Books

This book created a sensation when it appeared in 1903 and remains a striking insider’s narrative of the American steel industry in the late nineteenth century. Bridge was a fisthand witness to the confrontations of Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, the eventual sale of Carnegie Steel and the formation of U.S. Steel.

In The Battle for Homestead, Paul Krause calls upon the methods and insights of labor history, intellectual history, anthropology, and the history of technology to situate the events of the lockout and their significance in the broad context of America’s Guilded Age. Utilizing extensive archival material, much of it heretofore unknown, he reconstructs the social, intellectual, and political climate of the burgeoning post-Civil War steel industry.

The new edition of this long unavailable classic features an extensive analytical introduction by the noted architectural historian Dell Upton. Containing 416 black-and-white photographs, 81 measured drawings and an extensive text, this volume presents a splendid array of the early dwellings, barns, and other outbuildings, churches, arsenals, banks, inns, commercial buildings, tollhouses, mills, and even tombstones of western Pennsylvania.

Now back in print, this is a pioneering analysis of an elite driven, post-World War II urban renewal, that has become the classic model for all such redevelopment projects.

This volume traces the major decisions, events, programs, and personalities that transformed the city of Pittsburgh during its urban renewal project, which began in 1977. Roy Lubove demonstrates how the city showed united determination to attract high technology companies in an attempt to reverse the economic fallout from the decline of the local steel industry. Lubove also separates the successes from the failures, the good intentions from the actual results.

From 1909-1914 the Pittsburgh Survey brought together statisticans, social workers, engineers, lawyers, physicians, economists, and city planners to study the effects of industrialization on the city of Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh Surveyed examines the accuracy and the impact of the influential Pittsburgh Survey, emphasizing its role in the social reform movement of the early twentieth century.

A study of the immigrants who flocked to this Central Pennsylvania steel town in the late nineteenth century in search of employment. Comprised primarily of Southern blacks and Eastern European immigrants, they formed the lower class of this town. Analyzes the social structure and dominance of the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant elite.

In 1986, with little warning, the USX Homestead Works closed. Thousands of workers who depended on steel to survive were left without work. A Town Without Steel looks at the people of Homestead as they reinvent their views of household and work and place in this world.

Unforgettable photographs from Roy Stryker’s Pittsburgh Photographic Library (PPL) capture the convergence of destruction and rejuvenation that is the essence of an urban renaissance–all the anxiety and hope of the fifties is reflected in these poignant photographs and explained through essays and narrative.

A detailed, carefully wrought business biography of Henry Clay Frick, one of the leading entrepreneurs in American heavy industry during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Kenneth Warren has provided not only insight into the life of Henry Clay Frick, but a major contribution to our understanding of the history of the basic industries, the shaping of society, locality, and region – and thereby of laying the foundations for the value systems and landscapes of present-day America.

The Steel Workers remains a readable and timeless account of labor conditions in the early years of the steel industry. An introduction by the noted historian Roy Lubove places the book in political and historical context.

Chronicles the development of industry, education, religion, social customs, law and order, and many other aspects of life in Western Pennsylvania up until the War of 1812. Based upon the original work of the Western Pennsylvania Historical Survey, from 1931-1935.

A celebration of Pittsburgh’s industrial landscape and an eloquent tribute to a way of life largely disappearing in America. A unique addition to the literature on the importance of place.

Excerpt from Flatlanders and Ridgerunners: Out-Riddling the Judge Back in Prohibition my uncle made moonshine. His name was Moses Kenny and his whiskey–they called it “White Mule” was the best in the county. Well, the feds got after him and finally they arrested him. Took him to a federal judge down in Philadelphia. Now, the judge liked a good time and thought he’d have a little fun with this hick from the mountains. When Uncle came into court, he said, “are you the Moses who can make the sun dark?” Moses looked at him and said slowly, “Nope, your honor. But I am the Moses who can make the moon shine.” The judge let him go.

Charles McCormick’s extensively researched work describes the formative period of federal domestic spying in the Pittsburgh region. He utilizes case files from various federal intelligence agencies to add to our understanding of the security state, cold war ideology, labor and immigration history, and the rise of the authoritarian American Left, as well as the career paths of figures as diverse as J. Edgar Hoover and William Z. Foster.