Edited by Randall M. Miller
and Wiliam Pencak
Co-published with the Pennsylvania Historical
and Museum Commission
The Keystone State, so nicknamed because it
was geographically situated in the middle of the thirteen original colonies
and played a crucial role in the founding of the United States, has remained
at the heart of American history. Created partly as a safe haven for people
from all walks of life, Pennsylvania is today the home of diverse cultures,
religions, ethnic groups, social classes, and occupations. Many ideas, institutions,
and interests that were first formed or tested in Pennsylvania spread across
America and beyond, and continue to inform American culture, society, and politics.
This book tells that story—and more. It recenters Pennsylvania in the American
historical narrative.
Pennsylvania: A History of the Commonwealth
offers fresh perspectives on the Keystone State from a distinguished array of
scholars who view the history of this Commonwealth critically and honestly,
using the latest and best scholarship to give a modern account of Pennsylvania’s
past. They do so by emphasizing the evolution of Pennsylvania as a place and
an idea. The book, the first comprehensive history of Pennsylvania in almost
three decades, sets the Pennsylvania story in the larger context of national
social, cultural, economic, and political development. Without sacrificing treatment
of the inßuential leaders who made Pennsylvania history, the book focuses
especially on the lives of everyday people over the centuries. It also magnifies
historical events by examining the experiences of local communities throughout
the state.
Pennsylvania: A History of the Commonwealth
is divided into two parts. Part I offers a narrative history of the Commonwealth,
paying special attention to the peopling process (the movement of people into,
around, and out from the state); the ways people defined and defended communities;
the forms of economic production; the means of transportation and communication;
the character, content, and consequences of people’s values; and the political
cultures that emerged from the kinds of society, economy, and culture each period
formed and sustained. Part II offers a series of “Ways to Pennsylvania’s
Past”—nine concise guides designed to enable readers to discover Pennsylvania’s
heritage for themselves. Geography, architecture, archaeology, folklore and
folklife, genealogy, photography, art, oral history, and literature are all
discussed as methods of uncovering and understanding the past.
Each chapter is especially attuned to Pennsylvania’s
place in the larger American context, and a Foreword, Introduction, and Epilogue
to Part I explore general themes throughout the state’s history. An important
feature of the book is the large selection of illustrations—more than 400
prints, maps, photographs, and paintings carefully chosen from repositories
across the state and beyond, to show how Pennsylvanians have lived, worked,
and played through the centuries.
This book is the result of a unique collaboration
between Penn State Press and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
(PHMC), the official history agency of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Together
they gathered scholars from all over the Commonwealth to envision a new history
of the Keystone State and commit their resources to make imagining and writing
a new history possible.
Randall M. Miller is William Dirk Warren ‘50
Sesquicentennial Chair and Professor of History at Saint Joseph’s University
and President of the Pennsylvania Historical Association.
William Pencak is Professor of History at the
Pennsylvania State University and Editor of Pennsylvania History, the journal
of the Pennsylvania Historical Association.
November 2002
9 x 10.25 inches,
Hardback: $49.95 short | 0-271-02213-2
Paperback: $29.95 trade | 0-271-02214-0
A Keystone Book
Civilians and Society
in War
By Wayne Bodle
Of the many dramatic episodes of the American
Revolution, perhaps none is more steeped in legend than the Valley Forge winter.
Paintings show Continentals huddled around campfires and Washington kneeling
in the frozen woods, praying for his army’s deliverance. To this day schoolchildren
are taught that Valley Forge was the “turning point of the Revolution”—the
event that transformed a ragged group of soldiers into a fighting army. But
was Valley Forge really the “crucible of victory” it has come to represent
in American history? Now, two hundred and twenty-five years later, Wayne Bodle
has written the first comprehensive history of the winter encampment of 1777-78.
The traditional account portrays Valley Forge
in the 1770s as a desolate wilderness far removed from civilian society. Washington’s
army was forced to endure one of the coldest winters in memory with inadequate
food and supplies, despite appeals to the Continental Congress. When the mild
weather of spring finally arrived, the Prussian baron Friedrich von Steuben
drilled the demoralized soldiers into a first-rate army that would go on to
stunning victories at Monmouth and, eventually, at Yorktown.
Bodle presents a very different picture of Valley
Forge—one that revises both popular and scholarly perceptions. Far from
being set in a wilderness, the Continental Army’s quarters were deliberately
located in a settled area. And although there was a provisions crisis, Washington
overstated the case in order to secure additional support. (A shrewd man, Washington
mostly succeeded at keeping his army supplied with food, clothing, and munitions.
