The "Immaculate Reception" may have started it all, but the 1979 Pittsburgh Steelers put the stamp on the modern era’s greatest sports dynasty. It’s not even a debate. No other National Football League team in the modern sports era—as defined by Nielson—won so much in so little time. The tag is sure to stay with the Steelers for a long, long time. Fans in Pittsburgh can thank NFL free agency, but only in part. They should really thank the ’79 Steelers for winning a fourth title when, really, the team should not have done so. The 1979 Steelers were not supposed to win a championship. The Steel Curtain was in decline, and the Houston Oilers were pounding on the door of the AFC. By the end of the season, of course, the banged-up Oilers were not to be feared, not with the San Diego Chargers gathering steam. In the NFC, the Dallas Cowboys could taste revenge, particularly after Steelers coach Chuck Noll had mocked them unmercifully following the previous year’s Super Bowl. However, the Steelers persevered. "We probably won it more on desire, football intellect," said Steelers defensive superstar "Mean" Joe Greene. Greene admitted that the defense was in decline. He even admitted his great career was in decline, but he never thought the end of the dynasty was near. Star quarterback Terry Bradshaw, on the other hand, with his career just taking off, knew the end was at hand, and after his greatest season, after his second of back-to-back Super Bowl Most Valuable Player awards, Bradshaw hinted at retirement. "I probably should have," he admits 25 years later. The 1979 season had exhausted Bradshaw, a topic he talks about in Tales from Behind the Steel Curtain. Greene also has plenty to say. So do their teammates and their coaches, not to mention the scouts, front office and support personnel, media, and fans. They all have tales to tell about the key season of one of the greatest dynasties the sports world has ever seen. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Sports Publishing imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in sports—books about baseball, pro football, college football, pro and college basketball, hockey, or soccer, we have a book about your sport or your team. Whether you are a New York Yankees fan or hail from Red Sox nation; whether you are a die-hard Green Bay Packers or Dallas Cowboys fan; whether you root for the Kentucky Wildcats, Louisville Cardinals, UCLA Bruins, or Kansas Jayhawks; whether you route for the Boston Bruins, Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens, or Los Angeles Kings; we have a book for you. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

"Behind the Steel: One Life—Five Epochs": takes the reader on a journey through Twentieth Century America, its cities, its wars, the western prairies, and the poet’s encounter with death, losses of the heart, and old age, when the past stands still and time quickens, when the echoes of the past ricochet and scatter into pure energy. The poet sharply searches for meaning through action, but discovers that only in solitude does he find answers, albeit conditional, bowing to the forces beyond his sensibilities, to the limits of a self-imposed blindness, to the incomprehensibly complicated and absurd events that occur in our midst, yet exceed the human capacity for reason, moral belief and even suffering.

An emotional memoir from Hall of Fame, Super Bowl winning former head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers and current CBS analyst, Bill Cowher.

A brief collection of popular stories about the famed " Steel Curtain" defense of the Pittsburgh Steeler football team of 1979.

A stirring portrait of the decade when the Steelers became the greatest team in NFL history, even as Pittsburgh was crumbling around them. In the 1970s, the city of Pittsburgh was in need of heroes. In that decade the steel industry, long the lifeblood of the city, went into massive decline, putting 150,000 steelworkers out of work. And then the unthinkable happened: The Pittsburgh Steelers, perennial also-rans in the NFL, rose up to become the most feared team in the league, dominating opponents with their famed "Steel Curtain" defense, winning four Super Bowls in six years, and lifting the spirits of a city on the brink. In The Ones Who Hit the Hardest, Chad Millman and Shawn Coyne trace the rise of the Steelers amidst the backdrop of the fading city they fought for, bringing to life characters such as: Art Rooney, the owner of the team so beloved by Pittsburgh that he was known simply as "The Chief"; Chuck Noll, the headstrong coach who used the ethos of steelworkers to motivate his players; Terry Bradshaw, the strong-armed and underestimated QB; Joe Green, the defensive tackle whose fighting nature lifted the franchise; and Jack Lambert, the linebacker whose snarling, toothless grin embodied the Pittsburgh defense. Every story needs a villain, and in this one it's played by the Dallas Cowboys. As Pittsburgh rusted, the new and glittering metropolis of Dallas, rich from the capital infusion of oil revenue, signaled the future of America. Indeed, the town brimmed with such confidence that the Cowboys felt comfortable nicknaming themselves "America's Team." Throughout the 1970s, the teams jostled for control of the NFL-the Cowboys doing it with finesse and the Steelers doing it with brawn-culminating in Super Bowl XIII in 1979, when the aging Steelers attempted to hold off the Cowboys one last time. Thoroughly researched and grippingly written, The Ones Who Hit the Hardest is a stirring tribute to a city, a team, and an era.

Did you know that one former star for the Pittsburgh Steelers went on to lower the driving age to 16 as a member of his state's legislature? Or that one former Steeler now leads the St. Patrick's Day Parade every year in Chicago? Or that another owned a casino in Reno? And that's just the players from the dark ages of the Steelers' organization.Where have guys like Ted Marchibroda, Roy Jefferson, Frenchy Fuqua, Jack Lambert, and Dermontti Dawson gone? What about Levon Kirkland, Kevin Greene, Carnell Lake, Bubby Brister, Bruce Van Dyke, and Frank Lewis? The answers are inside. Men of Steel profiles a Who's Who list of Steeler greats, catching up with the former players while taking each for a nostalgic walk down memory lane. Through interviews with the players themselves-including Joe Greene, Dick Hoak, Rod Woodson, Donnie Shell, and Tunch Ilkin-fans can relive the past as well as catch up to the present.From Elbie Nickel and the second-most famous play in team history to the group from the 1960s that legendary writer Myron Cope once blasted for abstaining from alcohol, Men of Steel chronicles 60 years of Steelers history dating back to the 1940s. Most Steeler fans will enjoy recalling each player's athletic accomplishments, but this book also delivers the rest of the story-both on and off the field. For fans of Pittsburgh football, it gets no better than Men of Steel.

John Scott's classic account of his five years as a worker in the new industrial city of Magnitogorsk in the 1930s, first published in 1942, is enhanced in this edition by Stephen Kotkin's introduction, which places the book in context for today's readers; by the texts of three debriefings of Scott conducted at the U.S. embassy in Moscow in 1938 and published here for the first time; and by a selection of photographs showing life in Magnitogorsk in the 1930s. No other book provides such a graphic description of the life of workers under the First Five-Year Plan.