| Alexander the Great | J. R. Hamilton | A new and incisive rexamination of Alexander’s life including his economic as well as military achievements. |
| Boss Rule in the Gilded Age | James Kehl | Biographer James A. Kehl, who was given first access to Matt Quay’s personal papers, presents an inside look at the controversial former Pennsylvania senator, who also ruled as the Republican Party boss for over fifty years in the state. |
| Charles Seeger | Ann Pescatello | The first biography of Charles Seeger. Part composer, teacher, performer, musicologist, bureaucrat, and inventor, Seeger was a force in American music for most of the twentieth century. |
| Clifford W. Beers | Norman Dain | A compelling biography of Clifford W. Beers, whose lifelong battle against his own mental illness inspired him to become a champion for mental health. Beers went on to found the National Committee for Mental Hygiene (now the National Association for Mental Health), among other organizations. |
| Don’t Call Me Boss | Michael Weber | The first biography of David L. Lawrence, the best of the city bosses, who became mayor of Pittsburgh, modern municipal manager, governor of Pennsylvania, and a power in national politics. |
| Green Republican | Thomas Smith | A biography of John P. Saylor, a Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who became a prominent conservationist in the three decades after World War II. |
| Helen Clay Frick | Martha Frick Symington Sanger | Chronicles Helen Clay Frick's lifelong commitment to social welfare, the environment, and her purchase of many significant works of art for her private collection, the Frick Collection in New York, the University of Pittsburgh teaching collection, and the Frick Art Museum.
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| Icon of Spring | Sonya Jason | Beginning in 1932, when the author was seven years old, Icon of Spring traces a young girl's coming-of-age and a family's struggles to escape the bonds of poverty. Jason's memoir offers an intimate portrait of daily life during the darkest days of Herbert Hoover's America, and reveals the almost incandescent hope placed in Franklin D. Roosevelt by those who suffered the most during the Great Depression. |
| Ida Tarbell | Kathleen Brady | Now back in print and in paperback for the first time, this definitive biography of Ida Tarbell, on of America’s great journalists, is highly readably and widely acclaimed. |
| Ill-Starred General | Lee McCardell | Lee McCardell’s strongly-reviewed biography of the General who disastrously led British forces--including a young George Washington--into battle against the French near the site of present day Pittsburgh. |
| Improbable Fiction | Jan Cohn | A compelling account of the life of Pennsylvanian writer Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958). Through the examination of the tension between her seemingly contradictory domestic and professional identities, Jan Cohn illuminates precisely why Rinehart’s accomplishments are so remarkable. |
| Industrial Genius | Kenneth Warren | Kenneth Warren presents a compelling biography that chronicles the startling success of Charles Schwab's business career, his leadership abilities, and his drive to advance steel-making technology and operations. Through extensive research and use of previously unpublished archival documentation, Warren offers a new perspective on the life of a monumental figure--a true visionary--in the industrial history of America. |
| John McMillan | Dwight Guthrie | The first full biography of John McMillan, dubbed “the apostle of Presbyterianism in the Western Country.”, this book also offers a detailed account of early civilization and settlement beyond the Alleghenies. |
| Just Good Politics | Raymond Chafin | Just Good Politics is the autobiography of Raymond Chafin, the savvy, free-wheeling political "boss" from Logan County, West Virginia, who managed political machinery for the elections of several state governors, U. S. senators, and, in 1960, for John F. Kennedy. It also provides a genuine bridge between our increasingly homgenized American society and a largely unexamined part of rural mountain life. |
| Karl Kautsky, 1854-1938 | Gary Steenson | The first major study of Karl Kautsky, considered the most influential Marxian theoretician in the world, from 1895 to 1914. Outside of Friedrich Engels, Kautsky did more to popularize Marism than any other person. An entire generation of Marxists, including Lenin and Trotsky, learned the doctrine in large part from Kautsky. |
| Maida Springer | Yevette Richards | The first full-length biography to document and analyze the central role played by Maida Springer in international affairs, Maida Springer explores how Springer’s experiences inspired her to become involved in the formation of AFL-CIO’s African policy during the Cold War and African independence movements. It also discusses the overall political and social situation during this time period.
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| Man Who Loved the Stars | John Brashear | The inspiring story of a man whose avocation as a stargazer and vocation as a millwright led to his development of lenses, mirrors and other astronomical apparatus. John A. Brashear's technological advances were later employed by astronomers in the United States and Europe. Brashear also attracted the friendship and financial support of astronomer Samuel Lagley, railroad magnate William Thaw, Henry Clay Frick, and Andrew Carnegie, who gave him $20,000 for the construction of Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh. |
| Mind That Found Itself | Clifford Beers | At once a classic account of the ravages of mental illness and a major American autobiography, A Mind That Found Itself tells the story of a young man who is gradually enveloped by a psychosis. His well-meaning family commits him to a series of mental hospitals, but he is brutalized by the treatment, and his moments of fleeting sanity become fewer and fewer. His ultimate recovery is a triumph of the human spirit. |
| Patches of Fire | Albert French | Patches of Fire is Albert French’s deeply personal memoir of a young black man’s Vietnam War experience. The trials of war, the struggles of a Vietnam veteran, and the ultimate redemption of a life filled with accomplishment are related with vivid detail. |
| Puzzle People | Thomas Starzl | A compelling autobiography by one of the pioneers of transplant surgery. The cloth edition was widely reviewed in mainstream media and in medical journals when published in 1992. |
| Steel Titan | Robert Hessen | Drawing upon previously undiscovered resources, Steel Titan is the first biography ever written on the life of Charles M. Schwab, president of U.S. Steel and founder of Bethlehem Steel. |
| Steve Nelson, American Radical | Steve Nelson | An oral history about the life of Steve Nelson,the immigrant teenage son of a Croatian miller, and later an American Communist Party organizer. Follows Nelson's varied career, and his rise in the ranks of the Party. Tells the inside story of the workings of the Party, from a small group of Detroit autoworkers to the Party leaders in New York. |
| Thomas Mellon and His Times | Thomas Mellon | Publicly available for the first time, Pittsburgh entrepreneur, judge, and banker Thomas Mellon’s autobiography includes maps and rarely seen photographs. The preface by his grandson Paul Mellon and the foreword by David McCullough, along with the introduction, notes, and afterword by University of Pittsburgh professor Mary Briscoe, provide a historical and social context. |
| Timothy Pickering and the American Republic | Gerard Clarfield | Pickering was an important figure in the early American republic. For more than fifty years, he was entrenched in the political, military and diplomatic affairs of the young nation. He held important administrative posts during the Revolution, two cabinet posts, and served as a congressman, senator, and as a spokesman for the extremist element of New England's Federalists. This is the first comprehensive biography of Pickering, and a critical assessment of his politics. |
| Triumphant Capitalism | Kenneth Warren | 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. |
| We Fish | Jack Daniel | A dialogue between father and son, combining prose and poetry, that uses fishing as a shared activity and a metaphor, to address the universal challenge of raising good children. The lessons they share have the power to save a generation of young black men.
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| Where the Evidence Leads | Dick Thornburgh | Dick Thornburgh, former Governor of Pennsylvania and U.S. Attorney General under Presidents Reagan and Bush, reveals painful details of his personal life, including the 1960 automobile accident that claimed the life of his first wife and permanently disabled his infant son. He presents a frank analysis of the challenges of raising a family as a public figure, and tells the moving story of his personal and political crusade that culminated in the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. |
