First published in 1969, Roy Lubove's Twentieth-Century Pittsburgh is a pioneering analysis of elite driven, post-World War II urban renewal in a city once disdained as "hell with the lid off." The book continues to be invaluable to anyone interested in the fate of America's beleaguered metropolitan and industrial centers.

This book challenges the commonly held theory that American workers had a far superior standard of living than their European counterparts in the early twentieth century. Peter R. Shergold bases his study on the cities of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Birmingham, England, and compares statistical data on wage rates, labor hours, family income, retail prices, diet and budgets. He also presents information from medical investigators, travelers, charity workers, business organizations, diaries, speeches and a wide variety of other sources to breathe human life into his statistical data. Shergold reveals that skilled Americans did earn higher wages than the British, yet unskilled workers did not, while Americans worked longer hours, with a greater chance of injury, and had fewer social services.