Pennsylvania Books

To anyone that is not familar with coal region life...this is a good reflection of what it was like. The hard times, the good times, the cheating and politics that went on even in that era. I thought it was great and very interesting.

I WOULD RECOMMEND THIS BOOK TO ANY ONE THAT ENJOYS A GOOD STORY. I FEEL YOU COULD PUT YOUR OWN ANCESTORY INTO SOME OF THE EVENTS IN THIS BOOK. ALTHOUGH IT WAS WRITTEN ABOUT EARLY DAYS OF THE COAL REGION IN PENNSYLVANIA I THINK LIFE WAS LIKE THIS FOR MOST IMMIGRANTS COMING TO AMERICA IN THIS TIME FRAME. I WOULD LIKE TO READ BOOKS NORM OLEY WILL WRITE IN THE FUTURE IF THE STORY KEEPS ME INTERESTED THE WAY THIS ONE HAS.

this is the 1st book i have read in a long time that made me want to finish it the same day. i found this book to be interesting showing accounts of how events actually happened in the early days of coal discovery in the coal region of pennsylvania. i believe this is a book the whole family would enjoy reading. writing was tasteful. being from the coal region and trying to put my own family history to the book although fiction could possibly been loosely based on facts. i am looking forward to the next book norm oley writes.

Absolutely soul touching photographs. I have always been interested in the Amish lifestyle. Simple, Honest and Loving. Bill Coleman has spent 30 years photographing the "plain people"; he has perfected getting just the right shot! The photos in this book express "friendship" that goes deeper than most friendship books I have purchased. Maybe it is the innocence of the children..maybe because Coleman captures the "essence" without the fancy frilly additions.
A truly beautiful book to give to a friend, or someone who loves children!

The Book is filled with all the sweetest quotes ~ I love using them in cards and as myspace comments. The pictures are ADORABLE. I really enjoy having this book around!

This lovely book is a photo collection portraying Amish children. The photograhper established a relationship with the Amish community and took the pictures with their cooperation. Proceeds benefit a clinic for children with special needs. It's a great gift for anyone who was touched by the recent killings of Amish children to buy for themselves or friends.

Just got the book the other day. It has plenty of information of all the golf courses around the NYC area. I also discovered plenty of courses around my area that I didn't know about before! If your an avid golfer around these neck of the woods, this book is a MUST HAVE.

An excellent reference for the Big Apple golfer. Info on all courses within a 70 mile radius of NYC. Including their Top 30 Public Courses, as well as listings of ranges, golf stores and all things golf...SCHWING Magazine-Summer 1999 issue.

If golf is your game...as their ads correctly say "you gotta have this book"...it has everything you need to know about golfing in the NY Metropolitan Area...invaluable !

We took the book with us to Pittsburgh and discovered all sorts of places we wouldn't have known about otherwise. Never steered us wrong.

I no longer travel without a Moon Handbook.

As a Pittsburgher-- born, raised and educated in one of the greatest of American cities-- it's vexing to see Amazon.com dropped my 'ometown's "h" when listing the Pennsylvania 'andbook's complete title with the incorrect spelling "Pittsburg." Pittsburgh without the "h" is like Miam, New Yor, Chicag, or Salt Lake Cit without their respective final letters. 'ere's 'oping your editorial staff checks out one of the atlases you sell on-line next time!

Hawk Mountain is my favorite place in the entire world, and when I received my copy of this book, I immediately started reading. I couldn't put it down. The narrative is spellbinding; among his other many talents, Broun was an excellent writer. The photographs add an extra dimension to the story of the sanctuary and make the manuscript come alive. It was especially meaningful to me as someone who is so familiar with and fond of the place, but even someone who has never seen it can't fail to be moved by the passion and the conviction with which the sanctuary founders moved forward with their vision. Highly recommended.

