These stories and essays, for the most part, take place in the city of Philadelphia. Taken together, they paint the portrait of a young scholar trying to find his way in the big city. From the halls of academe through his transition into the "real world," the stories chart his progress, his love life, his triumphs and his failures as he tries to find within himself who he is and where he belongs on this planet. Just because most of the characters are still in their twenties doesn't mean the stories should be labeled coming-of-age stories. Most of the stories have no moral, and there are more questions than answers to be garnered from most of them. Finally, not all the stories are uplifting, but at least they are honest and may offer some insight into this perplexing world of which we are all a part.

A forgotten, and often bizarre, history of Philadelphia is unearthed in these quirky vignettes.

Serial killer H.H. Holmes built his murder castle in Chicago, but he met the hangman in Philadelphia. Al Capone served his first prison sentence here. The real-life killers who inspired HBO’s Boardwalk Empire lived and died here. America’s first bank robbery was pulled off here in 1798. The country’s first kidnapping for ransom came off without a hitch in 1874. A South Philadelphia man hatched the largest mass murder plot in U.S. history in the 1930s. His partners in crime were unhappy housewives. Catholics and Protestants aimed cannon at each other in city streets in 1844. Civil rights hero Octavius V. Catto was gunned down on South Street in 1871. Take a walk with us through city history. Would you pass Eastern State Penitentiary on April 3, 1945, just as famed bank robber Willie Sutton popped out of an escape tunnel in broad daylight? Or you might have been one of the invited guests at H.H. Holmes’ hanging at Moyamensing Prison on a gray morning in May 1896. It still ranks as one of the most bizarre executions in city history. Or, if you walked down Washington Lane on July 1, 1874, would you have been alert enough to stop the two men who lured little blond Charley Ross away with candy? You might have stopped America’s first kidnapping for ransom, the one that gave rise to the admonition, “Never take candy from a stranger.” The case inspired the Leopold and Loeb kidnapping. Then there was the bank robber whose funeral drew thousands of spectators and the burglary defendant so alluring that conversation would stop whenever she entered the courtroom. Mix in murderous maids, bumbling burglars, and unflinching local heroes and you have True Crime Philadelphia.

The stories presented here are true slices of life taken from an underworld where people don't play by the rules and where the good guys don't always win. These are real-life stories about wiseguys and drug dealers, con men and murders. In these pages, you'll find the true noir stories that have bubbled up under the magnifying glass of a 30-year veteran reporter at the The Philadelphia Inquirer. It's a fascinating look into the minds, crimes, fates, and lives of Philadelphia's most intriguing criminals. So sit back and enjoy this illuminating look into the dark world of Philadelphia True Noir.

Philadelphia Stories is a kind of family album. As in their earlier volume, Still Philadelphia: A Photographic History, 1890-1940, Miller, Vogel, and Davis have collected photographs of ordinary lives and daily events from 1920 to 1960 that have shaped the collective memory of people in the Philadelphia area. Through a series of photo essays, Philadelphia Stories evokes the mood of an era that embraced the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, and the complacent prosperity of the 1950s. Contemporary photos document physical changes in the metropolitan area: the developing skyline, the streets of rowhouses, the expanding suburbs. Details on homelife, food prices, school activities, local politics, shopping, social mores, and neighborhood customs chronicle experiences that are in many ways distinct to Philadelphians but also indicative of dramatic social, political, and economic shifts in the United States over forty years. Using photojournalism as the dominant style of documentary photography—and consciousness making—the book also features three prototypical family albums. These collections of snapshots taken by local residents to record weddings, holidays, and other family events not only depict how people saw themselves at various times but reveal the kinds of memories they wanted to keep. While major national events create the context for this social history, the book focuses on the daily lives of Philadelphians: as they cope with the Depression, participate in New Deal programs, buy automobiles and television sets, grow Victory Gardens, hold air raid drills, visit the Freedom Train, move to the suburbs, cling to old neighborhoods, and maintain tradition amid flux.Philadelphia Stories celebrates the recent past in the words and images of those who experienced it. It is a family album for all who know and love the city. Author note: Fredric M. Miller is Curator of the Urban Archives Center, Paley Library, Temple University.Morris J. Vogel is Professor of History, Temple University.Allen F. Davis is Professor of History, Temple University.

An illustrated biography of the ornithologist James Bond, the author of the book Birds of the West Indies and the namesake of Ian Fleming's fictional British spy.

Who would you see first if you walked the streets of Philadelphia in 1961 or 1874 or 1945? Would you walk up Fairmount Avenue on April 3, 1945 just as famed bank robber Willie Sutton popped up out of a prison tunnel in broad daylight? You might have been one of the invited guests at serial killer H. H. Holmes' hanging at Moyamensing Prison on the gray morning of May 7, 1896. It still ranks as one of the most bizarre executions in city history. Perhaps you'd stroll past Mary Hill's picture-perfect mansion at Tenth and Pine just as her corpse was thrown from a second story window in 1868? Or, if you walked down Washington Lane on the first day of July 1874, could you have stopped the two men who lured little blond Charley Ross with candy? It was America's first kidnapping for ransom, the one that gave rise to the admonition, "Never take candy from a stranger." The case remained in the headlines for so long that it inspired the Leopold and Loeb kidnapping in 1924. Would you be sitting on your front stoop on sunny Alma Street in 1961 as Richie Blaney, clad in a freshly ironed shirt and Bermuda shorts, turned the key on his sedan, igniting the dynamite that blew most of his body into the back seat and sent his car hood aloft over the rowhouse roofs? Philadelphia is a city of firsts - first zoo, first library, first computer, first hospital, first university, first stock exchange, first art museum, first volunteer fire department. It also boasts the first bank robbery, the first octo-murder, first kidnapping for ransom, and the first arsenic murder ring complete with soothsayers, demon lovers, womanizing witch doctors and the evil eye. Al Capone served his first prison sentence here. H.H. Holmes met the hangman here. The real-life killers who inspired HBO's Boardwalk Empire lived and died here. Add to that murderous maids, bumbling burglars, self-made widows and some unflinching local heroes.