Coming Soon

A Legacy of Conservation

Every year thousands flock to the Pennsylvania Wilds to be among nature and its famous elk herd. In the past, dangerous levels of hunting and industrial development forever altered Pennsylvania's natural landscape and drove its native elk to near extinction. In response, concerned sportsmen and conservationists pushed the state legislature to create a game commission in the late 1800s to enforce game laws and protect the herd. The Pennsylvania Game Commission then sought to reintroduce the once mighty elk herd in the early twentieth century, shipping fifty elk via train from Jackson Hole and Yellowstone. Conservation movements continued to enhance the state's environmental landscape that faced new threats from logging and mining industries and by the 1980s, the Wilds was on a path to full restoration.

Author Mario Chiappelli reveals the history of how the Pennsylvania Wilds and its elk herd remain as vibrant as ever today.

Discover sinister stories of Erie's hidden history.

Life on the lake is not always pleasant, as these stories of scandal, robbery, murder, suicide, the mob and more reveal. Author Justin Dombrowski presents narratives of Erie's wicked past.

Discover the history of the development of Long Island and its intimate relationship with New York City.

Beginning in the Roaring Twenties, Wall Street money looked eastward to Nassau and Suffolk counties looking generate wealth from a land boom. After the Great Depression and World War II, Long Island was the site of the creation of the quintessential postwar American suburb, Levittown. Levittown and its spinoff suburban communities served as a primary symbol of the American dream through affordable home ownership for the predominately White middle class and established a core attribute of the national mythology. Starting in the 1960s, the dream began to dissolve, as the postwar economic engine ran out of steam and Long Island became as much urban as suburban.

Author Lawrence R. Samuel charts how the island evolved over the decades and largely detached itself from New York City to become a self-sustaining entity with its own challenges, exclusions and triumphs.

Above and Beyond the Call of Duty

In early summer, 1863 Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia began moving northward. As Lee moved toward Maryland, the Union army followed, taking a parallel path on the opposite side of the Blue Ridge Mountains. From June 9 to the beginning of July the two armies skirmished at various locations along the route. Then, from July 1 through July 3, they clashed in the epic Battle of Gettysburg. Throughout the Gettysburg Campaign, seventy-two men earned the Medal of Honor, the highest honor in the American military. Discover the harrowing narratives of those who served to keep a nation united with the highest valor. Including the story of the unknown soldiers awarded the medal, these profiles showcase some of the most intense moments of the most important battle in the Civil War.

Author James Gindlesperger presents the Medal of Honor at Gettysburg.

Southern New Jersey was a hotbed of slave fugitives, freedmen and abolitionists in the Civil War era.

The proud 22nd Regiment of the United States Colored Troops included hundreds of Black New Jersians ready to fight for emancipation and the Union cause. Abolitionists such as Harriet Tubman, Abigail Goodwin and Benjamin Sheppard operated among key landmarks of the underground railtoad in South Jersey counties such as Cape May, Cumberland and Salem. Slavery and the rights of Black Americans were at the forefront of the region's attention inlcuding stories such as a melee in a Cape May hotel between Balck waiters and white patrons, the covert signaling of boats ferrying fugitive slaves across the Delaware River and the daring resucue of a runway slave from the hands of slave catches by local church worshipers.

Author Ellen Alford reveals the history of abolition and the underground railroad in South Jersey.