A true conservation classic. Anyone who has visited Hawk Mountain will appreciate this book. The wholesale slaughter of the 20's and 30's of hawks passing over the Pennsylvania mountain is vividly described and will outrage any nature lover. Broun also poetically describes the beauty and solitude of life on the mountain in all seasons. Highly recommended! Stephen Rees. Abington, Pa.

A true conservation classic. Anyone who has visited Hawk Mountain will appreciate this book. The wholesale slaughter of the 20's and 30's of hawks passing over the Pennsylvania mountain is vividly described and will outrage any nature lover. Broun also poetically describes the beauty and solitude of life on the mountain in all seasons. Highly recommended! Stephen Rees. Abington, Pa.

Understanding the historical development of pensions is critical to the future of retirement systems around the world. This volume offers a comprehensive assessment of the political and financial dimensions of public sector pensions from the colonial period until the emergence of modern retirement plans in the twentieth century. The authors emphasize how retirement plans can help achieve human resource objectives, how public sector pension policy has sometimes been influenced by other government objectives, and how early pension plans were funded.

After discussing the economics of retirement plans, the authors review the history of European retirement plans, beginning with their use in the Roman Empire, and then moves on to early American pension systems. They explore the development and management of U.S. army and navy pension plans during the nineteenth century, drawing on original records of participants, retirees, and plan finances. They document the struggle to establish a federal civil service retirement system and trace the growth of state and local retirement plans. This history is inextricably linked to broader developments in U.S. financial markets, offering rich insights into political debates, including current debates surrounding plan design and plan funding.

This book is of significant interest to financial market and pension experts, labor and corporate pension sponsors, policymakers, public sector plan participants, and others who want to know how and why pensions emerged. Robert L. Clark is Professor of Economics and Professor of Business Management, North Carolina State University, and coeditor of the volume To Retire or Not? Retirement Policy and Practice in Higher Education, also available in the series from the University of Pennsylvania Press. Lee A. Craig is Professor of Economics, North Carolina State University. Jack W. Wilson is Professor of Business Management, North Carolina State University.

Understanding the historical development of pensions is critical to the future of retirement systems around the world. This volume offers a comprehensive assessment of the political and financial dimensions of public sector pensions from the colonial period until the emergence of modern retirement plans in the twentieth century. The authors emphasize how retirement plans can help achieve human resource objectives, how public sector pension policy has sometimes been influenced by other government objectives, and how early pension plans were funded.

After discussing the economics of retirement plans, the authors review the history of European retirement plans, beginning with their use in the Roman Empire, and then moves on to early American pension systems. They explore the development and management of U.S. army and navy pension plans during the nineteenth century, drawing on original records of participants, retirees, and plan finances. They document the struggle to establish a federal civil service retirement system and trace the growth of state and local retirement plans. This history is inextricably linked to broader developments in U.S. financial markets, offering rich insights into political debates, including current debates surrounding plan design and plan funding.

This book is of significant interest to financial market and pension experts, labor and corporate pension sponsors, policymakers, public sector plan participants, and others who want to know how and why pensions emerged. Robert L. Clark is Professor of Economics and Professor of Business Management, North Carolina State University, and coeditor of the volume To Retire or Not? Retirement Policy and Practice in Higher Education, also available in the series from the University of Pennsylvania Press. Lee A. Craig is Professor of Economics, North Carolina State University. Jack W. Wilson is Professor of Business Management, North Carolina State University.

Clark, Craig, and Wilson have produced a comprehensive book that serves a wide audience. While providing a detailed history of the development of public sector pensions from colinial times to 1920, tghe authors have taught their readers about the economic theory of pensions, informed them about the origins of the modern welfare state, and guided them to better understand the policy implications of recent proposals to reform Social Security. In the end, this book accomplishes much.

