Hello everyone,

I'm interested in doing some reading on Pennsylvania coal country, where my grandma and grandpa grew up. My grandpa was a third-generation Italian immigrant who apparently tried his hardest to assimilate quickly, but continued to face some discrimination on account of his Italian heritage and Catholicism. My grandma's family was of German descent and came to Pennsylvania in a much earlier wave of immigration. She too was Catholic. Her childhood stories are filled with various European immigrant communities in the area: Slovaks, Hungarians, Czechs, Lithuanians, Latvians, etc. I visited Pottsville, where they both lived, and saw evidence of these old communities in the local cemeteries, which were segregrated by ethnicity and creed.

I'd love to learn more about this region and its immigrant experience. I've done a library search, and there seem to be tons of books on the urban immigrant experience in the 1920s, but I'd be really interested in reading specifically about Pennsylvania's coal country and the decades preceding my grandparents' birth. Any books - pop history or academic - would be much appreciated.

Thanks!