The Soul of Pittsburgh

"Pittsburgh contains multitudes. The city bestows a character of contradiction, love of place and strength of community on anyone lucky to be born and raised there. A town whose rivers were once lined with belching steel mills but also hosted the world's first major art exhibition is not easily defined. From the decline of the steel industry and the exodus of a vast diaspora of Pittsburghers to its reinvention as a trendy midsized metropolis, the ethos of the Steel City remains everchanging. Across thirteen interconnected essays, author Ed Simon examines the city's identity in all of its minutia--U.S. Steel and the U.S. Steelworkers; dive bars and churches; the black and gold and the Black and white; hills, bridges and inclines; and geography as destiny"--Page 4 of cover.