Shawn Kantor
University of California, Merced, and National Bureau of Economic Research

Not for the academic alone, Hitler's Face lays out not only post-WWI Germany's obsession with physiognomy but also its maniacal drive to construct a physiognomic system which could redeem the fatherland after its disgrace at Versailles; the drive to construct, as Schmýlders puts it, a national portrait gallery which would not only illustrate but prove the superiority of the German people.

The book is translated into clear and concise prose. The cover sucks, but can be easily removed.

In a world where the US government evaluates your penchant for atrocity based on how many people named Mohammed you've texted in the last two years, it's good to be reminded of, shall we say, certain pitfalls in this approach.

The premise of tracing images of Hitler is intriguing, and the book lives up to it.

"Hitler's Face - the Biography of an Image" comes in English at the right time in American history, at exactly the time when we (once again) need to learn to interpret the images projected by the media of those who hold power over our nation. From this point of view, "Hitler's Face" is an absolutely essential book; its analysis of physiognomic studies linked with the propagandist aspect of political portrayals is very current.

In general, the English translation reads very smoothly. Some citations from secondary texts were at times difficult to follow, but I imagine they were the best published translations available. And besides, the rest of the text makes up for these sections; a good read.

I am puzzled and very disappointed that this book is not being widely enough read and written about. I suspect its reputation is growing underground as people pass on copies and recount their experiences in reading it. Collins is a fine writer who brings an awsome command of history, Biblical scholarship, cultural appraisal, literary studies into focus such that the reader is made to see in startlingly new ways what a mess America has been brought to by its present leaders. This is not a superfical glance at the neocons, G W Bush, the Iraq war; it is rather a deeply thoughtful consideration of much that has gone into the long prehistory of the American nightmare -- ancient narratives, the structure of the language, the nature of metaphor, the inner workings of the evangelical mind. The book builds to a conclusion that will have you thinking in new ways about the recent past, not necessarily with bright hopes. Collins has a wonderful sense of humor, low-key, understated, sharp. I recommend this book.

This is a marvelous work of scholarship that exposes the dangerous myths powering the American worldview. Ought to be required reading in American political science curricula.

Review of Homeland Mythology, by Christopher Collins (Penn State Press, 2007) 262 pp.


Christopher Collins' Homeland Mythology: Biblical Narratives in American Culture exposes layers of sediment that have occluded our view of what is American. To all those who love to quote one side of a coin, "In God We Trust," never turning it over to read "In Diversity United," this is essential reading. All cultures survive and perish on their stories, but the unexamined story, as Collins demonstrates, is a perverse lie, a tool for propagandists and tyrants. It is one thing to suspend disbelief when listening to a work of fiction, but if we carry our fairy tales into adulthood, then we risk delusional behavior on a collective level. Worse, we act on beliefs we believe are already ordained by God, with drastic consequences: imperialistic expansion, racism, disregard for human rights, disregard for the environment, war.

Collins traces a direct line from the Christian interpretations of Biblical stories from the beginning of European history and Anglo history in the New World right to the current White House and to a vast array of rhetorical givens in the media and collective consciousness. He shows that not all narratives assume the same idea of time or history. The Hebrew Bible looks to the past, embracing ancient traditions: Isaac "follows" Abraham. The Christian appropriation of The Hebrew Bible, much like the Islamic, imposes a tortured interpretation, declaring the Hebrew Bible to be a foreshadowing of the coming (and coming again) of Jesus Christ, a forward narrative movement.

Pointing out how politicians have scoured the Bible for fear-mongering language is pretty easy, but exposing how they have used Bible stories, already embedded in a collective psyche, to justify horrific acts requires insight and careful documentation, which Collins has achieved. Collins' work is to the study of the Judeo-Christian traditions what Bernard Lewis' works have been to our understanding of Islam. And Like Lewis, Collins is scholarly without ever being pedantic. Bringing together literary analysis, rhetorical theory, and cultural anthropology, Collins adeptly presents us with a book that is both profound and reader friendly.

