| Airway to Everywhere | W. David Lewis | This book chronicles the formation and history of All American Aviation, an early pioneer of commercial avaition, and air mail carrier. |
| American Mosaic | Joan Morrison | American Mosaic presents the recollections of 140 immigrants from six continents and fifty countries who have settled all across the United States. |
| American Railroad Politics, 1914–1920 | K. Austin Kerr | This book describes the crucial World War I period, when the federal government assumed control of the railroads, and various interest groups fought for their positions with policy makers. |
| And the Wolf Finally Came | John Hoerr | A veteran reporter on American labor, John P. Hoerr analyzes the spectacular and tragic collapse of the steel industry in the 1980s. And the Wolf Finally Came demonstrates how an obsolete and adversarial relationship between management and labor made it impossible for the industry to adapt to a rapidly changing global economy. |
| Battle for Homestead, 1880–1892 | Paul Krause | In The Battle for Homestead, Paul Krause calls upon the methods and insights of labor history, intellectual history, anthropology, and the history of technology to situate the events of the lockout and their significance in the broad context of America’s Guilded Age. Utilizing extensive archival material, much of it heretofore unknown, he reconstructs the social, intellectual, and political climate of the burgeoning post-Civil War steel industry. |
| Bethlehem Steel | Kenneth Warren | Bethlehem Steel presents an original and compelling history of a leading American company, examining the numerous factors contributing to the growth of this titan and those that eventually felled it—along with many of its competitors in the U.S. steel industry.
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| Big Steel | Kenneth Warren | Big Steel is the first comprehensive history of the company at the center of America’s twentieth-century industrial life––the United States Steel Corporation. Granted unprecedented access to the U.S. Steel archives, Warren tells the compelling history of this business. |
| Bone Wars | Tom Rea | Tom Rea traces the evolution of scientific thought regarding dinosaurs and reveals the deception, hostility, and sometimes outright aggression present in the early years of fossil hunting. This book details one of the most famous—and notorious—dinosaur skeletons ever discovered: Diplodocus carnegii, named after Andrew Carnegie.
Winner of the 2002 Spur Award(best Western Non-Fiction-Contemporary) from Western Writers of America. |
| Braddock at the Monongahela | Paul Kopperman | An impressive account of the 1755 battle between British forces led by General Edward Braddock and the victorious French and Indian fighters stationed at Fort Duquesne. |
| Breaking the Backcountry | Matthew Ward | An exciting history of the Seven Years’ War (i.e., The French and Indian War) from the perspective of the region in which it began and most affected the early U.S.: the backcountry communities of Virginia and Pennsylvania. |
| Citizens Defending America | Martin Greenberg | Martin Greenberg chronicles the history of citizen volunteerism by examining the nature and purpose of volunteer police units in America since 1620. By considering these organizations with a contemporary perspective he provides insight into how the country might provide for a safe and secure future.
Winner of the 2006 George Washington Honor Medal from Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge. |
| Community Planning in the 1920s | Roy Lubove | The first detailed study of the Regional Planning Association of America, whose organization in 1923 signified a sharp break with traditional housing and planning in the United States. |
| Constitution of the United States, 1787–1962 | Putnam Jones | The essays in this collection commemorate the 175th anniversary of the establishment of the United States Constitution, offering perspectives on its history and its meaning to modern society. |
| Cormany Diaries | James Mohr | A unique pairing of husband and wife diaries written during the Civil War, offering in-depth accounts of life both at home and on the battlefield. Notes by the editor enlighten many of the issues that the couple grappled with during this tumultuous time. |
| Council Fires on the Upper Ohio | Randolph Downes | Council Fires on the Upper Ohio is a unique account of the Indian-white relations during the second half of the eighteenth century. Told from the point of view of the Indians, it details how the Indians maintained a precarious hold of Western Pennsylvania by playing one white faction off against another. |
| Creating America | Jan Cohn | Before movies, radio, and television challenged the hegemony of the printed word, the Saturday Evening Post was the preeminent vehicle of mass culture in the United States. And to the extent that a mass medium can be the expression of a single individual, this magazine, with a peak circulation of almost three million copies a week, was the expression of its editor, George Horace Lorimer. Cohn shows how Lorimer made the Post into a uniquely powerful magazine that both celebrated and helped form the values of the time. |
| Crisis in Bethlehem | John Strohmeyer | Crisis in Bethlehem provides an insider's look at Bethlehem Steel's bonanza years, its collapse, how it coped (and did not cope) with crisis, and the human costs involved. |
