The author was inspired to write these memoirs of the years he spent growing up in the Pennsylvania steel town of Bethlehem before the Second World War by the realization that they were a pivotal time in American history. While Americans were struggling with the economic hardships of the Great Depression, they never gave up and instead made the best of what they had. Out of their triumph over hardship grew the generation that fought and won the Second World War. The society and culture exemplified by the Pennsylvania steel towns has now vanished but it is hard not to think that, while we have gained much as a society, we have also lost far too many things worthy of preservation. One of these was the great Bethlehem Steel plant itself, the ruins of which stretch for miles along the Lehigh River. Dominating the ruins are the ghostly remains of the five great blast furnaces, preserved to remind people of the greatness that was once Bethlehem Steel and the community that lived in its shadows.

In Steel Town, it's always dark. In Steel Town, it's always raining... In Steel Town, the mills blaze all day and all night, making steel and even more steel to be shipped over the Magic Mountains, down the Pitch-Black River, and far, far away. The men who work in the mills work as hard as the machines that make the steel, never stopping. But when the men go home at night, a different side of Steel Town emerges -- one filled with music and neighbors, pierogies and spaghetti, churches and front porches. This gritty yet poetic world is brought to life through Jonah Winter's lyrical, rhythmic text and Terry Widener's luscious, nocturnal illustrations, whose massive figures glow with the few lights that shine through this darkness. This is a portrait of an imaginary town derived from the very real American steel towns of the 1930s, when the sky was often black as night all day and the cavernous mills belched out fire and smoke. Here is a journey to a town that time has not forgotten, just misplaced: Steel Town.

Examines the business, labor, and human history of Homestead, Pennsylvania, the heart of the American steel industry.

Tales of a largely unknown and recurrent Promised Land, revealing the soul of industrial life, and a yearning for broader horizons

Gary Ashbaugh - I just finished reading your book. Boy, did that ever turn the clock back. I think that described life in those small towns to a tee. Congratulations on getting it published. TOWN and TIME ... My cycle of life began January 12, 1945, seven months before the end of WWII, in Emlenton, Pennsylvania, a borough of some 800 souls, where generations of my father's family had lived and died. Emlenton, which lies partially isolated in the hills of northwestern Pennsylvania, offered few outside distractions, so we relied heavily on our imaginations and the natural resources that surrounded us. The swimming holes along Richey Run Creek, the Indian cave below the town cemetery, and long hikes along the railroad tracks that followed alongside the majestic Allegheny River offered plenty of adventure and diversion. Our lives revolved around paper routes, baseball, pin ball machines, hotdogs, French fries, 5&10 stores, dances, and dating. The freezing cold winters involved basketball, deer hunting and fur trapping. A youthful fertile mind, interested in science, led to rocketry, homemade motors, crystal radios, moonshine, and motor scooters that provided a lifetime of memories. The stories shared are sometimes funny, poignant, and often laced with mischief. Emlenton seemed to be magical, and those times now seem idyllic. This is where I grew up, and this book is about the time, the place, the people, and the events that formed my coming of age in the 1950s.

Our all-time bestselling title, this classic and powerful novel spanning three generations of a Slovak immigrant family has been adopted for course use in more than 250 colleges and universities nationwide. Out of This Furnace, is Thomas Bell's most compelling achievement. Its story of three generations of an immigrant Slovak family - the Dobrejcaks - still stands as a fresh and extraordinary accomplishment. The novel begins in the mid-1880s with the naive blundering career of Djuro Kracha. It tracks his arrival from the old country as he walked from New York to White Haven, his later migration to the steel mills of Braddock, and his eventual downfall through foolish financial speculations and an extramarital affair. The second generation is represented by Kracha's daughter, Mary, who married Mike Dobrejcak, a steel worker. Their decent lives, made desperate by the inhuman working conditions of the mills, were held together by the warm bonds of their family life, and Mike's political idealism set an example for the children. Dobie Dobrejcak, the third generation, came of age in the 1920s determined not to be sacrificed to the mills. His involvement in the successful unionization of the steel industry climaxed a half-century struggle to establish economic justice for the workers. Out of This Furnace is a document of ethnic heritage and of a violent and cruel period in our history, but it is also a superb story. The writing is strong and forthright, and the novel builds constantly to its triumphantly human conclusion.

