In telling the story of Saint Joseph's, author David R. Contosta examines five intertwined and shifting forces that have shaped the university since its founding in the mid-nineteenth century. These have been the fortunes of Philadelphia and its surrounding suburbs, the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), the Roman Catholic Church, the overall development of American higher education, and a welter of external events during 15 decades of national and world history.

Stained Glass in Catholic Philadelphia tells the remarkable story of the thousands of stained-glass windows made in America, England, France, and Germany in the more than 400 churches, chapels, and institutions in the five-county Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Since 1997 more than 450 sites have been visited to document their windows by photographing them. This process has resulted in the creation of a photo archive of over 50,000 images. Using this archive as a foundation, a team of scholars from a variety of institutions and with specialties in medieval studies, architectural and social history, Christian iconography, decorative and liturgical arts, the craft, creative reuse, and historic preservation of stained glass was assembled to study these windows. The result is this profusely illustrated book of original research that makes accessible a significant and highly visible, but neglected, aspect of our ecclesial, national, and regional cultural heritage.

The year 2002 marked a double anniversary for one of Philadelphia's own, St. John N. Neumann, C.Ss.R.: the 25th anniversary of his canonization, and the 150th anniversary of his episcopal ordination as fourth bishop of Philadelphia. This volume of essays on Neumann's intellectual formation, ministry, theology and spirituality commemorates these dual historic occasions. Among the specific topics studied are: Neumann's student years in Prague, his namesake St. John Nepomuk, his ministry as catechist and bishop, his establishment of the 40 Hours Devotion on a diocesan-wide level, his devotion to Mary and St. Joseph, and the reference to Neumann's ordinary and practical sanctity in Vatican II's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church. This book hopes to foster a renewed understanding and appreciation of, as well as stimulate further research on, the only male U.S. citizen to be declared a saint by the Roman Catholic Church.

Four paperback volumes packed into a beautiful hardcover case, Metropolitan Paradise is the definitive book on the relationship between natural and urban environments. 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 - the dramatic gorge with high cliffs, twisted rocks, dark hemlocks, sparkling water and the bountiful rolling terrain directly to the north beyond the city boundaries. Ironically, this paradise is part of a large, old North American urban region, suffering from all the troubles of the modern metropolis. The Wissahickon Valley is a microcosm of changes in the American landscape over the past 400 years. The lessons of its history, present treatment and future possibilities, are both universal and unique. The book is both a local journey and, by extension, an exploration of how to resolve the crises of a collapsing natural world. Today cities are exploding into complex, densely packed, multi-dimensional organisms. With six billion people on the planet and a projected nine billion within 50 years, almost everyone will be living in a megalopolis. This book is the story of a struggle to establish and maintain connected natural systems in one metropolitan area. The preservation and restoration of this valley is offered as a possible model for the world's cities. Sustaining natural lands within the matrix of an increasingly pervasive urban landscape is crucial. These places are our "canary in the mine." If they cannot succeed, all wildness is imperiled, impoverishing all life and ultimately threatening human survival. 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.

The first history of the oldest court in the United States (1789), this volume positions the development of this Federal Court within the context of the ongoing political, social, and economic changes that were transforming Philadelphia, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the nation as a whole. Mortals with Tremendous Responsibilities recounts for the first time the compelling story of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania which traces its history back to 1789 and the Judiciary Act signed by President George Washington. The Court's first judge was Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Highlighted in the book are the Court's judges, its important cases, and the growth and changes in its jurisdiction, workload, and administration over more than 220 years. This history serves as a reminder of the consequential role that this and the other federal trial courts play in our constitutional system of government even though as Alexander Hamilton noted in No. 78 of The Federalist, "the federal courts possess neither the power of the purse nor the power of the sword." Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in Democracy in America after his visit to the United States in the 1830's, "scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question." Time and time again, matters which began as political questions in America have ended up before this and other federal trial courts. This book describes some of these matters. Over the years, the judges in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania have had to grapple with a myriad of issues including sedition, treason and espionage, slavery, military enlistment, seizure of ships during wartime, draft evasion, prohibition, monopolies, free speech, religious freedom, and separation of church and state. More recently, they have faced cases involving civil rights, racial and gender employment discrimination, political corruption, organized crime, prison conditions, and abortion, among others. One of the Court's judges years ago aptly described a judge as a mortal with tremendous responsibilities. This telling observation has been adopted as the book's title. The Court, which was one of the original thirteen federal district courts, had only one authorized judgeship until 1904. The number of judges and the Court's workload have greatly expanded since that time until it is now one of the largest and busiest of the ninety-four federal trial courts in the United States. For more than a century and a half, all of its judges, who have lifetime appointments, were white males. Today, the Court is comprised of a diverse group of men and women who more nearly reflect the population of America.