| Crossroads | John Harpster | Crossroads is a collection of thirty-seven colorful and perceptive writings left by early travelers and settlers who ventured west of the Allegheny Mountains. Traders, surveyors, soldiers, preachers, and immigrants, some of them well known and some obscure, tell of the loneliness, terror, and beauty of the frontier. |
| Drums in the Forest | Arthur James | 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. |
| Early Western Pennsylvania Politics | Russell Ferguson | Ferguson profiles the major politicians and political events in the region from Revolutionary War times until the 1820s, as a battle between loyalists of Jeffersonianism and Hamiltonianism. |
| Emergence of a UAW Local, 1936–1939 | Peter Friedlander | This book is a firsthand account of the experience of unionization in personal and social terms. Freidlander describes the transformation of a working-class community by its own actions and the ensuing stratification within that union. |
| First and Second United States Empires | Jack Ericson Eblen | This book describes the nature of government in all the contiguous territories of the United States from 1784–1912, offering a comprehensive view of the role and meaning of territorial government. |
| Founding Families of Pittsburgh | Joseph Rishel | 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. |
| George Mercer Papers | Lois Mulkearn | George Mercer was a captain of the First Virginia Regiment during the French and Indian War, a land surveyor, and an agent for the Ohio Company in England.Lois Mulkearn interprets George Mercer's documents on the activities of the Ohio Company, including early plans for town settlement, Indian treaties, and elightrning the reader on colonial history and the western frontier. |
| George Washington in the Ohio Valley | Hugh Cleland | A chronicle of Washington's excursions to the Ohio Valley frontier, as a soldier and private citizen. |
| Glass House Boys of Pittsburgh | James Flannery | An original examination of legislative clashes over the singular issue of the glass house boys, who performed menial tasks, received low wages, and had little to say on their own behalf while toiling in glass bottle plants. Flannery reveals the many societal, economic, and political factors at work that allowed for the perpetuation of child labor in this industry and region. |
| Guns at the Forks | Walter O’Meara | 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. |
| Harry, Tom, and Father Rice | John Hoerr | Centered around mostly ordinary people, Harry, Tom, and Father Rice relates the story of the author’s uncle Harry Davenport, union leader Tom Quinn, and Father Charles Owen Rice to the great conflict between anti-Communist and Communist forces in the American labor movement.
Read a press release about this book |
| Herbert Hoover and Economic Diplomacy | Joseph Brandes | From 1921 to 1928, future president Hoover built the Commerce Department into one of the most influential forces in federal government. During this time, the United States became a major creditor to other nations, which in turn had a significant impact on power relations between nations. The Commerce Department also became a champion of American economic rights and independence from foreign commodities, and in the process became the guiding force in national economic policy. |
| Homestead | Margaret Byington | This classic provides an extensive look at early twentieth century Pittsburgh with vivid descriptions of urban social conditions. |
| Homestead Strike of 1892 | Arthur Burgoyne | In 1893 Arthur Burgoyne, one of Pittsburgh’s most skilled and sensitive journalists, published Homestead, a complete history of the 1892 Homestead strike and the ensuing conflict between the Carnegie Steel Company and the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. Accurate, readable, and judiciously balanced in assigning blame, this work gives crucial insight into a turbulent period in Pittsburgh’s history. |
| Hugh Henry Brackenridge Reader, 1770-1815 | Daniel Marder | A collection of the work of Hugh Henry Brackenridge (1748-1816)—one of the most vigorous and prolific writers of his time, and extoller of democracy. |
| Inside History of the Carnegie Steel Company | James Howard Bridge | This book created a sensation when it appeared in 1903 and remains a striking insider’s narrative of the American steel industry in the late nineteenth century. Bridge was a fisthand witness to the confrontations of Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, the eventual sale of Carnegie Steel and the formation of U.S. Steel. |
| Keelboat Age on Western Waters | Leland Baldwin | This book tells the story of river boating in the west before the invention of the steamboat. Recreates life on the keelboats and flatboats that ran the Ohio, Mississippi, and other rivers from revolutionary days until about 1820. |
| North Reports the Civil War | J. Cutler Andrews | Andrews presents the drama of the Civil War as seen through the eyes of reporters’ own diaries, dispatches, and printed news stories. |
| Ohio Company | Alfred James | A comprehensive history of the formation and activities of the Ohio Company of Virgnia, and their major role in the settlement of western Pennsylvania. |
