Books Archives - Page 2 of 8 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

On Jan. 25, 1904, 179 mostly teenaged miners died in a massive explosion at the Harwick Mine near Cheswick, where today a stone memorial marks their mass grave. A single survivor, Adolph Gunia, was pulled from the rubble by the mine’s designer, Selwyn Taylor, and his assistant, James McCann. Volunteers like Daniel Lyle dug through …

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Books

Dougherty’s Debut Highlights the Bonds Among Five Female Friends

by Fred Shaw

Of her debut novel, Pittsburgh native Marianne Dougherty says it’s “about the power of female friendships to sustain us” — an accurate portrayal of what plays out over 380 brisk-reading pages. With a host of well-regarded freelance work in both local and national platforms, Dougherty has penned a tale about what bonds her strong feminine …

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Books

His Father’s Son

by David J. Garrow

For the first 37 years following his 1945 birth, August Wilson was a Pittsburgh nobody, abandoned by his white German father, Frederick August Kittel, and disdained by his black mother, Daisy Wilson, once he dropped out of school in the ninth grade. Self-educated thanks to thousands of hours spent in multiple Carnegie Library branches, Freddy …

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Books

The Making of the Mafia

by Fred Shaw

There’s a scene in season one of “the Sopranos” when teen daughter Meadow asks, “Who invented the Mafia?” The question leaves Tony to consider how to respond with a mouthful of mu shu pork. That she then names those five New York City families with ease exemplifies the way La Cosa Nostra has become ingrained …

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Books Sports

From Basket Ball to the NBA

by Fred Shaw

While the debate over Pittsburgh’s status as a basketball town continues on barstools and radio waves across the region, what’s been settled by Claude Johnson, Carnegie Mellon University grad and author of The Black Fives: The Epic Story of Basketball’s Forgotten Era, is the important role that a black player from Homestead, once a “basket …

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Books

The Allman Brothers Band – and Me

by Alan Paul

The road may go on forever, but it began in my brother’s bedroom on Inverness Avenue, where he handed me a copy of the Allman Brothers Band’s Eat A Peach and told me to listen to it, when I was in seventh grade. I put on some headphones, lay down on the yellow shag carpet, …

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Books

The Rebellious Spirits Still Haunting Pittsburgh

by Stuart Sheppard

Some historical events seem so fantastical that they sound like myths when retold, while others are so intrinsic to our nature that they could be today’s news, and actually help us understand our contemporaneous existence more deeply. After reading The Whiskey Rebellion: A Distilled History of an American Crisis by Brady J. Crytzer, I would …

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Books

The Allman Brothers Band – and Me

by Alan Paul

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Books

Donora Death Fog: Clean Air and the Tragedy of a Pennsylvania Mill Town

by Fred Shaw

Amid outcry over the recent train derailment and subsequent leak of vinyl chloride in nearby East Palestine, Ohio, and environmental rights groups’ concerns about emissions from Shell’s ethylene cracker plant in Beaver County, dialogue over the balancing act between commerce and public health continues. In his well-researched new book, Donora Death Fog: Clean Air and …

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Books

Pittsburgh’s Orphans and Orphanages

by Joann Cantrell

For as long as I can remember, every time my grandmother spoke of her childhood, it made me sad. Margaret Schall, affectionately known as “Tootie,” was raised in the Odd Fellows Home for Orphans on the North Side of Pittsburgh from 1920 until 1933. She was an orphan of circumstance, rather than by the death …

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Books

A Satiric End of the World

by Fred Shaw

What might the end of the world be like? According to Michael Simms in his debut novel, Bicycles of the Gods: A Divine Comedy (Madville Books, $ 19.95), it could happen a bit like a “screwball comedy” as he navigates a wacky scenario by using “apocalyptic satire” to boldly comment on the troubled state of …

