This book is for the people of Youngstown, past, present and future. It is for their parents and their parents' parents, for their children and their children's children, but mostly it is for them. This book is an examination of memory and conscience, sometimes a celebration, always a mirror. From hard hats to cookie tables, black lungs to football glory, the valley of our pasts lives in these pages. My sweet Jenny, I'm sinkin' down. It is the only way through.

The Youngstown story often is told with a beginning in iron and steel and ending in decay with a subplot driven by violent mobsters and corrupt politicians. Aiming to provide a more well-rounded examination of Youngstown, this collection of essays provides an authentic look at the city through a diverse set of experiences from the perspectives of those who have lived there. Readers will gain a sense of the past, present, and future of the city.

What's a cookie table? Funny you should ask! The cookie table is a tradition beloved by residents of Youngstown, Pittsburgh, and parts in between. It has its roots in a time when wedding cakes were far too dear for newly arrived immigrants to purchase. Instead, family and friends showed their love for a bride and groom by baking from scratch hundreds (sometimes thousands) of cookies and other small sweet treats to be shared at the reception. The Belt Cookie Table Cookbook collects forty cookie recipes from authentic Mahoning Valley cookie tables and cookie cooks: cookies from different cultures, cookies with different textures, spices, shapes, and backstories. Simple cookies, ridiculously indulgent cookies. Cookies that aren't really cookies at all but slices of yeasted breads or more like candy, but are lumped into the cookie category because they are delicious and someone's great-grandmother brought the recipe with her when she came over from the Old Country. The cookie table tradition carries with it the understanding that not only should you always eat as many cookies as you can at the party, but that you should to take a bag or a box home with you as well as a way of sharing that love with your family and friends. With this book, you can join the community too.

Join the author of Historic Theaters of Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley and Lost Youngstown in an excavation of forgotten stories from bygone days. Beyond steel and rust, Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley share a rich, but often overlooked past. During the late 1910s, the ever-present smoke blanketing the area could not hide the fires from the burning business district of East Youngstown or the city streets deserted from Spanish influenza. Over twenty years later, the Mahoning Valley lived under another dark cloud, the Great Depression, but instead of violence and destruction, the men and women of the WPA busied themselves with building up the region and dreaming of better days. Journalist and historian Sean Posey excavates the history behind familiar landmarks, forgotten institutions, and historic sites that connect Mahoning Valley history to the story of the evolution of industrial America.

More than two decades have passed since Youngstown lost its beloved Strouss' Department Store. But Youngstowners can still taste those incomparable chocolate malts, see the dramatic view from the store's mezzanine and feel the excitement of the annual Thanksgiving Day parade. The story of Strouss' kept pace with the powerful trends that defined Youngstown as a whole. This was especially true during the boom years of the early twentieth century, when the store was the shopping hub in a community known as "America's Ruhr Valley." But the city changed, and Strouss' changed with it. In this unprecedented historical narrative, Welsh and Geltz dig deep into Strouss' past to uncover a dramatic story that will surprise--and delight--Youngstowners of all ages.

Landmark coffeehouse manager Clare Cosi has served her share of New York’s rich and famous, but even she is surprised by her explosive introduction to a mysterious Internet billionaire… When a car bomb nearly kills tech whiz Eric Thorner, Clare comes to his aid and receives a priceless thank you. Not only does the billionaire buy her a barista’s dream espresso machine, he hires her to create the world’s most expensive coffee blend. As Eric jets Clare around the globe on a head-spinning search for the world’s best coffee, she gets to know his world—a mesmerizing circle of money with rivalries that could easily have turned deadly. But is this charming young CEO truly marked for termination? Or is he the one making a killing?

The massive steel mills of Youngstown once fueled the economic boom of the Mahoning Valley. Movie patrons took in the latest flick at the ornate Paramount Theater, and mob bosses dressed to the nines for supper at the Colonial House. In 1977, the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company announced the closure of its steelworks in a nearby city. The fallout of the ensuing mill shutdowns erased many of the city's beloved landmarks and neighborhoods. Students hurrying across a crowded campus tread on the foundations of the Elms Ballroom, where Duke Ellington once brought down the house. On the lower eastside, only broken buildings and the long-silent stacks of Republic Rubber remain. Urban explorer and historian Sean T. Posey navigates a disappearing cityscape to reveal a lost era of Youngstown.