Pennsylvania Books

Jochens does a supreme job of explaining "everything you ever needed to know about women in early Scandinavia, but were afraid to ask."

This is a fascinating book about the female archetypes which *may* underly modern women of Nordic heritage more than we've previously realized. Or are they more patriarchal fantasy than reality? This book (and the companion volume "Women in Old Norse Society") seems a culmination of Jochens' career, bringing together vast amounts of knowledge and wisdom, brilliantly and provocatively interpreted. The book looks at images of women in Norse literature, mainly the Icelandic sagas. First she looks at Divine Images. The more ancient ones include fertility goddesses, valkyries, sibyls, norns and land-spirits. The more recent classic Nordic pantheon includes the two main goddesses Frigg and Freyja, and how such topics as sexual behaviour and marriage are treated in this divine pagan realm. Jochens then looks at Human Images of women in Norse literature. This is where she identifies the archetypes: the Warrior Woman, the Prophetess/Sorceress, the Avenger, and the Whetter (or Inciter). One of the very interesting points which Jochens stresses is that there is little historical evidence that these images portrayed the reality of women in real Norse society. Stories and poems of these pagan figures were transmitted by oral tradition for hundred of years, but the written sources were written by Christian monks for a Christian audience. This makes for infintely fascinating layers of conjecture and interpretion. I would highly recommend this book for anyone interested in how women are portrayed in history, especially women of Nordic heritage.

Ray Didinger is my favorite writer. I am a huge sports fan and I just love reading his work. This book, One Last Read, is a personal collection of his favorite works from throughout his career. The different articles he included are amazing. I specifically enjoyed his article about Reggie White, me being a huge fan of his. He also includes his speech introducing Tommy McDonald, an Eagles great, into the Hall of Fame.

A must read for all sports fans, especcially Philadelphia sports fans.

This is a must read for Philadelphia sports fans but also for anyone who appreciates well written articles and thoughtful opinions. Mr Didinger is in the writer's wing of the Pro Football Hall of Fame for a reason. And because it is a collection of articles throughout the years it is something one could stop and start several times without missing a beat.

As I read Rob Laughner's "Our Nun," not knowing at all what to expect but rather assuming it would be a murder mystery, I was most surprised to find that it was really all about a boy named Boyd. And once I got to know his character, was spellbound by him. His shy, knowing, wry, and exceptionally human presence weaves a sweet magic about this book, leaving the reader with a desire to see much more of Boyd. Anyone who's ever known someone like him, (farmkid doesn't really do the trick here) can't help but be pleased that Mr. Laughner brought him to life on these pages, happy to have another meeting, hoping that each page turned brings him closer into view. The book is amazingly difficult to describe: It's not "modern," not "old-fashioned," absolutely not "trite or simplistic," and not "sweet." It's just a really good read, a really good story, very real, and yet magical. I loved it. I will read it again. And I will tell everyone I know about it, because everyone, from age 10 to 100, will "get it" on some level, and like it! Just read it, and hope that we see more of Boyd soon...

Just read the first paragraph. Beautifully written first novels aren't often brave enough to be funny, too. But after the first paragraph you'll have to grant him three pages, then the chapter...and the next thing you know you're cheering him down the field as if he were your quarterback, the focus of tackles with the goal line approaching. No better novel about being a farm kid, about being eleven -- a murder comes as a bonus. Lewis Nordan fans will love it while aquiring a new favorite author.

But just read the first paragraph. That's all I ask.

This book is a good, field-based introduction to the common mosses and liverworts of the northeastern United States. It is an ideal starting point for those who have noticed mosses and liverworts and want to learn more. The large color photographs make it easy to recognize the most common species and the text describes the habitats where these plants can be found. Its size makes it easy to carry and use.

The subject of this book, a guide to mosses and liverworts, is challenging. For those living in Pennsylvania and nearby states, all regional guides published in the last half century require taxonomic expertise. For liverworts, it's Rudolf Schuster's The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America East of the Hundreth Meridian, 6 volumes, 4,668 pages, over a thousand dollars if you are lucky enough to find a copy. For mosses, it's Crum and Anderson's two volume Mosses of Eastern North America, 1328 pages, published over 35 years ago and available on Amazon for over $400. You might try How to Know the Mosses and Liverworts 2nd edition, by Conrad and Redfearn, but the guide covers the entire country and consists of dichotomous keys illustrated with line drawings.
Susan Munch's Outstanding Mosses & Liverworts of Pennsylvania and Nearby States is the only guide with color photographs. Spiral bound, 89 pages, and reasonably priced, it is designed to help people get started identifying mosses and liverworts. By selecting conspicuous and relatively common species, the author makes the process of identification feasible. For identifying specimens, I found it helpful to thumb through the pages and scan the photographs, much as I would a field guide to wildflowers. Opposite each page of photographs is a page of text describing the species illustrated. The photographs give sharp, close-up images of diagnostic features. The text is engaging and provides ecological and taxonomic information with a minimum of jargon. For more comprehensive taxonomic sources, the author provides a list of references.