| Outposts of the War for Empire | Charles Stotz | This reissued hardcover edition thoroughly examines colonial era forts through narrative and illustration. It offers information about their physical attributes as well as why they were built. |
| Papers of Robert Morris, 1781–1784, Volume 1 | Robert Morris | Although Robert Morris (1734-1806), "the Financier of the American Revolution," was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution, a powerful committee chairman in the Continental Congress, an important figure in Pennsylvania politics, and perhaps the most prominent businessman of his day, he is today least known of the great national leaders of the Revolutionary era. |
| Papers of Robert Morris, 1781–1784, Volume 2 | Robert Morris | Although Robert Morris (1734-1806), "the Financier of the American Revolution," was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution, a powerful committee chairman in the Continental Congress, an important figure in Pennsylvania politics, and perhaps the most prominent businessman of his day, he is today least known of the great national leaders of the Revolutionary era. |
| Papers of Robert Morris, 1781–1784, Volume 3 | Robert Morris | Although Robert Morris (1734-1806), "the Financier of the American Revolution," was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution, a powerful committee chairman in the Continental Congress, an important figure in Pennsylvania politics, and perhaps the most prominent businessman of his day, he is today least known of the great national leaders of the Revolutionary era. |
| Papers of Robert Morris, 1781–1784, Volume 4 | Robert Morris | Although Robert Morris (1734-1806), "the Financier of the American Revolution," was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution, a powerful committee chairman in the Continental Congress, an important figure in Pennsylvania politics, and perhaps the most prominent businessman of his day, he is today least known of the great national leaders of the Revolutionary era. |
| Papers of Robert Morris, 1781–1784, Volume 5 | Robert Morris | Although Robert Morris (1734-1806), "the Financier of the American Revolution," was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution, a powerful committee chairman in the Continental Congress, an important figure in Pennsylvania politics, and perhaps the most prominent businessman of his day, he is today least known of the great national leaders of the Revolutionary era. |
| Papers of Robert Morris, 1781–1784, Volume 6 | Robert Morris | Although Robert Morris (1734-1806), "the Financier of the American Revolution," was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution, a powerful committee chairman in the Continental Congress, an important figure in Pennsylvania politics, and perhaps the most prominent businessman of his day, he is today least known of the great national leaders of the Revolutionary era. |
| Papers of Robert Morris, 1781–1784, Volume 7 | Robert Morris | More dramatic and emotionally charged than its predecessors, volume 7 portrays Morris’s struggle to sustain public credit and keep the American army together until peace with Great Britain was officially declared. When tax revenues from the states failed to arrive on schedule, his financial maneuvers approached deperation. He launched a risky venture to import specie from Cuba and won Congress’s sanction for an overdraft on French funds. |
| Papers of Robert Morris, 1781–1784, Volume 8 | Robert Morris | Although Robert Morris (1734-1806), "the Financier of the American Revolution," was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution, a powerful committee chairman in the Continental Congress, an important figure in Pennsylvania politics, and perhaps the most prominent businessman of his day, he is today least known of the great national leaders of the Revolutionary era. |
| Papers of Robert Morris, 1781–1784, Volume 9 | Robert Morris | A definitive publication project that transcribes and carefully annotates the Office of Finance diary, correspondence, and other official papers written by Morris during his administration as superintendent of finance from 1781 to 1784. |
| Papers of Thaddeus Stevens, Volume 1 | Thaddeus Stevens | The first volume of a two-volume edition covers Thaddeus Stevens’s political career from his Vermont youth to the end of the Civil War. It includes letters and speeches from his early days as a Gettysburg lawyer and as a representative in the Pennsylvania assembly through his antislavery efforts to the 1865 passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, freeing all slaves. |
| Papers of Thaddeus Stevens, Volume 2 | Thaddeus Stevens | This second volume of a two-volume edition covers Thaddeus Stevens’s later years during the tumultuous period from the end of the Civil War to his death in 1868. It includes letters, speeches, and remarks Stevens delivered as he championed equal rights for the freedmen and steered key Reconstruction measures through Congress. This volume also contains letters from loyalists and ex-Confederates to Stevens reflecting their reactions to conditions in the South. |
| Pennsylvania Constitutional Development | Rosalind Branning | First published in 1960, this work remains the seminal study of the development of Pennsylvania’s constitution. |
