Pennsylvania History

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.

In the summer of 1863, Confederate General Robert E. Lee, fresh off a victory at the Battle of Chancellorsville, decided to invade Union territory. Taking his Army of Northern Virginia into Pennsylvania, Lee was drawn to a place where the areas major roads converged at Gettysburg. There, over seventy thousand Southern troops waged a dogged, bloody battle against over ninety thousand Union soldiers in the fields and on the boulder-strewn heights surrounding the town.

What begins as yet another assignment for a reporter, a young millennial who relies happily on email and texting as the primary means of communication, develops into a heartfelt mission to tell the story of the people and places in the letters. Dead Letters is an intimate portrait of small-town America and the people who, at times, risked everything in pursuit of economic prosperity, religious freedom, and social equity.

In The Forgotten, Ben Bradlee, Jr., reports on how voters in Luzerne County, a pivotal county in a crucial swing state, came to feel like strangers in their own land - marginalized by flat or falling wages, rapid demographic change, and a liberal culture that mocks their faith and patriotism.

Of all the original 13 colonies in America, only one owes its conception to one man, and indeed, Pennsylvania was and still remains bound up in the life and character of its founder, William Penn. Here was a man born into a military family who saw his father rise through the ranks of the 17th-century English court to become a friend of the king, and he even considered a military career for himself, only to leave it all behind to become a member of the "Society of Friends", known colloquially as the Quakers.

Painted lavishly in oils in historic, genre-melding, technical virtuosity, and using custom-made costumes and local craftsman, the six-foot wide panoramic scene features an actual descendant of John Harris posing as John Harris himself, and a former Broadway Dancer as the heroic rescuing chief. Secret ancient historical information, celestial symbolism, and fantastic artistic technique are delivered within the compositional arrangements and careful selection of colors and elements.

The 1918 to 1919 H1N1 influenza pandemic is among the most deadly events in recorded human history, having killed an estimated 50 to 100 million persons. Recent H5N1 avian influenza epizootics associated with sporadic human fatalities have heightened concern that a new influenza pandemic, one at least as lethal as that of 1918, could be developing.

William Penn acquired a large section of American land in a debt settlement and transformed it into a thriving colony. He wrote this tract (and others) to recruit British colonists to Pennsylvania. In it, he praises the quality of the weather, the abundance of agricultural opportunities, and their good relations with the native people. His persuasive words capture a sense of “America the beautiful” that drove thousands to seek a new life in the land of opportunity.