Penn Press Log

Art Work--Now Available

Art Work: Women Artists and Democracy in Mid-Nineteenth-Century New York
April F. Masten
312 pages | 6 x 9 | 55 illus.
Cloth 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4071-9 | $59.95 | £39.00
A volume in the Arts and Intellectual Life in Modern America series

Between 1850 and 1880, thousands of women moved to New York City to study art and pursue careers as painters, designers, illustrators, and engravers. This book reconnects their accomplishments to the city's conspicuously democratic art institutions, its burgeoning illustrated press, and the prevailing aesthetic ideal known as the Unity of Art.

Read more . . .

Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Ellen Trachtenberg.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here

Podcast Interview with Colin Gordon

Marshall Poe interviewed Colin Gordon, author of Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City, for  the New Books in History blog. An audio file of this extensive interview is available for download at newbooksinhistory.com.

Negro League Baseball--Now in Paperback

Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution
Neil Lanctot
512 pages | 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 | 31 illus.
Cloth 2004 | ISBN 978-0-8122-3807-5 | $37.95 | £25.00
Paper 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2027-8 | $19.95 | £13.00

Winner of the 2005 Seymour Medal of the Society for American Baseball
Research

"Prodigiously researched and thoroughly unsentimental, Neil Lanctot's history of organized black baseball from 1933 through the early 1960s provides an enormously important historical corrective to feel-good versions of baseball integration."--New York Times

Read more . . .

Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Ellen Trachtenberg.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

History Wire on Visions of Progress

Steve Goddard selected Doug Rossinow's Visions of Progress: The Left-Liberal Tradition in America for today's History Wire Book Alert, calling the history "an effective way to introduce today's progressives to their historical predecessors and suggests the pitfalls of losing sight of the forest for the trees."

Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City--Now Available

Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City
Colin Gordon
304 pages | 7 x 10 | 78 color illus.
Cloth 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4070-2 | $55.00 | £36.00
A volume in the Politics and Culture in Modern America series

Mapping Decline, illustrated with more than 75 full-color maps, traces the ways private real estate restrictions, local planning and zoning, federal housing policies, and urban renewal encouraged "white flight" and urban decline in St. Louis, Missouri.

Read more . . .

Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Ellen Trachtenberg.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

H-Urban Review of Nightclub City

". . .[Nightclub City: Politics and Amusement in Manhattan] is an important addition to the literature on New York and the social world of leisure and entertainment that emerged between the wars," writes David S. Churchill in a recent H-Urban H-Net review of Burton W. Peretti's history of New York City night life and politics.

Read the entire review at www.h-net.org.

Blaszczyk Receives BHC Award

Regina Lee Blaszczyk, editor of Producing Fashion: Commerce, Culture, and Consumers, received the Harold F. Williamson Prize from the Business History Conference. The award, which honors mid-career scholars who have "made significant contributions to the teaching and writing of business history," was presented to Blaszczyk at this year's BHC meeting in Sacramento, California.

Almost a Dynasty Rekindles Fond Memories

A review of Almost a Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the 1980 Phillies, by William C. Kashatus, appeared in the March 30 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer. In this review, retired sports journalist Bill Lyon writes:

. . .[Kashatus] has knitted together a meticulously detailed, exhaustively researched, thoroughly dissected offering that contains no fewer than four appendices, a selected bibliography, an index, an introduction, a list of acknowledgments, and a veritable novella's worth of notes. It is difficult to believe that anything has been left out. . . .

If you grew up with the Phillies of his generation, this book will resonate and rekindle fond memories. If you are learning of it for the first time, well, there was a time, believe it or not, when the Phillies rose above their rag-tag history, when the teams of the most futile franchise in all of sport were perennial contenders.

Spring Training Trivia Challenge Final Results

Today is opening day of the Philadelphia Phillies 2008 season. Time to announce the final results of the Almost A Dynasty Spring Training Trivia Challenge.

The weekly trivia challenge winners are:

week 1, Bill Baer of Aston, PA
week 2, John Fea of Philadelphia, PA
week 3, Rodney Reuter of Lincoln, NE
week 4, Ron Rosen of Shrewsbury, MA

Each weekly winner receives a copy of Almost A Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the 1980 Phillies, signed by author William C. Kashatus.

The grand prize winner, Rodney Reuter, also receives two section 109 tickets to a Phillies vs. Mets game at Citizens Bank Park here in Philadelphia.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Almost A Dynasty Spring Training Trivia Challenge and congratulations to the winners.

Who Will Win the Phillies vs. Mets Game Tickets?

Congratulations to Ron Rosen of Massachusetts, winner of the fourth and final round of the Almost a Dynasty Spring Training Trivia Challenge.

For having his entry drawn from all of the entries that we received, Ron Rosen wins a copy of Almost a Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the 1980 Phillies by William C. Kashatus, and a chance at the grand prize--Tickets for Two to a Phillies vs. Mets Game.

1. What former left fielder played for the Phillies and the White Sox and was a career .276 hitter with 308 home runs and 1,128 RBIs?

Greg Luzinski

2. What four-time All Star and current infield instructor for the Chicago White Sox won the National League Championship Series MVP in 1980?

Manny Trillo

3. Which pitcher for the Phillies, Cubs, Rangers, Indians, Tigers, and Orioles became, in 1987, the second player (after Harry Chiti) in Major League Baseball history to be traded for himself?

Dickie Noles

The grand prize winner will be announced next Monday, March 31st.