Presbyterians from the Irish province of Ulster were among the first to push the wild frontier west and found the city of Pittsburgh. By the 1840s, the flow of Irish Catholic immigrants had become a flood. Fleeing the great hunger and facing resentment in the city, they established themselves as key members of the community, building railroads and canals and establishing schools, hospitals and fraternal orders. During the Civil War, 156 women, many of them Irish, made the ultimate sacrifice for their new country when the Allegheny Arsenal exploded. The Fenians fought Southern Rebels under a green flag and made a little-known invasion of Canada in 1866. In the twentieth century, the sons and daughters of Erin took on roles as political leaders, labor agitators and entrepreneurs. Exploring tales of saints, sinners and visionaries, author Gerard F. O'Neil offers a beguiling and fascinating history of the Pittsburgh Irish.

Many modern Irish Pittsburghers can trace their roots to immigrants fleeing an Ireland devastated by the Great Potato Famine of the mid-1800s. They migrated to Pittsburgh, a booming industrial town, and worked in the iron and steel mills, the mines, and the railroads. Irish women became domestic servants in such large numbers that "Bridget the Maid" was a stock character on stage and later in films. The immigrants settled in neighborhoods such as the Point, the Hill District, Homewood, and the North Side. Fighting anti-Irish and anti-Catholic sentiments, they paved the way for their children, who would dominate municipal politics and the Catholic Church and rise to surprising heights in sports, entertainment, and business. Gov. David L. Lawrence, dancer Gene Kelly, and boxing champion Billy Conn were three of these Irish Pittsburgh groundbreakers. Their success echoed the smaller, but equally significant, success of ordinary Pittsburghers who rose from poverty to middle class, from shantytown to "lace curtain" respectability in the neighborhoods and later in the suburbs of the city.

Irish Presbyterians and the Shaping of Western Pennsylvania, 1770–1830 is a historical study examining the religious culture of Irish immigrants in the early years of America. Despite fractious relations among competing sects, many immigrants shared a vision of a renewed Ireland in which their versions of Presbyterianism could flourish free from the domination of landlords and established church. In the process, they created the institutional foundations for western Pennsylvanian Presbyterian churches. Rural Presbyterian Irish church elders emphasized community and ethnoreligious group solidarity in supervising congregants’ morality. Improved transportation and the greater reach of the market eliminated near-subsistence local economies and hastened the demise of religious traditions brought from Ireland. Gilmore contends that ritual and daily religious practice, as understood and carried out by migrant generations, were abandoned or altered by American-born generations in the context of major economic change.

William Wall is the first international winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize. In this collection of interconnected stories, the beautiful and ravaging forces of sea and land collide with the forces of human nature, through isolation and family, love and loss, madness and revelation. The stories follow the lives of two sisters and the people who come and go in their lives, much like the tides. Dominated by the tragic loss of a third sister at a young age, their family spirals out of control. We witness three stages of the sisters' lives, each taking place on an island—in southwest Ireland, southern England, and the Bay of Naples. Beautifully and sparsely written, the stories deeply evoke landscape and character, and are suffused with a keen eye for detail and metaphor.

Over 170 years, Pittsburgh rose from remote outpost to industrial powerhouse. With the formation of the United States, the frontier town located at the confluence of three rivers grew into the linchpin for trade and migration between established eastern cities and the growing settlements of the Ohio Valley. Resources, geography, innovation, and personalities led to successful glass, iron, and eventually steel operations. As Pittsburgh blossomed into one of the largest cities in the country and became a center of industry, it generated great wealth for industrial and banking leaders. But immigrants and African American migrants, who labored under insecure, poorly paid, and dangerous conditions, did not share in the rewards of growth. Pittsburgh Rising traces the lives of individuals and families who lived and worked in this early industrial city, jammed into unhealthy housing in overcrowded neighborhoods near the mills. Although workers organized labor unions to improve conditions and charitable groups and reform organizations, often helmed by women, mitigated some of the deplorable conditions, authors Muller and Ruck show that divides along class, religious, ethnic, and racial lines weakened the efforts to improve the inequalities of early twentieth-century Pittsburgh—and persist today.

The Best Restaurants, Markets & Local Culinary Offerings The ultimate guides to the food scene in their respective states or regions, these books provide the inside scoop on the best places to find, enjoy, and celebrate local culinary offerings. Engagingly written by local authorities, they are a one-stop for residents and visitors alike to find producers and purveyors of tasty local specialties, as well as a rich array of other, indispensable food-related information including: • Favorite restaurants and landmark eateries • Farmers markets and farm stands • Specialty food shops, markets and products • Food festivals and culinary events • Places to pick your own produce • Recipes from top local chefs • The best cafes, taverns, wineries, and brewpubs