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Books

Ramona Reeves wins Drue Heinz with First Collection

by Jan Elizabeth Watson

Take the mordant wit of Flannery O’ Connor, combine it with the stripped-down empathy of Raymond Carver, and you just might have something like It Falls Gently All Around and Other Stories. This debut collection by Ramona Reeves offers a window into the entwined lives of characters in Mobile, Alabama — a politically, socially and …

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Books Culture

Small-town Characters Drive “Wings & Other Things”

by Fred Shaw

Story endings can be famously tricky to land, with Hemingway once claiming he wrote 39 different endings to A Farewell to Arms. Yet, when the writer Chauna Craig delves into the messy lives of her female protagonists, the resolution happens so effortlessly it can feel like sleight of hand. The Indiana University of Pennsylvania professor’s …

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Books Culture

Fitting into West Virginia

by Fred Shaw

In writing, place can be both problematic and inspirational. Take James Joyce’s troubled relationship with his Irish homeland. Ireland’s Catholic, nationalist values were reasons enough for him to never enter his native land after 1912. And though he died in 1941, his masterpieces remain redolent of Dublin. In her captivating debut memoir, Another Appalachia: Coming …

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Books Culture

Airmen Behind Enemy Lines

by Charles Stanley Jr.

As illustrated by the stories of eight Pittsburgh-area natives, downed airmen who bailed out over Yugoslavia during World War II experienced vastly different fates, from daring rescues to drowning and execution. Lost Airmen: The Epic Rescue of WWII Bomber Crews Stranded Behind Enemy Lines tells their stories and many others. Pilot Charles “Scotty” Stewart ordered …

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Books Culture

The Power and Danger of Storytelling

by Fred Shaw

Sway. for Jonathan Gottschall, author of the riveting nonfiction, The Story Paradox: How Our Love of Storytelling Builds Societies and Tears Them Down, this lone syllable jotted on a bar napkin while watching interactions in a tavern becomes the answer to a question: What are they actually doing? His thesis: human communication stands “to influence …

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Books Culture

Death of the Daily News

by Fred Shaw

Nearly 200 years ago, French social scientist Alexis De’ Tocqueville spent nine months touring America, documenting observations in what became the seminal Democracy in America. His take on the job of newspapers in a bourgeoning new country experimenting in representative democracy could be his most prescient: “’To suppose they only serve to protect freedom would …

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Books Culture

The Blue Continuum

by Robert McNeilly Jr.

“Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.”— Robert F. Kennedy Policing in any community is only as effective as the elected officials being informed and prudent enough to avoid common mistakes. When officers make mistakes, they jeopardize …

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Books Culture

Behind a Biography

by Maxwell King

I first got interested in John Kane 20 years ago. I was working at The Heinz Endowments, the large charitable foundation in Pittsburgh, which has a wonderful collection of the work of Pittsburgh artists, going back over 100 years. A local art dealer named Pat McArdle was talking to me about the collection when he …

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Books Culture

Consequences of Love

by Fred Shaw

With kidnapping and murder in the storyline, a “whodunit” often ensues. But like the Coen Brothers film masterpiece, Fargo, sometimes the crimes are less interesting than how the characters react to their circumstances and the events that led them astray. Stewart O’ Nan, a Squirrel Hill native and Pittsburgh’s preeminent novelist, uses this tactic to …

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Books

Getting Published at 70

by Chris Posti

I could write a book. we’ve all said it one time or another, whether it’s because we know a lot about a certain topic, or because we’ve had it up to here with our circumstances. But in my case, I wrote a book because I couldn’t find any women’s fiction I liked. I’m not all …

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Books

Gabriel Welsch Surveys the Human Landscape with “Groundscratchers” Collection

by Fred Shaw

In the world of landscaping, the term “groundscratcher” is derisive. It’s also the title of Gabriel Welsch’s revelatory short story collection from Tolsun Books. In it, the titular story finds Michael Petrin, ground supervisor of a large estate, at odds with the “maximal Minimalist” Japanese Zen Fusion gardener Yoshi Higashide hired by his boss, the …

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