Pennsylvania discussion

A Pennsylvania native was the first woman to serve on a jury. You may be surprised how recently women won the right to serve. http://jrlindermuth.blogspot.com/

If you think rustling was restricted to the Wild West, think again. Notorious Joe Buzzard, a Pennsylvania native, considered himself the nation's premier horse thief. Read about him and more in my latest blog entry: http://jrlindermuth.blogspot.com/

For several years, I taught Pennsylvania history. At first, the only thing I could recall from those horrible high school social studies classes was that Pennsylvania had 67 counties and two types of coal. I naturally knew about Hershey, Gettysburg and Independence Hall, but I wondered if I would have enough information to eek through 11 weeks of class. The more I probed, however, the more stories I began to uncover. When I left teaching, I sat down to research Pennsylvania history and not leave any rabbit hole unexplored. I began compiling stories I could put in a book. I initially thought my book would only be about 200 pages, if I was lucky. I ended up with two volumes of more than 800 pages. The stories ranged from the earliest colonial days with William Penn and the Native Americans all the way through to modern times. I wanted my history to not be a boring recitation of dates and places, but of profiles of men and women who did something remarkable. I wanted to get inside their head and figure out not only what they did but why. The book is "Empowered: How Pennsylvania transformed America." It's available through Amazon, Kindle and B&N. I put up the first volume of stories for the Giveaway starting today and running through May 20. If you always thought that history could be presented better, I hope you will check it out. Thanks.