New in Paper Allegheny City, known today as Pittsburgh's North Side, was the third-largest city in Pennsylvania when it was controversially annexed by the City of Pittsburgh in 1907. Dan Rooney, a longtime North Side resident, joins local historian Carol Peterson in creating this highly engaging history of the cultural, industrial, and architectural achievements of Allegheny City from its humble beginnings until the present day. The authors cover the history of the city from its origins as a colonial outpost to its emergence alongside Pittsburgh as one of the most important industrial cities in the world. Supplemented by historic and contemporary photos, the authors take the reader on a fascinating and often surprising street-level tour of this colorful, vibrant, and proud place.

A NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS' TOP BOOK OF THE YEAR • BOOKLISTS' EDITOR'S CHOICE • ONE OF NPR'S BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “At once a film book, a history book, and a civil rights book.… Without a doubt, not only the very best film book [but] also one of the best books of the year in any genre. An absolutely essential read.” —Shondaland This unprecedented history of Black cinema examines 100 years of Black movies—from Gone with the Wind to Blaxploitation films to Black Panther—using the struggles and triumphs of the artists, and the films themselves, as a prism to explore Black culture, civil rights, and racism in America. From the acclaimed author of The Butler and Showdown. Beginning in 1915 with D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation—which glorified the Ku Klux Klan and became Hollywood's first blockbuster—Wil Haygood gives us an incisive, fascinating, little-known history, spanning more than a century, of Black artists in the film business, on-screen and behind the scenes. He makes clear the effects of changing social realities and events on the business of making movies and on what was represented on the screen: from Jim Crow and segregation to white flight and interracial relationships, from the assassination of Malcolm X, to the O. J. Simpson trial, to the Black Lives Matter movement. He considers the films themselves—including Imitation of Life, Gone with the Wind, Porgy and Bess, the Blaxploitation films of the seventies, Do The Right Thing, 12 Years a Slave, and Black Panther. And he brings to new light the careers and significance of a wide range of historic and contemporary figures: Hattie McDaniel, Sidney Poitier, Berry Gordy, Alex Haley, Spike Lee, Billy Dee Willliams, Richard Pryor, Halle Berry, Ava DuVernay, and Jordan Peele, among many others. An important, timely book, Colorization gives us both an unprecedented history of Black cinema and a groundbreaking perspective on racism in modern America.

From the 1905 opening of the wildly popular, eponymous Nickelodeon in the city's downtown to the outgrowth of nickel theaters in nearly all of its neighborhoods, Pittsburgh proved to be perfect for the movies. Nickelodeon City profiles the major promoters in Pittsburgh, as well as ordinary theater owners, suppliers, and patrons. Aronson examines early film promotion, distribution, and exhibition, and reveals the beginnings of state censorship and the lobbying and manipulation attempted by members of the movie trade.

Despite being geographically cut off from large trade centers and important natural resources, Pittsburgh transformed itself into the most formidable steel-making center in the world. Beginning in the 1870s, under the engineering genius of magnates such as Andrew Carnegie, steel-makers capitalized on western Pennsylvania’s rich supply of high-quality coal and powerful rivers to create an efficient industry unparalleled throughout history. In City of Steel, Ken Kobus explores the evolution of the steel industry to celebrate the innovation and technology that created and sustained Pittsburgh’s steel boom. Focusing on the Carnegie Steel Company’s success as leader of the region’s steel-makers, Kobus goes inside the science of steel-making to investigate the technological advancements that fueled the industry’s success. City of Steel showcases how through ingenuity and determination Pittsburgh’s steel-makers transformed western Pennsylvania and forever changed the face of American industry and business.

In 1907, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania annexed a large land tract that already had an illustrious history as its own city-- the third largest and most prosperous in the state. What then on became known as the North Side of Pittsburgh was originally a place called Allegheny City, annexed against its will. Despite eventual acclimation and further prosperity, its identity, indelible, hangs as a mist over the storied land-- for historians, homeowners and visitors that today see all the modern spectacles set on the age-old stage, the lowland at the juncture of three majestic rivers. Resurrecting Allegheny City presents the cultural and social history of this lost society of Allegheny. It looks in-depth at the natives who put down footpath and, filled with significant maps, presents the long transformation of the land. Though now part of Pittsburgh for over one hundred years, the hills and valleys, woods and runs, burial ground, overlooks and sunken islands are all imprints of the catalysts that occurred here. This portrait of a place tells a tale from earliest time to present day-- showing a forward-moving society of the 1800s centered around a town square of the 1790s, presenting life in pre-twentieth century homes, and even addressing recent era where modern homesteaders have successfully battled challenges. It explains why, in 2007, many Pittsburgh Northsiders are sacredly tied to their neighborhood, their historic homes, and the very land upon which they find themselves rooted. They are defined, still, by Allegheny City.