News Releases

     History Professor Thomas Dublin along with co-author Walter Licht were selected by the Organization of American Historians (OAH) to receive the 2006 Merle Curti Award for the best book published in American social history. The award was presented during the 99th Annual Meeting of the Organization held recently in Washington, D.C.

     In the sweeping study The Face of Decline: The Pennsylvania Anthracite Region in the Twentieth Century, Dublin and Licht examine how businesses, residents and governments responded to dwindling demand for anthracite coal, especially after World War II. By 2000, fewer than 1,000 miners were employed in the region’s coalfields, which had provided work for 181,000 people at the industry’s height before World War I.

     The book’s varied sources – including oral histories, census data, corporate records and photographs – allowed the authors to incorporate many perspectives. The 277-page volume from Cornell University Press ties in social, political, business, economic and labor history.

     Walter Licht is chair of the history department at the University of Pennsylvania.
Founded in 1907, OAH is the largest learned society and professional organization dedicated to the teaching and study of the American past. OAH promotes excellence in the scholarship, teaching, and presentation of American history, and encourages wide discussion of historical questions and equitable treatment of all practitioners of history.