Two years after the publication of their book Allegheny City: A History of Pittsburgh’s North Side, co-authors Dan Rooney and Carol Peterson still hit the road from time to time for book signings. On July 15, the pair spoke with an enthusiastic crowd at the Allegheny City Historic Gallery on East Ohio Street in the North Side. Thanks to Willy James for the photos! From left to right, Bill Gandy, host of the event and PR man for ACHG; Dan Rooney; Carol Peterson.   Audience members get their copies of Allegheny City signed by the co-authors.

Jack Foley, longtime esteemed California radio host, recently interviewed Rachel Tzvia Back, translator of In the Illuminated Dark: Selected Poems of Tuvia Ruebner. On KPFA radio’s “Cover to Cover,” Back tells Foley that she “felt completely possessed” reading Ruebner’s Hebrew verse, and contacted him saying she “must” translate his poems. In the Illuminated Dark was “a labor of love . . . a privilege and a delight,” she said. Hear the interview: here    

The latest author to answer our Q&A call is Michael David-Fox, author of the new book Crossing Borders: Modernity, Ideology, and Culture in Russia and the Soviet Union. UPP: You’ve spent nearly two decades studying various aspects of Russian history. What intrigues you most about the region? MDF: When I first got into Russian Studies I was captivated by the nineteenth-century intelligentsia and its classic thinkers, from Herzen to Lenin. I was drawn in by the “cursed questions” about Russia and the West and the role of the revolutionary movement. The Possessed is still my favorite Dostoevsky novel. There was…

Writing against Racial Injury The Politics of Asian American Student Rhetoric Haivan V. Hoang RHETORIC/LITERACY/ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES “Hoang offers an insightful thick description of Asian American activism rhetoric at the sites of language and literacy production. It teaches us to rethink what we mean by ‘student writing’ and the ‘teaching of writing’ in light of a broad range of self-sponsored, extracurricular rhetorical acts by Asian American activists.” —Min-Zhan Lu, University of Louisville Bringing together language and literacy studies, Asian American history and rhetoric, and critical race theory, Hoang uses historiography and ethnography to explore the politics of Asian American language…

Soviet Space Mythologies Public Images, Private Memories, and the Making of a Cultural Identity Slava Gerovitch HISTORY OF SCIENCE/RUSSIAN STUDIES “Soviet Space Mythologies makes a major contribution to the history of Soviet space flight and culture. It places the story of Russian space conquest into the broader history of space flight—including references to pioneering scholars in the history of NASA. This is also the first book to focus on the professional identity of the cosmonaut and space engineer.” —Andrew Jenks, California State University, Long Beach Slava Gerovitch explores the history of the Soviet human space program within a political and…