Founded in 1956, Penn State University Press publishes rigorously reviewed, high-quality works of scholarship and books of regional and contemporary interest, with a focus on the humanities and social sciences. The publishing arm of the Pennsylvania State University and a division of the Penn State University Libraries, the Press promotes the advance of scholarship by disseminating knowledge—new information, interpretations, methods of analysis—widely in books, journals, and digital publications.
Scholarly publishing has faced monumental challenges over the past few decades. The Press takes its place among those institutions moving the enterprise forward. Its innovative projects continue to identify and embrace the technological advances and business models that ensure scholarly publishing will remain feasible, and widely accessible, well into the future.
Explores the work of professional blues musician Lonnie Johnson, demonstrating how his recorded works reveal lyrical and musical themes that call into question critical assumptions about the genre.
Lonnie Johnson is a blues legend. His virtuosity on the blues guitar is second to none, and his influence on artists from T-Bone Walker and B. B. King to Eric Clapton is well established. Yet Johnson mastered multiple instruments. He recorded with jazz icons such as Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong, and he played vaudeville music, ballads, and ......
The Voyage and Adventures of William Moraley, an Indentured Servant
First published by Penn State Press in 1992, The Infortunate has become a staple for teachers and students of American history. William Moraley’s firsthand account of bound servitude provides a rare glimpse of life among the lower classes in England and the American colonies during the eighteenth century. In the decade since its ......
In Josh 8:30–35, Israel constructs an altar on Mt. Ebal in fulfillment of the command of Deut 27:1–8. This structure had very important social, political, and religious implications for Israel, for it was the first structure to be built after the people entered the land of Canaan. Once the altar was completed, sacrifices were to be ......
One of the central questions of the French Revolution is what happened to the country from the time the monarchy collapsed in the summer of 1792, when the prospects for popular democracy seemed brightest, to the Terror of 1793–94, when the Committee of Public Safety ruled by fiat and repression. A key moment during this interim period was ......
A Thriving City of 30,000 Inhabitants and Many Great Industrial Establishments Nearly Wiped from Earth: Many Thousands Drowned or Burned to Death: Property Worth Many Millions of Dollars Destroyed: An Avalanche of Water Sweeps Down the Conemaugh Valley: General Hastings in Command in Joh
On May 31, 1889, the South Fork Dam upstream of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, failed, unleashing a torrent of water that killed more than two thousand people and destroyed the city. Herman Dieck's Johnstown Flood, published shortly after the event, offers sensational stories of death, escape, sacrifice, and survival along with demographic ......
Or Valley of Death, Being a Complete and Thrilling Account of the Awful Floods and Their Appalling Ruin
Sensationalized history can be credited with inspiring generations of truth-seeking experts and enthusiasts. The tragedy of the Johnstown Flood was an oft-exploited event as writers and publishers hawked hastily written articles in original form or pirated collections. Where many of the articles lacked fact, they were rife with exaggeration and ......
