Pennsylvania: A History of the Commonwealth

by Randall M. Miller (Editor), William A. Pencak (Editor)

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 an array of distinguished 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 influential 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.

Genres: History, American History

712 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Randall Miller is a professor of history at Saint Joseph's University (Philadelphia, PA).

Reviews

[Jeff · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a book that has taken me far too long to finish.

Part of the reason is its size… not because there are so many pages, but because it's really too big to take on the train for my morning and evening commutes. So, it has often resided on my coffee table, waiting for me to pick it up again.

But there is more to the story than that. Pennsylvania… is a sprawling book. And a very uneven one, as one might expect from a book that is essentially a collection of essays.

There were moments when I was extraordinarily thrilled with its contents. For example, this is a history book that starts its story in 30,000 B.C. with discussions about the geologic and prehistoric pasts of the lands that became Pennsylvania. What a great start! And the history section of the book is decent, although less in-depth than I had hoped.

The disappointment started when I left the history section behind and delved into the sections comprising "Ways to Pennsylvania's Past", which turned out to be various essays that could have been better described as "Let's Talk about How You Can Become a Better Historian". Okay. We all could use that advice, I suppose. But if I had wanted those essays, I would have picked up a book entitled, Let's Talk about How You Can Become a Better Historian. But that's not the book I had in hand; I had a book whose subtitle was A History of the Commonwealth. You see my dilemma.

So, in the end, I cannot recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a comprehensive history of Pennsylvania or to someone who is interested in reading a history from cover to cover. If you encounter this book, pick it up. Pick and choose the topics you want to read about and ignore the rest. Otherwise, it might take you 4½ years to read it.

[Eric Mccoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good breezy history of state and it's people. Not in depth but an interesting overview. Takes every opportunity to highlight achievement of PA but doesn't shirk from dark sides either. if it's being charged with a liberal bias it's because it presents some liberal viewpoints as potentially valid rather than just dismissing them all but overall it's very positive on Pennsylvania and makes an effort to present objective views.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 5 out of 5]

Project Read-a-History-of-Every-State-in-Order-of-Statehood #2

This massive, wrist-wrenching tome about Pennsylvania is replete with everything you might want out of a state history. As a pivotal state early in American history (hence the nickname "The Keystone State"), PA set the norm for religious freedom, transportation, resource exploitation, and hideous, rustbound decline, all American hallmarks. Producer of such luminaries as Benjamin Franklin, Mary Cassatt, Rachel Carson, Frank Rizzo, and Charlie, PA has long been a fount of the outstanding and the questionable, a description that pretty much sums up its history.
There's much, of course, on PA's role in colonial and revolutionary history. The best bits are on the long 19th century and PA's growth as a transportation hub and innovator, gateway to the west and its cities' roles in civil rights, being progressive when it came to abolition and the rights of African-Americans. But Penn's initial vision of PA as a haven for all religions, sects, and peoples brought with it an inherent genetics of disunity which has long dictated internal PA politics and development. With the state's explosion as a source of coal, oil, and lumber, the 19th century saw PA become a node of union activism and the little guy's war against the obese corporations lording over everything. This history is even more fascinating in its focus on the decline and nosedive PA took economically and politically over the 20th century as chronic corruption, mismanagement and general malfeasance basically ruined the state's industries and left a polluted wasteland in its wake. Written in the early 00s, though, the recent recovery, especially of Pittsburgh isn't covered here. PA's bounceback from a period of virtually zero growth, population and otherwise, is a remarkable story in and of itself, but you won't get that here, the only drawback. A new edition would easily remedy that, though.
Structurally, the book separates out the actual history from a back fourth-of-the-text that has separate sections on geography, arts, architecture, and so on. Surprisingly little on the sports bits, especially seeing as the state hosts numerous professional sports teams. I found the arts section a little lacking, too, but doesn't deter from the overall greatness.

[Mike Anastasia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection is a definitive overview of Pennsylvanian history, but I must question that angle it takes. The book is supposed to be a textbook, and textbooks are supposed to be unbiased recordings of fact, but this book feels an awful lot like a social history in textbook form. Across all eras, from paleo-Indians to present day citizens, the book focus on the relationship between people instead of the relationship between other geologic areas, states and even countries. It's hard to write a book on the Revolutionary War and focus more on house life than battlefields, but this book does it.

This is the kind of book that belongs on a side table at a Bed and Breakfast close to the border with any of the other seven keylocked states, but probably not in a college library. I've always been critical of textbooks and I must say this is classier than most, but I would still always suggest reading period narratives or collecting your own primary source collections. This may as well be Wikipedia without a search function.

[Carrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I looked through this in order to determine if I need to buy it for our homeschool library. I decided I do. I am not from PA, so it is very helpful to have a nice source like this in order to meet the PA history requirement as set forth by our illustrious commonwealth. Starts pretty much as the dawn of time, covering American Indians, Amish, steel worker uprisings, etc. Also has a lot of nice photos.

[Maol Mhuire O'Duinnin]

so far, it's extremely detailed at approximately 600 pgs. but i dig history, so i'm trying to stay with it.

[George Siehl · Rating 3 out of 5]

A comprehensive array of topics discussed in this textbook: geography, art, architecture, Native Americans, the sequence of immigration, on to government and industrial growth and decline.. The treatment is pretty much doctrinaire liberal: all the warts for business, halos for the unions. Different authors for different chapters, so a bit of a spread in political preference, but nothing much.