Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
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Editorial
No full textThis is an editorial for the January 2017 issue of the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
Knight of Philadelphia: The Life and Times of Albert Monroe Greenfield, The Outsider: Albert M. Greenfield and the Fall of the Protestant Establishment.
No full textThese two recent publications offer valuable insight into the career and contributions of Albert Monroe Greenfi eld, a remarkable Philadelphia businessman, developer, and politico. Born in imperial Russia in 1887, Greenfi eld was brought to America in 1892 by Jewish émigré parents who soon settled in Philadelphia. By 1905, he entered into a real estate partnership and over the next decade accrued both wealth and reputation acting as broker for numerous high-profi le transactions. In tracing these early years, Rottenberg delineates important themes for Greenfi eld’s later career: he “refused to be pigeonholed by his Jewishness,” made a virtue of self-reinvention, seized opportunities “that seemed . . . to abound wherever a young man of limitless energy might turn,” and exhibited characteristic foresight by recognizing the future of motion pictures and the ties of that fl edgling industry to real estate (31, 22, 28, 34). Greenfi eld’s confi dence and power grew in the 1920s, and he soon advanced from broker to developer—seeking to help Philadelphia remake its anachronistically underdeveloped Center City. In the process, he became realtor to Dennis Cardinal Dougherty and forged lifelong ties to the Catholic hierarchy, became an important voice within the state Republican machine, and helped J. David Stern purchase the Philadelphia Record and transform it into a widely read organ of liberal Democratic reformism
New Light on the History of Correspondence Schools
No full textWhat we now call distance education began long before computers linked students and teachers. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, hundreds of private companies, public universities, and enterprising individuals sold instruction by mail. Nearly any subject could be pursued, but vocational training was the best seller. The company that dominated the field, enrolling nearly 100,000 new students annually in the early twentieth century, was in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where its massive headquarters was known as the Big Red Schoolhouse. By comparison, the largest proprietary school in Philadelphia, Peirce College, never enrolled more than 2,000 students until World War I
Lincoln’s Autocrat: The Life of Edwin Stanton.
No full textCivil War scholar William Marvel has authored a lengthy and extensive biography of Lincoln’s shrewd and fl amboyant secretary of war. Chronologically and topically arranged, this meticulously researched work, which is the first study to appear about Stanton in over fi fty-three years, depicts him as an aggressive, erudite, and imperious lawyer. Marvel also shows that Stanton developed effective leadership skills during the presidency of the Pennsylvanian James Buchanan. The author cogently explains how this moderate Democrat gradually embraced the cause of the Radical Republicans
Back Matter
No full textThis is the back matter for the January 2017 issue of Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
A Divinity for All Persuasions: Almanacs and Early American Religious Life
No full textScholars of early American history commonly note that most families of that time were likely to own only two books, if they were privileged to own books at all: a Bible and an almanac. Almanacs were stitched pamphlets, published annually, that offered readers a one-stop resource for purposes of practical living, entertainment, and moral education. Each included a calendar, times of sunrise and sunset, notices of astrological events, and sundry poetry, pious tales, jokes, recipes, and medical and agricultural advice. Despite their prevalence, almanacs remain early America’s most understudied form of print media. In A Divinity for All Persuasions, T. J. Tomlin remedies this neglect with an immensely useful and comprehensive analysis of the genre, focusing on almanacs published in British North America between 1730 and 1820
Front Matter
No full textThis is the front matter for the October 2017 issue of Pennsylvania Magazine of Biography and History
Editorial
No full textThis is the editorial for the October 2017 issue of Pennsylvania Magazine of Biography and History
The Michael Zinman Collection of Printing for the Blind
No full textThe Library Company of Philadelphia has collected printing for the blind since at least 1838. That year, it acquired the fi rst text printed in raised letters in the United States, the Gospel According to Saint Mark (1833) (fi g. 1). It was printed by Jacob Snider Jr. for the Pennsylvania Institution for the Instruction of the Blind (PIIB), which Julius Friedlander (1803–39) established in1833. The text appeared in tactile rounded script, one of many reading systems developed in the nineteenth century to educate the visually impaired.1 In the following decades, more such publications entered the library’s holdings. In recent years, this growth took place through the generosity of Library Company trustee emeritus Michael Zinman
Front Matter
No full textThis is the front matter for the January 2017 issue of Pennsylvania Magazine of Biography and History