History / General

Mayan rebels killed an American plantation manager in 1875, but no one has ever unravelled why this murder took place. Paul Sullivan’s fascinating and skillful telling of this story reads like a mystery novel.

The book assesses how Pittsburgh deindustrialization over the past decades has posed both opportunities and challenges for the city and surrounding tri-state area.

Examines debates over women’s rights in the first half of the twentieth century, to show how Czechs gradually turned away from democracy and established the separation of state and domestic issues, at the expense of personal freedoms.

An examination of the relationship between African Americans and the environment in U.S. history, “To Love the Wind and the Rain” contains essays covering topics such as slavery, religion, the turpentine industry, gardening, outdoor recreation, women and politics.

This text examines the history of the Great Lakes Basin in relation to its importance as a place of social, economic, and political interaction between the United States and Canada.

Winner of the 2006 Albert B. Corey Prize from the American Historical Association.

Available in Canada through University of Calgary Press

Joel Tarr presents a collection of essays examining the tortured environmental history of Pittsburgh, a region blessed with an abundance of natural resources as well as a history of intensive industrial development.

Awarded the 2005 Certificate of Commendation by Choice Magazine

A special reissue commemorating the 250th anniversary of the French and Indian War, Guns at the Forks tells about the dramatic parts five successive forts, particularly Fort Duquesne and Fort Pitt, play in the war between 1750 and 1760. O’Meara’s narrative also relates the larger story of the French and Indian War and its role in the global conflict that altered the course of world events.

A study of twenty wealthy upper-class families during Pittsburgh’s growth into an important commerical and industrial center. It shows how they succeeded in creating the institutions needed to sustain a local aristocracy and possessed the ability to adapt its accumulated advantages to social and economic changes.

Reveals the history and death of the Soviet Union’s peaceful use of nuclear power through exploration of both the projects and the technocratic and political elite who were dedicated to increasing state power through technology. Paul Josephson illuminates the problems that can befall any society heavily invested in large-scale technology.

A collection of essays addressing the collaboration of human and natural forces in the creation of cities, the countryside, and empires.

This reissued edition deals with the French and Indian War. A discussion of the historical background of Fort Duquesne is followed by the description of five forts on the forks of the Ohio river.

Clarke Thomas has compiled a two-hundred-year history of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the first paper published west of the Alleghenies. From the Whiskey Rebellion to the present, the stories the paper covered reveal the history of Pittsburgh and the people who live there.

Writing the Siege of Leningrad tells of women’s experiences keeping the city alive and functioning during the 900 day Siege of Leningrad. Utilizing the words and descriptions of these women, Cynthia Simmons and Nina Perlina tell the story of a previously overlooked section of the population.

Examines why privatization was so popular immediately after the fall of communism, and why it has failed in its intended goals of improving the economies of postcommunist countries.

In this brilliantly edited collection of personal interviews, Maida Springer, one of the twentieth-century’s most fascinating international labor leaders and powerful African-American women, tells her story in her own words.