Featured Books and DVDs: Learn fun facts and serious history about our beloved city
Learn about Philly’s rich history and explore how it has shaped the city’s distinct identity with this month's featured titles.
Did you know that Philadelphia – and specifically, Penn – is the site of the nation’s first hospital? In fact, Philly is the location of many of our nation’s firsts thanks to Benjamin Franklin: in addition to founding the University of Pennsylvania, he is responsible for the first library, the first streetlight, and the first volunteer fire department, each in our city.
But as the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia explains, the city’s reputation as a “City of Firsts” began before Franklin arrived: “Philadelphia was a vision before it was a city, and its grandest innovations were in place before Franklin was even born.” Some of these lesser-known firsts include the merry-go-round, the revolving door, and bubblegum!
Learn more about Philly’s rich history and explore how it has shaped the city’s distinct identity with this month's featured titles.
You can find the selections highlighted below, and many more, on display on the first floor of the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center, next to New Books.
Note: The descriptions below are collected from publishers and edited for brevity and clarity.
Books
If you’re new to the city, this is a great starting place for you!
Fodor's Philadelphia highlights the best the City of Brotherly Love has to offer: famous historic sites in Independence National Historical Park, world-class museums along Ben Franklin Parkway, and the ongoing culinary renaissance. Every recommendation has been vetted by a local Fodor’s expert to ensure travelers plan the perfect trip, from the cobblestone streets of Old City to the local cuisine at Reading Terminal Market to Philadelphia’s iconic landmarks like the Rocky Steps, the LOVE Statue, and Boathouse Row in Fairmont Park.
Mischievous Creatures: The Forgotten Sisters who Transformed Early American Science by Catherine McNeur
Historian Catherine McNeur uncovers the lives and work of Margaretta Hare Morris and Elizabeth Carrington Morris, sisters and scientists in early America. Margaretta, an entomologist, was famous among her peers and the public for her research on 17-year cicadas and other troublesome insects. Elizabeth, a botanist, was a prolific illustrator and a trusted supplier of specimens to the country’s leading experts. Together, their discoveries helped fuel the growth and professionalization of science in early 19th century America. But these very developments confined women in science to underpaid and underappreciated roles for generations to follow, erasing the Morris sisters’ contributions along the way. This indelible portrait of two unsung pioneers places women firmly at the center of the birth of American science.
Metropolitan Paradise: The Struggle for Nature in the City, Philadelphia's Wissahickon Valley, 1620-2020 by David Contosta and Carol Franklin
Sacred to the Lenni-Lenape and to many early Europeans who settled in the area, the Wissahickon Valley has all the elements of "paradise" recognized in many cultures – a dramatic gorge with high cliffs, twisted rocks, dark hemlocks, sparkling water, and bountiful rolling terrain directly to the north beyond the city boundaries. The area is also a microcosm of changes in the American landscape over the past 400 years. Contosta and Franklin share the struggle to establish and maintain connected natural systems in one metropolitan area, with the preservation and restoration of this valley offered as a possible model for the world's cities. This book is the authors' contribution to a remarkable and widespread effort to restore the Wissahickon Valley and to envision a bold and imaginative future.
Philadelphia: City of Music by Jim Rosin
Philadelphia native Jim Rosin looks back at the pop, rock, and R&B music scene in Philadelphia during the 1960s and 1970s, featuring commentary from many recording artists, photographs, biographies, discographies and more. Join the Soul Survivors, Delfonics, Stylistics, O’Jays, Spinners, Billy Paul, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, and a host of others to relive the excitement of this remarkable era in Philadelphia: City of Music.
Benjamin Franklin's Last Bet: The Favorite Founder's Divisive Death, Enduring Afterlife, and Blueprint for American Prosperity by Michael Meyer
At the end of his life, Ben Franklin allowed himself a final wager on the survival of the United States: a gift of two thousand pounds to Boston and Philadelphia, to be lent out to tradesmen over the next two centuries to jump-start their careers. Each loan would be repaid with interest over 10 years. If all went according to Franklin’s inventive scheme, the accrued final payout in 1991 would be a windfall.
Benjamin Franklin’s Last Bet traces the evolution of these twin funds as they age alongside America itself, bankrolling woodworkers and silversmiths, trade schools and space races. With charm and inquisitive flair, Meyer shows how Franklin’s stake in the “leather-apron” class remains in play to this day, and offers an inspiring blueprint for prosperity in our modern era of growing wealth disparity and social divisions.
DVDs
Abbott Elementary: The complete first season
In this beloved workplace comedy from writer/executive producer/star Quinta Brunson, a group of teachers is brought together in a Philadelphia public school, because they love teaching. Though outnumbered and underfunded, they love what they do even if they don't love the school district's less-than-stellar attitude toward educating children.
Philly Hoops: The SPHAS and The Warriors - The Birth of Pro Basketball in the City of Philadelphia
Eddie Gottlieb fell in love with basketball as a child in South Philadelphia, went on to star in high school and later, to own and operate the SPHAs, the city's first professional basketball team. Taking their name from The South Philadelphia Hebrew Association at 4th and Reed, the SPHAs dominated the American Basketball League from 1933 to 1945, capturing seven league championships in 12 seasons. The story continues as Gottlieb helped found the NBA, owning and coaching the Philadelphia Warriors franchise. With commentary from NBA greats, this documentary tells the stories of legendary Philly players such as Wilt Chamberlain with intensity and humor.
Four men comb the streets of the City of Brotherly Love, looking for connection--though often settling for the quick and dirty. But tonight, each will cross paths with the other, sending shockwaves through their lives. All are confronted with the reality that love must be accepted on love's terms. This 2016 film costars the award-winning Colman Domingo, named one of Times's most influential people this year.
In 1976, after years of mysterious absence, Marcus returns to the Philadelphia neighborhood where he came of age in the midst of the Black Power movement. While his arrival raises suspicion among his family and former neighbors, he finds acceptance from his old friend Patricia and her daughter. However, Marcus quickly finds himself at odds with the organization he once embraced, whose members suspect he orchestrated the slaying of their former comrade-in-arms. In a startling sequence of events, Marcus must protect a secret that could shatter everyone's beliefs as he rediscovers his forbidden passion for Patricia.
This short film, directed by the Quay Brothers, focuses on the collections of books, instruments, and medical anomalies at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia and the Mütter Museum. Examining obscure archives, antique volumes, and artifacts, Through the Weeping Glass investigates marvels of pathology and anatomical oddities, finding poetry in the ill-fated, true-life stories of the “ossified man” Harry Eastlack and famed conjoined twins Chang and Eng Bunker.
Date
August 12, 2024