The fourth in Belt's series of idiosyncratic city guides. Pittsburgh is made up of more than ninety different neighborhoods, and while The Pittsburgh Neighborhood Guidebook doesn't have room for all of them, it does its best, exploring the contrasts that exist between and within neighborhoods and how they play out in personal narratives. In these pages you'll find essays about old Lawrenceville, nonfiction set in the Mon Valley, Wilkinsburg, and East Pittsburgh, and work by lifetime residents, transplants and transients. The newest installment in Belt's Neighborhood Guidebook Series, The Pittsburgh Neighborhood Guidebook is a book for anyone who thinks they know Pittsburgh, or just wishes they did.

"Pittsburgh Main Thoroughfares" is a report by Frederick Law Olmsted. The TOCs include The Main Arteries, Eastward Arteries and Their Improvement, A New Traffic Center, Sixth Avenue, Try Street Grade Crossing, Second Avenue Freight Yards, The Hump Cut, Grant Boulevard Extension, A Civic Center, Diamond Street Widening, Market Street Widening, The Market, The Water Front, etc.

The residents of Pittsburgh's East End controlled as much a 40% of America's assets at the turn of the last century. Mail was delivered seven times a day to keep America's greatest capitalists in touch with their factories, banks, and markets. The neighborhood had its own private station of the Pennsylvania Railroad with a daily non-stop express to New York's financial district. Many of the world's most powerful men — princes, artists, politicians, scientists, and American Presidents such as William McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, William Taft, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover, came to visit the hard-working and high-flying captains of industry. Two major corporations, Standard Oil and ALCOA Aluminum were formed in East End homes. It was the first neighborhood to adopt the telephone with direct lines from the homes to the biggest banks in Pittsburgh, which at the time was America's fifth largest city. The story of this neighborhood is a story of America at its greatest point of wealth and includes rags-to-riches stories, political corruption, scandals, and greed. The history of this unique piece of American geography makes for enjoyable reading that will satisfy a large cross section of readers.

August Wilson is one of America's great playwrights. He lived in Pittsburgh from his birth in 1945 to 1978, when he moved to St. Paul, MN, and later to Seattle, WA. He died in 2005 and is buried in Pittsburgh.Wilson composed 10 plays chronicling the African American experience in each decade of the twentieth century--and he set nine of those plays in Pittsburgh's Hill District. He turned the history of a place into great theater. His plays, including Fences, The Piano Lesson, Two Trains Running, Jitney, Gem of the Ocean, and Radio Golf have become classics of the American stage.August Wilson: Pittsburgh Places in His Life and Plays guides visitors to key sites in the playwright's life and work in the Hill District and beyond. This guidebook enriches the understanding of those who have seen or read his plays, inspires others to do so, and educates all to the importance of respecting, caring for, and preserving the Pittsburgh places that shaped, challenged, and nurtured August Wilson's rich, creative legacy.

Pittsburgh is ever-changing -- once dusted with soot from the mills, parts of the city now gleam with the polish of new technologies and little remains of what had been there before. The essays and artwork in this anthology aim for the surprising, elusive stories that capture a Pittsburgh that is in transition. Contributors run the gamut from MacArthur-award winning photographer, LaToya Ruby Frazier to 15-year-old Nico Chiodi, the book's youngest contributor who chronicles the doings of the North Side Banjo Club. "Everyone in this book," writes editor, Eric Boyd, "is talking about the city, the things surrounding it; all of the pieces have been created with experience, intimacy, and personality. This book, I hope, will speak to you, not at you. Because we all know this city is changing. We're just not exactly sure what that means." Included are contributions by Amy Jo Burns, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Ben Gwin, Cody McDevitt, David Newman, and many more.