Welcome to the City of Brotherly Love. This charming board book captures the true spirit of Philadelphia in a tour that includes the Liberty Bell, Museum of Art, The Thinker statue, Philadelphia Zoo, William Penn Statue, Reading Terminal, Betsey Ross House, National Constitution Center, United States Mint, Fairmont Park, Independence Seaport Museum, Academy of Natural Sciences, and more.

Our philosophies and perils of wisdom related to our lifetime highlights will be shared with the reader in the pages ahead. I, S.L. Sharp, will adorn the chapters with poetry and song lyrics to enhance our philosophies in our book entitled GAZING INTO OUR CRYSTAL BALL. W.R. Sharp, through his written essays, stories and philosophies, will try to give you a glimpse of his many travels, highlights of his science career and stories of his moments with his loved ones which will provide our readers insight into his in-depth knowledge. And hopefully, the stories and expressions of feelings through the reading of my poetry and lyrics, will bring happiness and awareness of beauty to our readership. As my co-author, my brother, W.R. Sharp, wrote in one of his essays, "Welcome to the Eighty-Teens". He too was welcomed to this age by cataracts and dental complications. However, he felt that these golden years should be celebrated as we gaze into our own crystal ball of life. He thinks life is a journey, and it is always spinning as if encapsuled in a fortune-telling crystal ball. It encounters multiple experiences, opportunities, transitions, challenges and obstacles as we march through time toward our afterlife. Nevertheless, life can be quite fulfilling and coming of age is a continuous process facing all of us who live a long life. In this ball, the most important transformations involve coming of age in its earlier stages in one's education, career pathway, partnerships, parenting or mentoring skills of others, post careers, retirement and facing our afterlife. The latter changeover is especially challenging for those without partners and children unless in the crystal ball of life they prospered from self-love and independence. Fortunately, the existence of public and private retirement facilities will accommodate some of these retirees. The two of us have always imagined the existence of an afterlife metaverse as we march forward in our lives. Optimistically, we both hope to be able to learn lessons in the spinning ball from our present lives and accomplishments and in our next life, accomplish all of our unaccomplished earthly goals. Maybe if you, the reader, gaze closer at your own life's crystal ball, you will see that your life turns out the way it was meant to be whether it is happy or sad. Who knows! The magic of it all is that you were able to live on this earth for just a blink of an eye no matter what your real life's experiences were on this life-altering planet. And on the day when you finally transition into the mysterious afterlife, a new window of opportunities will unfold for you to explore that will be overwhelming to you. At that time, you will have the freedom to embrace new possibilities for yourself that were not accessible to you during your existence on this Earth.

For many Spanish Americans in the early nineteenth century, Philadelphia was Filadelfia, a symbol of republican government for the Americas and the most important Spanish-language print center in the early United States. In Letters from Filadelfia, Rodrigo Lazo opens a window into Spanish-language writing produced by Spanish American exiles, travelers, and immigrants who settled and passed through Philadelphia during this vibrant era, when the city’s printing presses offered a vehicle for the voices advocating independence in the shadow of Spanish colonialism. The first book-length study of Philadelphia publications by intellectuals such as Vicente Rocafuerte, José María Heredia, Manuel Torres, Juan Germán Roscio, and Servando Teresa de Mier, Letters from Filadelfia offers an approach to discussing their work as part of early Latino literature and the way in which it connects to the United States and other parts of the Americas. Lazo’s book is an important contribution to the complex history of the United States’ first capital. More than the foundation for the U.S. nation-state, Philadelphia reached far beyond its city limits and, as considered here, suggests new ways to conceptualize what it means to be American.

A classic history of the Federal Convention at Philadelphia in 1787, the stormy, dramatic session that produced the most enduring of political documents: the Constitution of the United States. From Catherine Drinker Bowen, noted American biographer and National Book Award winner, comes the canonical account of the Constitutional Convention recommended as "required reading for every American." Looked at straight from the records, the Federal Convention is startlingly fresh and new, and Mrs. Bowen evokes it as if the reader were actually there, mingling with the delegates, hearing their arguments, witnessing a dramatic moment in history. Here is the fascinating record of the hot, sultry summer months of debate and decision when ideas clashed and tempers flared. Here is the country as it was then, described by contemporaries, by Berkshire farmers in Massachusetts, by Patrick Henry's Kentucky allies, by French and English travelers. Here, too, are the offstage voices--Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine and John Adams from Europe. In all, fifty-five men attended; and in spite of the heat, in spite of clashing interests--the big states against the little, the slave states against the anti-slave states--in tension and anxiety that mounted week after week, they wrote out a working plan of government and put their signatures to it.

Traces the personalities and the policies of two generations of leaders in one of the largest and most influential free black communities in antebellum America. Moving beyond their commitment to antislavery, this work examines the range of other causes to which they devoted themselves, from moral reform and civil rights to Caribbean emigration.