Marlon L Fick

Hotline Heaven is a work which must not be read solely for its story, although the plot is most interesting and well-crafted. Instead open the novel to the first page and relax into the poetry which Ms. Park infuses with a personal magic into the voice of the female narrator. Here are articulations from the loneliest and most fragile dimensions of the human spirit which emerge in the darkness of a sleepless night. Ms. Park has a very rare ability to produce a story which begs to be read several times for the pleasure of both its beauty and its insights. To truly savor its richness, one must approach it with some experience of the uncertainty and unexpected beauty life has to offer. I await the next world she will create with great anticipation.

This book deserves a very careful reading as Ms. Park displays a rare gift for the articulation of inner landscapes of loneliness, hope and reconciliation. The book has layers of meaning which are woven together through the poetic and evocative talents of its author

I was moved and heightened by Frances Park's novel "Hotline Heaven". Turning each page, I can only compare it to rising higher and higher to another plane where only the inspired go.

This is a very welcome counterbalance to the many voices that stress differences among cultures at the cost of losing sight of what we humans share. With extensive use of anthropological studies, Brown alerts the reader to those almost innumerable and too easily taken-for-granted elements of humanity. We all smile when happy, mourn the loss of a child, negotiate a place in a social setting with specific traditional roles. We all eat, experience hunger, learn which foods are acceptable, connect eating with social occasions, use food-related activities as basic metaphors for aspects of life. (The annotated bibliography is especially good for its lists of shared human factors.) Those who stress differences among people now usually do so to promote tolerance of "the other." But a good basis for tolerance is to recognize the common humanness within all the differences. This book does that well. It is good but highly readable anthropology.

This is a comprehensive survey of the anthropological study of human universals, human nature, culture vs. biology, etc. It's also a critique of the field of anthropology, and one given from a refreshing outside-looking-in perspective. Brown deals with several influential cases (such as Margaret Mead's study of Samoan adolescence) and shows where they erred. He discusses the processes of defining and demonstrating universals, takes us on a grand tour of the history of universals in anthropology, presents the basic gamut of how universals have been and can be explained. In the final chapters he lays out his position and leaves cultural relativism thoroughly refuted. Cultural relativists, he demonstrates, have relied on universals even in their attempts to show cultural relativity. Among even the most dissimilar human languages, for example, the similarities (grammar, syntax, rhythm, content, etc.) still far outweigh the differences. Anthropologists have historically focused on the differences while remaining blind to the (often more fundamental and important) similarities. I'm a little leery of some of the traits Brown ends up calling universal; he does acknowledge the "working" nature of such a list. But what precisely shall be found to be universal is less important than simply the shift to an orientation that would seek to understand human nature in such terms. This is what Brown proposes. He understands the place of anthropology in the social sciences, the field's potential, where and how that potential has gone unrealized, and how anthropologists will need to alter their approach if they're to be fruitful in the future. I haven't even scraped the surface here; the book is a gold mine of interdisciplinary connections and it brims with insights. More than anything, it's a sensible, biologically-informed, (dare I say) reality-based account of human nature. The tone is that of a genuine pursuit of truth, as opposed to the trend among some social scientists to search high and low for anything that supports established theory. This book is packed, and in many ways it only aims to lay the framework of a better approach to the subject.

This is a very welcome counterbalance to the many voices that stress differences among cultures at the cost of losing sight of what we humans share. With extensive use of anthropological studies, Brown alerts the reader to those almost innumerable and too easily taken-for-granted elements of humanity. We all smile when happy, mourn the loss of a child, negotiate a place in a social setting with specific traditional roles. We all eat, experience hunger, learn which foods are acceptable, connect eating with social occasions, use food-related activities as basic metaphors for aspects of life. (The annotated bibliography is especially good for its lists of shared human factors.) Those who stress differences among people now usually do so to promote tolerance of "the other." But a good basis for tolerance is to recognize the common humanness within all the differences. This book does that well. It is also highly readable anthropology.