In a world that cries out for civility and healing, this is the only book about Mister Rogers' Neighborhood by an author who actually calls the place home. Known for his joyful humor, author Chris Rodell tells the story of how Latrobe influenced a young Fred Rogers, how the adult Fred Rogers influenced Latrobe and how both combined to influence him and the world. It relates how visionary educators are beginning to equate Mister Rogers with spiritual leaders like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. It tells the stories of couples he married, souls he saved and asks if calling him "Christ-like" is blasphemous or accurate. It has previously untold stories of Rogers being a life-saving superhero and of him being perfectly human. Governor Tom Ridge in his admiring foreword says: "Rodell writes about Latrobe and its native son the way Sinatra sings about New York, unflinching about the gritty realities, but with abiding affection and relentless positivity about the future." In the end, the book is about how we can turn the entire planet into Mister Rogers' Neighborhood beginning inside our very own hearts.

Men in hardhats were once the heart of America’s working class; now it is women in scrubs. What does this shift portend for our future? Pittsburgh was once synonymous with steel. But today most of its mills are gone. Like so many places across the United States, a city that was a center of blue-collar manufacturing is now dominated by the service economy—particularly health care, which employs more Americans than any other industry. Gabriel Winant takes us inside the Rust Belt to show how America’s cities have weathered new economic realities. In Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods, he finds that a new working class has emerged in the wake of deindustrialization. As steelworkers and their families grew older, they required more health care. Even as the industrial economy contracted sharply, the care economy thrived. Hospitals and nursing homes went on hiring sprees. But many care jobs bear little resemblance to the manufacturing work the city lost. Unlike their blue-collar predecessors, home health aides and hospital staff work unpredictable hours for low pay. And the new working class disproportionately comprises women and people of color. Today health care workers are on the front lines of our most pressing crises, yet we have been slow to appreciate that they are the face of our twenty-first-century workforce. The Next Shift offers unique insights into how we got here and what could happen next. If health care employees, along with other essential workers, can translate the increasing recognition of their economic value into political power, they may become a major force in the twenty-first century.

NOW A MAJOR TV SERIES STARRING JEFF DANIELS AND MAURA TIERNEY An American voice reminiscent of Steinbeck – a debut novel on friendship, loyalty, and love, centering on a murder in a dying Pennsylvania steel town, from the bestselling author of THE SON. Isaac is the smartest kid in town, left behind to care for his sick father after his mother dies by suicide and his sister Lee moves away. Now Isaac wants out too. Not even his best friend, Billy Poe, can stand in his way: broad-shouldered Billy, always ready for a fight, still living in his mother's trailer. Then, on the very day of Isaac's leaving, something happens that changes the friends' fates and tests the loyalties of their friendship and those of their lovers, families, and the town itself. Evoking John Steinbeck's novels of restless lives during the Great Depression, American Rust is an extraordinarily moving novel about the bleak realities that battle our desire for transcendence, and the power of love and friendship to redeem us. 'A startlingly mature and impressive debut' KATE ATKINSON 'Darkly disturbing and darkly compelling' PATRICIA CORNWELL 'Written with considerable dramatic intensity and pace' COLM TÓIBÍN 'A masterpiece. The best book to come out of America since The Road' CHRIS CLEAVE

A riveting literary debut about the cost of keeping quiet Amy Jo Burns grew up in Mercury, Pennsylvania, an industrial town humbled by the steel collapse of the 1980s. Instead of the construction booms and twelve-hour shifts her parents’ generation had known, the Mercury Amy Jo knew was marred by empty houses, old strip mines, and vacant lots. It wasn’t quite a ghost town—only because many people had no choice but to stay. The year Burns turned ten, this sleepy town suddenly woke up. Howard Lotte, its beloved piano teacher, was accused of sexually assaulting his female students. Among the countless girls questioned, only seven came forward. For telling the truth, the town ostracized these girls and accused them of trying to smear a good man’s reputation. As for the remaining girls—well, they were smarter. They lied. Burns was one of them. But such a lie has its own consequences. Against a backdrop of fire and steel, shame and redemption, Burns tells of the boys she ran from and toward, the friends she abandoned, and the endless performances she gave to please a town that never trusted girls in the first place. This is the story of growing up in a town that both worshipped and sacrificed its youth—a town that believed being a good girl meant being a quiet one—and the long road Burns took toward forgiving her ten-year-old self. Cinderland is an elegy to that young girl’s innocence, as well as a praise song to the curative powers of breaking a long silence.