| Permeable Border | John J. Bukowczyk | 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 |
| Pioneer Life in Western Pennsylvania | J. E. Wright | A fascinating look at life during pioneer times in western Pennsylvania. Describes the hardship, danger and drudgery of day-to-day life on the frontier. Topics include cabin raising, crop harvests, tanning, weaving, disease, religion, and superstition. Also follows the progression from pioneer life to industrial society. |
| Pittsburgh | Leland Baldwin | The standard history of Pittsburgh tells the city’s story from its violent days as an eighteenth-century outpost of empire to the onset of its great age of industrial expansion. |
| Planting of Civilization in Western Pennsylvania | Solon Buck | Chronicles the development of industry, education, religion, social customs, law and order, and many other aspects of life in Western Pennsylvania up until the War of 1812. Based upon the original work of the Western Pennsylvania Historical Survey, from 1931-1935. |
| Polish Americans and Their History | John Bukowczyk | This rich collection brings together the work of eight leading scholars to examine the history of Polish-American workers, women, families, and politics. |
| Politics Without Parties | Van Beck Hall | This book offers proof that before the emergence of the American political party system, political differences were defined by economic, social, and cultural differences. |
| Progressives and the Slums | Roy Lubove | A detailed study of housing reform at the turn of the twentieth century, focusing on the tenements of New York City and the work of Lawrence Veiller, the dominant figure in Progressive Era housing reform. |
| Scots Breed and Susquehanna | Hubertis Cummings | |
| Seeing Reds | Charles McCormick | Charles McCormick’s extensively researched work describes the formative period of federal domestic spying in the Pittsburgh region. He utilizes case files from various federal intelligence agencies to add to our understanding of the security state, cold war ideology, labor and immigration history, and the rise of the authoritarian American Left, as well as the career paths of figures as diverse as J. Edgar Hoover and William Z. Foster. |
| Shadow of the Mills | S. J. Kleinberg | Choice 1990 Outstanding Academic Book, Shadow of the Mills focuses on the private side of industrialization, on how the mills structured the everyday existence of the women, men, and children who lived in their shadows. Through imaginative use of census data, the records of municipal, charitable, and fraternal organizations, and the voices of workers themselves in local newspapers, S.J. Kleinberg builds a detailed picture of the working-class life cycle: marital relationships, the interaction between parents and children, the education and employment prospects of the young, and the lives if the elderly. |
| Steel Workers | John Fitch | The Steel Workers remains a readable and timeless account of labor conditions in the early years of the steel industry. An introduction by the noted historian Roy Lubove places the book in political and historical context. |
| Steelton | John Bodnar | A study of the immigrants who flocked to this Central Pennsylvania steel town in the late nineteenth century in search of employment. Comprised primarily of Southern blacks and Eastern European immigrants, they formed the lower class of this town. Analyzes the social structure and dominance of the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant elite. |
| Thunder in the Mountains | Lon Savage | Much neglected in historical accounts, Thunder in the Mountains is the only available book-length account of the crisis in American industrial relations and governance that occured during the West Virginia mine war of 1920-21. |
| Uncommon Passage | Edward Muller | Reveals the historic importance of the Great Allegheny Passage Trail, now a scenic hiking and biking trail that stretches from Pittsburgh, PA to Washington, D.C.
Through beautiful contemporary photos, historic illustrations and a compelling narrative, the rich history of the trail comes to life for visitors (and everyone) to enjoy. |
| Wealth, Waste, and Alienation | Kenneth Warren | Drawing on economic, technological, labor, and environmental history, Kenneth Warren explains the birth, phenomenal growth, decline and death of the Connellsville coke industry—the region that made Pittsburgh steel world famous. |
| What’s a Coal Miner to Do? | Keith Dix | This book explores the impact of technology on coal miners and operators. Dix reconstructs the history of the “hand-loading” era, then views the evolution of mechanical coal technology, the rise of the United Mine Workers, and the expanded role of the state under New Deal legislation. |
| Whiskey Rebels | Leland Baldwin | A succinct account of the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 in Western Pennsylvania, recalling the economic and sociological factors that led to this historic uprising. |
| Women and the Trades | Elizabeth Beardsley Butler | Chronicles the technological and organizational changes that transformed women's wage work in the early 1900's. Provides a comprehensive account of women's standing and the jobs they performed in the workforce. Part of the original sociological study, The Pittsburgh Survey, which was the first attempt to study life and labor in this industrial city. |
