Ilja Nieuwland is the author of American Dinosaur Abroad: A Cultural History of Carnegie’s Plaster Diplodocus. He is a historian of science–in particular paleontology–attached to the Huygens Institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam. American Dinosaur Abroad covers the discovery in 1899 of the Diplodocus carnegii—or Dippy, as it’s known today—by a team of paleontologists sponsored by Andrew Carnegie. Then the longest and largest dinosaur on record, the Diplodocus skeleton was replicated into plaster casts that were gifted to different nations by Carnegie in the years leading up to World War I. In this largely untold history, Nieuwland…

Ethel Spencer, the third daughter of the seven Spencer children born between 1884 and 1895, was a curious and observant child. She wrote her childhood memoir in 1959 while she was professor at Carnegie Tech (today’s Carnegie Mellon University). It served as a memento of the joy-filled years she shared with her brothers and sisters in Pittsburgh’s affluent Shadyside neighborhood. The Spencers of Amberson Avenue, later published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 1983, explores the family of Charles Hart Spencer, an employee of Henry Clay Frick, and his wife Mary Acheson from the viewpoint of young Ethel. Through the eyes of Ethel, the reader is…

Pittsburgh is more than just a home for author Kathleen George: the city and its people are a source of inspiration. A native of Johnstown, George has lived in the city for many years, teaches theatre arts and creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh, and has written several novels and short stories based in the Pittsburgh region, including The Johnstown Girls. Her latest, The Blues Walked In, is a period fiction novel set against the backdrop of Pittsburgh’s once-bustling Hill District. It’s 1936, and a nineteen year-old Lena Horne is walking to her father’s hotel in the Hill after a long tour with Nobel Sissel’s orchestra. Along the…

On September 19th, the University of Pittsburgh Press and author Patricia M. DeMarco celebrated the publication of her book Pathways to Our Sustainable Future: A Global Perspective from Pittsburgh. An enthusiastic crowd of about 100 filled the Tropical Forest area of Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Oakland. Attendees included Max King, President and CEO of The Pittsburgh Foundation and his wife Peggy, David Feingold, President of Chatham University, Bernard Goldstein, former Dean of the Pitt Graduate School of Public Health and Member of the National Academy of Sciences and his wife Rossalyn, Terry Collins, Theresa Heinz Professor of Green…

This Father’s Day let dad brush up on his Pittsburgh sports history with The Slide: Leyland, Bonds, and the Star-Crossed Pittsburgh Pirates by father-son writing duo Richard and Stephen Peterson and Chuck Noll: His Life’s Work by Michael MacCambridge. The Petersons trace Pirates baseball history from the 1970s to today, including the twenty-year bump along the road. MacCambridge gives life to the man who brought the Pittsburgh Steelers to the forefront of the National Football League, but removed himself from the spotlight. This is the first comprehensive biography of Chuck Noll.  With both books, you get a newfound understanding of the…