|9780822949299|Currents of Change in the Pittsburgh Environment|Sitting at the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers where they join to flow into the Ohio, the city of Pittsburgh has been shaped by its material environment—the rocky, grimy, watery base on which it stands. It has also been shaped by industrial activity, as the city has cycled through growth and expansion, deindustrialization, and renewal. Today, many former industrial sites have been replaced by research, shopping, and recreation—but change is not always consistent, and whether Pittsburgh has entirely moved to a sustainable future remains to be seen. Renewal, Regression, and Revival is…

|9780822968603|Currents of Change in the Pittsburgh Environment|Sitting at the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers where they join to flow into the Ohio, the city of Pittsburgh has been shaped by its material environment—the rocky, grimy, watery base on which it stands. It has also been shaped by industrial activity, as the city has cycled through growth and expansion, deindustrialization, and renewal. Today, many former industrial sites have been replaced by research, shopping, and recreation—but change is not always consistent, and whether Pittsburgh has entirely moved to a sustainable future remains to be seen. Renewal, Regression, and Revival is…

|9780822948544|Life as Art| Listed in Pioneer Press (Minneapolis-St. Paul) Most Anticipated of 2026 Playwright August Wilson is best known for his American Century Cycle, a sequence of ten plays—including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Fences and The Piano Lesson—that chronicle the lives of Black Americans in each decade of the twentieth century. But behind the celebrated plays stands a complex man shaped by his hometown’s vibrant Black culture. In August Wilson’s American Century: Life as Art, Laurence A. Glasco, one of the foremost historians of Black life in Pittsburgh, draws on Wilson’s early poetry, archival material, and original interviews with family members,…

|9780822967613|The Drawings of an American Naturalist| Winner, The Athenaeum of Philadelphia 2024 Literary Award for Nonfiction Pennsylvania naturalist William Bartram (1739–1823) is best known as the author of a travelogue describing his botanizing journey through the American South in the late eighteenth century. Writing was not, however, Bartram’s only or even preferred method of recording the natural world around him. His deeply unconventional drawings, depicting sentient plants and hybrid organic forms, lie at the heart of his understanding of nature. With this book, Elizabeth Athens considers the strangeness of Bartram’s graphic enterprise, exploring the essential role his renderings played in…

|9780822967606|The Woman Behind the Artist| While biographers of Andy Warhol have long recognized his mother as a significant influence on his life and art, Julia Warhola’s story has not yet been told. As an American immigrant who was born in a small Carpatho-Rusyn village in Austria-Hungary in 1891, Julia never had the opportunity to develop her own considerable artistic talents. Instead, she worked and sacrificed so her son could follow his dreams, helping to shape Andy’s art and persona. Julia famously followed him to New York City and lived with him there for almost twenty years, where she remained engaged…