The Genteel John O Hara

The writer John O'Hara (1905-1970) came from Pottsville in Pennsylvania. He put his home town and the surrounding vicinity under a microscope to produce an account of 'The Anthracite Region' that rivals Edith Wharton's descriptions of New York and Sinclair Lewis's anatomy of Sauk Centre. With the discerning eye of a local resident, O'Hara recreated this coal-rich region and its people so well that his novelettes, novellas, novels, plays and short stories give a true record of his 'Pennsylvania Protectorate' in the latter part of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. In order to reveal the ethnographical, geographical and historical authenticity of the O'Hara Canon, this book examines his writings in the context of Pottsville and the borough of Tamaqua, as well as the nearby towns and villages. The author also investigates both O'Hara's genteel upbringing and his gangster stratum. The book explores the many dimensions of O'Hara's life from the time of his birth until his escape to New York City in 1928. New sources such as unpublished letters and interviews with O'Hara's family, friends and enemies provide important insights into O'Hara, as well as into Pottsville and the surrounding region.

Ketubot Part IV

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.

This title, originally published in 1985, examines conceptions of success and the good life expressed in bestselling novels – ranging from historical sagas and spy thrillers to more serious works by Updike, Bellows, Steinbeck and Mailer – published from 1945 to 1975. Using these popular books as cultural evidence, Elizabeth Long argues that the meaning of the American dream has changed dramatically, but in a more complex fashion than has been recognised by that country’s most prominent social critics. Her study presents a challenge to prevailing social-scientific views of contemporary American culture, and represents, both in theory and method, an important contribution to the study of culture and social criticism.

The definitive biography of short story writer John O’Hara.

“John O’Hara’s fiction,” wrote Lionel Trilling, “is preeminent for its social verisimilitude.” Made famous by his bestselling novels, including BUtterfield 8 and Appointment in Samarra, O’Hara (1905–1970) also wrote some of the finest short fiction of the twentieth century. First published by the Modern Library in 1956, Selected Short Stories of John O’Hara displays the author’s skills as a keen social observer, a refreshingly frank storyteller, and a writer with a brilliant ear for dialogue. “The stories in this volume,” writes Louis Begley in his new Introduction, “show the wide range of [O’Hara’s] interests and an ability to treat with a virtuoso’s ease characters and situations from any place on America’s geographic and social spectrum.” From the Trade Paperback edition.

"John O'Hara's fiction," wrote Lionel Trilling, "is preeminent for its social verisimilitude." Made famous by his bestselling novels, including BUtterfield 8 and Appointment in Samarra, O'Hara (1905-1970) also wrote some of the finest short fiction of the twentieth century. First published by the Modern Library in 1956, Selected Short Stories of John O'Hara displays the author's skills as a keen social observer, a refreshingly frank storyteller, and a writer with a brilliant ear for dialogue. "The stories in this volume," writes Louis Begley in his new Introduction, "show the wide range of [O'Hara's] interests and an ability to treat with a virtuoso's ease characters and situations from any place on America's geographic and social spectrum."