Farmers from the interior provided food that ensured that the army didn’t
starve.) As for Steuben’s role in training the soldiers, Bodle argues that
it was not the decisive factor others have seen in the army’s later victories.
The freshness of Bodle’s approach is that
he offers a complete picture of events both inside and outside the camp boundaries.
We see what happens when two armies descend on a diverse and divided community.
Anything but stoically passive, the Continentals were effective agents on their
own behalf and were actively engaged with their civilian hosts and British foes.
The Valley Forge Winter is an example of the “new military history”
at its best—a history that puts war back into its social context.
Wayne Bodle is Assistant Professor of History
at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His articles have appeared in numerous
journals, including Pennsylvania History, The Pennsylvania Magazine of History
and Biography, and The William & Mary Quarterly.
December 2002
6.25 x 9.25 inches
History - American,
Hardback: $35.00 trade | 0-271-02230-2
by Matthew Dennis (Editor),
Simon P. Newman (Editor), William Pencak (Editor)
Hardcover
(March 2002)
Pennsylvania State Univ Pr (Txt); ISBN: 0271021411
Andrew R. Murphy
http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/0-271-02105-5.html
A new look at the emergence
of religious toleration that seeks to dispel common myths.
Religious toleration appears near the top of any short list of core liberal
democratic values. Theorists from John Locke to John Rawls emphasize important
interconnections between the principles of toleration, constitutional government,
and the rule of law.
Conscience and Community revisits the historical emergence of religious liberty
in the Anglo-American tradition, looking deeper than the traditional emergence
of toleration to find not a series of self-evident or logically connected expansions
but instead a far more complex evolution. Murphy argues that contemporary liberal
theorists have misunderstood and misconstrued the actual historical development
of toleration in theory and practice.
Murphy approaches the concept through three "myths" about religious
toleration: that it was opposed only by ignorant, narrow-minded persecutors;
that it was achieved by skeptical Enlightenment rationalists; and that tolerationist
arguments generalize easily from religion to issues such as gender, race, ethnicity,
and sexuality, providing a basis for identity politics. The book seeks a renewed
appreciation of the specificity that made religious toleration so divisive as
well as the general tension between conscience and community that persists in
contemporary societies.
Andrew R. Murphy is a Senior Fellow at the Martin Marty Center, Divinity School, University of Chicago. He is the editor of The Political Writings of William Penn (Liberty Fund, forthcoming).
List Price: $45.00
Hardcover - 337 pages (July 2001) ISBN:
0271021055
Edited by Larry E. Tise
A survey of Benjamin Franklin's
relationship with women and the role of women in
his era.
Benjamin Franklin was undoubtedly one of the most important arbiters of American
culture and society at the time of the Revolution, when the young nation was
establishing its constitutions, laws, and civil institutions. Franklin also
played a major
role in defining a new and important role for women in this society. This volume
brings
together a distinguished group of scholars who are either authorities on Franklin
or on
the role of women in the eighteenth century to adjudge the record and intentions
of
Franklin in this most vulnerable facet of his character, life, and place in
history.
The essays in this volume grew out of a symposium organized by Tise at the Franklin
Institute in Philadelphia. They fall into two groups, those that examine Benjamin
Franklin's relationship with women (sisters, relatives, love interests, and
friends) and
those that explore more generally the role of women in Franklin's era. Topics
addressed include Franklin's theories on relations between men and women, the
nature of marriage, the dangers as well as the delights of sex, and the importance
of
education for men and women.
Contributors are Mary Kelley, Jan Lewis, Claude-Anne Lopez, Carla Mulford, Sheila
Skemp, Susan Stabile, and Larry E. Tise.
Larry E. Tise is an independent historian with years of experience in government
agencies and nonprofit organizations. He served as Executive Director at the
Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and the North Carolina Division
of
Archives and History, as well as the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial of
the
Franklin Institute.
184 pages / 5" X 8.5"
/ 2 illustrations (April 2000)
ISBN 0-271-01993-X / Cloth: $30.00s
ISBN 0-271-01994-8 / Paper: $9.95s
184 pages / 5" x 8.5"
(2000)
ISBN 0-271-01993-X / Cloth: $30.00
ISBN 0-271-01994-8 / Paper: $9.95
July 24, 2002