The Allegheny River, of western Pennsylvania and New York, flows through a region rich in natural resources and human history. While the river is 320 miles long, the northern watershed district originates in Potter County, Pennsylvania, and joins the Clarion River near Parker, Pennsylvania. Along the Allegheny River: The Northern Watershed showcases over 200 vintage postcards of the river, its landscape, and its people. These captivating images chronicle over 200 years of history, from the...

The Allegheny River of western Pennsylvania and New York rises in Potter County, Pennsylvania, and flows 320 miles to its confluence with the Monongahela River in Pittsburgh. The Allegheny's southern watershed district begins in East Brady, Pennsylvania, and ends in Pittsburgh, and it includes the historic Redbank Creek, Mahoning Creek, Crooked Creek, and Kiskiminetas River valleys. Along the Allegheny River: The Southern Watershed features over 200 vintage postcards of the landscapes, peo...

The Bucktail Highway, Pennsylvania Route 120, traverses over 100 miles of the commonwealth's historic northern tier, linking Ridgway in the west with Lock Haven in the east. The Bucktail Highway crosses the eastern continental divide east of St. Marys and closely follows the picturesque, deep valleys carved by Sinnemahoning Creek and the West Branch of the Susquehanna River. Originally a Native American path and later a road that carried settlers west beyond the Allegheny Front, today's Bu...

The discovery of oil flowing from a well in the wilds of northwestern Pennsylvania shook the modern world in 1859. Refined as kerosene for lamps, a lubricant for home and industrial needs, and ultimately as a fuel for transportation in the form of gasoline, oil literally changed the world and defined global economics and politics. Western Pennsylvania's Oil Heritage profiles the history of Pennsylvania oil from its discovery and development to its impact on the culture, economy, and enviro...

This story of one of the last remaining synagogues in the historic neighborhood and its congregation is "as absorbing as a good cinema verité documentary" ( Booklist).On New York's Lower East Side, a narrow building, wedged into a lot designed for an old-law tenement, is full of clamorous voices—the generations of the dead, who somehow contrive to make their presence known, and the newer generation, keeping the building and its memories a...

Seaside Heights tells the history of a timeless seashore resort community located on a barrier island nestled between the Atlantic Ocean and Barnegat Bay. The 224-acre town was settled by residents of Philadelphia and Camden, who purchased white-sand lots to escape city life for the brisk ocean breezes and tranquility that Seaside Heights offered prior to World War II. Seaside Heights uses the scenes captured in vintage postcards, some of them very rare, as a study of the changes that have...

Nineteenth-century New York City was one of the most magnificent cities in the world, but also one of the most deadly. Without any real law enforcement for almost 200 years, the city was a lawless place where the crime rate was triple what it is today and the murder rate was five or six times as high. The staggering amount of crime threatened to topple a city that was experiencing meteoric growth and striving to become one of the most spectacular in America.For the first time, award...

The early settlement of the region around Pittsburgh was characterized by a messy collision of personal, provincial, national, and imperial interests. Driven by the efforts of Europeans, Pennsylvanians, Virginians, and Indians, almost everyone attempted to manipulate the clouded political jurisdiction of the region. A Colony Sprung from Hell traces this complex struggle. The events and episodes that make up the story highlight the difficulties of creating and consolidating authori...

Fort William Henry, America’s early frontier fort at the southern end of Lake George, New York, was a flashpoint for conflict between the British and French empires in America. The fort is perhaps best known as the site of a massacre of British soldiers by Native Americans allied with the French that took place in 1757. Over the past decade, new and exciting archeological findings, in tandem with modern forensic methods, have changed our view of life at the fort prior to the massacre, by p...

An eloquent portrayal of a disappearing way of life of the Long Island fishermen whose voices--humorous, bitter and bewildered--are as clear as the threatened beauty of their once quiet shore.

From the early 1900s through the 1950s, the postcard was an extraordinarily popular means of communication, and many of the postcards produced during this 'golden age' can today be considered works of art. Postcard photographers traveled the length and breadth of the nation snapping photographs of busy street scenes, documenting local landmarks, and assembling crowds of local children only too happy to pose for a picture. These images, printed as postcards and sold in general stores across...

The Perkiomen Creek is a picturesque stream that drains a major portion of western Montgomery County. It begins just beyond the northern borders of the county and travels south. The creek empties into the Schuylkill River at the county's lower border. The old Perkiomen Railroad closely followed the same path. Along the Perkiomen showcases postcards of the Perkiomen Valley in Montgomery County as it existed during the first half of the twentieth century. Readers will visit the villages and ...