Having grown up in the suburbs of Philly, I have memories of going to the Palestra to watch Big 5 basketball doubleheaders on Saturday nights.
For those of us who lived it, it is nostalgic book....
For those of us who love the game of basketball, it is a historical account of an amazing time, with amazing players, and a passion that is too seldom seen in today's game ..

This comprehensive and compelling book makes me long for my playing days again. I never followed the Big 5 (except for ESPN highlights), but now I am a fan because of it's richness and depth. The rivalries in the Big 5 are fascinating and hearty. This book captures how deep basketball waters run in Philadelphia and how deep collegiate loyalty can be. The author has crafted a rare treat that any fan of sports, history, and life will love. If you want to read about sports in its finest, purest form, then read this book.

Simon P Newman's Parades And The Politics Of The Street focuses on festivities and political connections in early American history, considering how parades were involved in drawing together people of different social levels, and how they influenced politics and opinions about popular leadership. This title would be useful for the college-level course on early American history as supplemental reading.

Simon Newman has given a vivid, fresh and accessible vision of life in early-European America. I'd never given a moment's thought to these matters of public demonstration...A must-read for anyone even remotely interested in colonial, social, even labor history.

This is the best poetry I have read this year. I have not run across another collection in which some of the puzzling devices and words the poet uses early on turn out to be "explained" or at least clarified in poetry later along. At first I had thought that Taggart had too many "coded" phrases in his works, but actually the proper names and places, and in some cases events and incidences were either not crucial to the understanding, or were one way or another understandable in the end. Clever and readable too. Throughout the work I could not help thinking of Philip Glass music. The repetition of words and phrases to make the reader concentrate on meaning, and of course on the music of the pieces.

Now I particularly like the poet's moves into areas of science, mathematics, and philosophy as well as the usual average writer's wanderings into nature, love & lasses, and fine arts. Good show. The cover photography was an excellent addition to the work, and I think every reader will find himself constantly flipping to the cover to see which poem matches which (and there is NOT a 1-to1 correspondence here, which adds agreeably to the mental work).

I suppose everyone has their favorites in any work, and mine in this one is "Lorine Niedecker," p. 52. Do read it.

John Taggart has had several books out in the past twenty years, most are long lyric poems. This book is a wonderful departure from the longer poems. WHile the poems are short, they reflect the musical tone that Taggart is known for. These short poems reflect life in rural Pennsylvania, and will strike a familiar chord with anyone who has lived in rural America.

This book really captures the spirit and essence of what is the Penn State Blue Band. I've marched in the band for 3 seasons and have, at times, tried to describe the exhiliration of the pregame show, or the dedication and pride I felt when I donned the uniform. This book does that perfectly. As years pass, and my memories fade of my experiences in The Blue Band, I will have this book to call upon, and help relive some of thos moments.

A fascinating and easy to read history of the Penn State Blue Band. There are some truly amazing photographs. I highly recommend this book!

For anyone interested in Pennsylvania history, this book is a wonderful acquisition. It chronicles disasters, both man-made and natural, over a two century period in a concise, informative manner. If anything, I could have used even more information on the aftermath of each disaster but the stories that were provided made for a very good read!

As a family historian, I am always looking for stories about events that influenced both our ancestors and current families. This book is excellent for this! Well written and enjoyable to read, this book discusses events ranging from 1793-2002. I lived in Pennsylvania during five of them and was intrigued to read events I remembered as history. I recommend the book highly.

This `Pennsylvania Dutch Cook Book' by J. George Frederick is the next step on my search to find the best `Pennsylvania Dutch' cookbook. For many reasons, it is not the best `Dutch' cookbook for the average modern American amateur cook who happens to want to make some traditional Lancaster County dishes, but it is near the top of the titles I have found for documenting this great Southeastern Pennsylvania cuisine for the author(s) of more popular books.

The first thing to note is that this is a standard Dover reprint of a book published in 1935. This means that since the book has a distinctly early 20th century point of view, before James Beard and before Julia Child and before Craig Claiborne, and certainly before the `back to the farmer's market' movement of Alice Waters and Deborah Madison. This being so, the introductory material is not only a narrative of the Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine, it is a testament to the mid-Depression view of the Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine.

