul Morrissey, and many others between 1963 and 1968, when Warhol was shot by an enraged hanger-on, Valerie Solanas. 

Steven Watson is a cultural historian and documentary filmmaker. His other books include “Strange Bedfellows,” “ The Harlem Renaissance,”  “The Birth of the Beat Generation,” and “Prepare for Saints: Gertrude Stein, Virgil Thomson, and the Mainstreaming of American Modernism.”  He lives in New York City.

Lady Killer
by Lisa Scottoline
ESPN Books, 19 E. 34th Street, 7th Floor, New York, NY  10016

Mary DiNunzio is a trademark Lisa Scottoline heroine—she's strong, she's smart, and she's got plenty of attitude. In recent years, she's become a big-time business-getter at Rosato & Associates, but the last person she expects to walk into her office one morning—in mile-high stilettos—is super sexy Trish Gambone, her high school rival. Back then, while Mary was becoming the straight-A president of the Latin Club and Most Likely to Achieve Sainthood, Trish was the head Mean Girl, who flunked religion and excelled at smoking in the bathroom.
As it turns out, however, Trish's life has taken a horrifying turn. She's terrified of her live-in boyfriend, who's an abusive, gun-toting drug dealer for the South Philly mob. There's only one problem—Mary remembers the guy from high school too. Unbeknownst to Trish, Mary had a major crush on him. Then Trish vanishes, a dead body turns up in an alley, and Mary is plunged into a nightmare, one that threatens her job, her family, and even her life. She goes on a one-woman crusade to unmask the killer, and on the way, finds new love in a very unexpected place.

Pennsylvania Ghost Towns
By Susan Hutchison Tassin
Stackpole Books, 5067 Ritter Road, Mechanicsburg, PA  17055-6921

Cemeteries, abandoned buildings, and roads to nowhere are all that remain of several once-thriving towns in Pennsylvania. This guidebook profiles 46 locations that have been abandoned or left to ruin, and some that have seen new life as historic sites, with discussions on their history, daily life, fall, and current condition.

Rebellion in the Ranks
By John Nagy
Westholme Publishing, 8 Harvey Avenue, Yardley, PA  19067

Mutiny has always been a threat to the integrity of armies, particularly under trying circumstances, and since Concord and Lexington, mutiny had been the Continental Army's constant traveling companion. It was not because the soldiers lacked resolve to overturn British rule or had a lack of faith in their commanders. It was the scarcity of food—during winter months it was not uncommon for soldiers to subsist on a soup of melted snow, a few peas, and a scrap of fat—money, clothing, and proper shelter, that forced soldiers to desert or organize resistance. Mutiny was not a new concept for George Washington. During his service in the French and Indian War he had tried men under his command for the offense and he knew that disaffection and lack of morale in an army was a greater danger than an armed enemy.
In Rebellion in the Ranks: Mutinies of the American Revolution, author John Nagy mines previously ignored British and American primary source documents and reexamines other period writings.  Nagy has corrected misconceptions about known events, such as the Pennsylvania Line Mutiny, while identifying for the first time previously unknown mutinies. Covering both the army and the navy, Nagy relates American officers' constant struggle to keep up the morale of their troops, while highlighting British efforts to exploit this potentially fatal flaw.

Pre-empted for PIAA Boys Volleyball Championships

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