Hell with the Lid Off looks at the ferocious five-year war waged by Pittsburgh and Oakland for NFL supremacy during the turbulent seventies.?The roots of their rivalry dated back to the 1972 playoff game in Pittsburgh that ended with the "Immaculate Reception," Franco Harris's stunning touchdown that led the Steelers to a win over the Raiders in their first postseason meeting.?That famous game ignited a fiery rivalry for NFL supremacy.?Between 1972 and 1977, the Steelers and the Raiders--between them boasting an incredible twenty-six Pro Football Hall of Famers--collided in the playoffs five straight seasons and in the AFC title game three consecutive years. Both teams favored force over finesse and had players whose forte was intimidation.?Pittsburgh's Steel Curtain defense featured Mean Joe Greene, Jack Lambert, Jack Ham, and Mel Blount, the latter's heavy hits forcing an NFL rule in his name.?The Raiders countered with "The Assassin," Jack Tatum, Skip Thomas (aka "Dr. Death"), George Atkinson, and Willie Brown in their memorable secondary.?Each of their championships crowned the eventual Super Bowl winner, and their bloodcurdling encounters became so violent and vicious that they transcended the NFL and had to be settled in a U.S. district court.? With its account of classic games, legendary owners, coaches, and players with larger-than-life personalities, Hell with the Lid Off is a story of turbulent football and one of the game's best-known rivalries.

Every city has an environmental story, perhaps none so dramatic as Pittsburgh's. Founded in a river valley blessed with enormous resources-three strong waterways, abundant forests, rich seams of coal-the city experienced a century of exploitation and industrialization that degraded and obscured the natural environment to a horrific degree. Pittsburgh came to be known as "the Smoky City," or, as James Parton famously declared in 1866, "hell with the lid taken off."Then came the storied Renaissance in the years following World War II, when the city's public and private elites, abetted by technological advances, came together to improve the air and renew the built environment. Equally dramatic was the sweeping deindustrialization of Pittsburgh in the 1980s, when the collapse of the steel industry brought down the smokestacks, leaving vast tracks of brownfields and riverfront. Today Pittsburgh faces unprecedented opportunities to reverse the environmental degradation of its history. In Devastation and Renewal, scholars of the urban environment post questions that both complicate and enrich this story. Working from deep archival research, they ask not only what happened to Pittsburgh's environment, but why. What forces-economic, political, and cultural-were at work? In exploring the disturbing history of pollution in Pittsburgh, they consider not only the sooty skies, but also the poisoned rivers and creeks, the mined hills, and scarred land. Who profited and who paid for such "progress"? How did the environment Pittsburghers live in come to be, and how it can be managed for the future?In a provocative concluding essay, Samuel P. Hays explores Pittsburgh's "environmental culture," the attitudes and institutions that interpret a city's story and work to create change. Comparing Pittsburgh to other cities and regions, he exposes exaggerations of Pittsburgh's environmental achievement and challenges the community to make real progress for the future. A landmark contribution to the emerging field of urban environmental history, Devastation and Renewal will be important to all students of cities, of cultures, and of the natural world.

First published in 1969, Roy Lubove's Twentieth-Century Pittsburgh is a pioneering analysis of elite driven, post-World War II urban renewal in a city once disdained as "hell with the lid off." The book continues to be invaluable to anyone interested in the fate of America's beleaguered metropolitan and industrial centers.