The first thing which tickles me about this point of view is that the author has no interest in the more politically correct `Pennsylvania German' term, since the ethnic origins of the Pennsylvania Dutch is actually the German, French, and Swiss lands bordering on the Rhine. (I can personally attest to this, as my mother's family that settled between Bethlehem and Philadelphia were originally German Swiss Huguenot clockmakers from Western Switzerland.) The second thing that appealed to me personally was the fact that the author includes my hometown of Bethlehem, PA among the five great cities of Pennsylvania Dutch homeland, including Allentown, Lancaster, Reading, and Philadelphia. There is even a recipe for `Bethlehem Scrapple Cabbage'. Talk about a `signature' dish!

One of the most distinctive aspects of the 1935 point of view is the author's belief that all regional American cuisines are dying out, diluted into the great American soup pot (my term). The great thing about this perception is that it was either wrong, or the emphasis on regional culinary identities of the last 30 years has overcome and reversed this fading of local differences. On the other side of the coin, the author's claim that of the three great regional cuisines he mentions, referring to `Southern' cooking and `New England' cuisine, the Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine, based in a few counties in Southeastern Pennsylvania, has by far the smallest geographical base, yet it has some of the greatest culinary diversity. The only real competitor the author sees is the Cajun / Creole cuisine based in New Orleans.

At first, I was inclined to take this statement as simply an expression of regional pride, until the author started to remind me of the genius of the Pennsylvania Dutch culture for preserving food and using preserved foods in a wide range of recipes. Is this not the cornerstone of the great Italian cuisine, with their wealth of preserved meats, cheeses, pastas, wines, and liqueurs? As a minor participant in that great tradition in making and buying our church's `chow-chow', the classic vegetable relish. This, however, is just the tip of the iceberg, as there are dozens of varieties of pickled and dried vegetables and meats in the Dutch repertoire.

On the recipes in this book, they truly reflect a cuisine of frugal self-sufficiency. They make me laugh at all those boosters of Italian `cuisine of poverty' as they load up their dishes with $16 pound cheeses and dried ham. The most common `rich' ingredient in these recipes is butter, but then, all these recipes arose on dairy farms, where the butter was made at home. Like the Northern Italians, corn is one of the most common ingredients in Dutch dishes, but we don't make a heavy use of corn meal. Instead, the `signature' Pennsylvania Dutch corn ingredient is dried corn, famous in Southeastern Pennsylvania in the green `Cope's Corn' cans and boxes.

Since these recipes are so authentic, and since they genuinely reflect a thrifty culture, many actually appear rather unappetizing on the surface, due to the heavy use of flour, suet, lard, and items from the `fifth quarter' of animals. The most common examples of this `use everything' culture are scrapple and souse. The first is a pate of pork scraps and corn meal. The second is a Gelee of pork and vegetable scraps. Both dishes are symptoms of the Rhineland on the border between France and Germany. What is odd is that while the book gives a recipe for making souse and ten (10) recipes for cooking scrapple, it has no recipe for making scrapple. For this, you will need to go to `Country Scrapple' by the foremost author on `Dutch' cuisine, William Woys Weaver, the author of the best historical perspective on `Dutch' cooking, `Sauerkraut Yankees'.

Frederick's book is more useful to the general audience than either of these two books from Weaver, but it is still something of a challenge to the amateur. There are several ingredients such as souse, scrapple, and dried corn that may simply not be available. There are other ingredients that I confess are a mystery to me, such as `sago'. On the other hand, `Reading Pretzels', a surprising ingredient in some soups, is plentiful throughout the country now.

On searching the book for my favorite `Dutch' dishes, I find everything but stuffed pig's stomach. And, all the other recipes I found are close to or exactly like my grandmother and mother made; however, even their versions were a bit fancier and richer than the recipes given in this book. The hot endive salad, for example, wilt's the dickens out of the greens, while my mother's take on the same dish is to simply heat the greens with the hot dressing, without the endive ever touching the hot pan in which the dressing was cooked.

For the amateur culinary archeologist and the native `Dutchman', this is a great, inexpensive find, containing a heap of nostalgia for the tummy.

What an amazing book! I glimpse into the not-so-distant past when we couldn't just "log-on" and get whatever we desire. This cookbook goes back to the time of self-sustaining farms and communities. You can see this in the number of recipe variations that include the town where it is common. Anyone familiar with PA Dutch cuisine should own this cookbook!