Publications and Book Reviews

By: Jennifer Kissel, editorial assistant, Senator John Heinz History Center

Remembering Monroeville: From Frontier to Boomtown
By Zandy Dudiak
(Charleston: The History Press 2009)
128 pps., softcover $21.99

Zandy Dudiak, native of Monroeville, and winner of more than 80 awards for journalistic endevors, focuses her latest work on the history of her hometown. The modern Pittsburgher knows Monroeville as a Mecca of shopping, nightlife, and traffic. However, Remembering Monroeville sheds new light the history of the town as an evolution of a “sleepy hamlet” into the “hub of the suburbs.” The rich history of the quiet pastoral land is rediscovered in Dudiak’s history of the new boomtown.

Last Chance To RSVP For The Mother Daughter Tea

Next Saturday, Dec. 12 from 1 to 4 p.m., gather your favorite ladies - grandmothers, mothers, daughters, aunts, nieces, friends, and sisters - at the History Center for a special Mother Daughter Tea With the Lincolns, sponsored by Robert Peirce & Associates.

Join President and Mrs. Lincoln for an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of the Lincoln: The Constitution and the Civil War and Lincoln Slept Here exhibition, as well as live entertainment, tea, and refreshments.

This delightful event costs $30 per person for members and $40 per person for non-members.

Hurry - spaces are limited! RSVPs must be made by this Friday, Dec. 4.

To make your reservation, please call Megan Kuniansky at 412-454-6436 or e-mail membership@hswp.org.

Enjoy Annual History Center Holiday Book Fair

This Saturday, Dec. 5 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., celebrate the History Center's 130th anniversary and mingle with more than 50 regional authors during our Annual Holiday Book Fair, sale and book-signing.

Authors include Art Rooney, Jr., Roy McHugh, Jennifer Antkowiak, Dave Crawley, Jim O'Brien, and many more of your favorites.

Click here for a complete list of authors.

Plus, you'll enjoy live music and free hot beverages. Books make great holiday gifts! History Center and Sports Museum Members receive 10% off all book purchases.

To become a member, please contact Megan Kuniansky at 412-454-6436 or e-mail membership@hswp.org.

Live and Learn Weekend Live Webcast

The Senator John Heinz History Center will be livestreaming Live and Learn Weekend beginning Friday, Nov. 13 at 6:30 p.m. and Saturday, Nov. 14 at 10:30 a.m. and will feature a live question and answer session.

To watch the the live Webcast, please click here.
(Please Note: Video will not appear until specified start times.)

This event's featured book will be:

My Confederate Kinfolk: a 21st-century Freedwoman Discovers Her Roots by Thulani Davis (2007)

We're very excited to be livestreaming this program around the world, but please bare with us as it is our very first Webcast!!

Support the History Center on PittsburghGives Match Day 2009

Be a match-maker and help support the Senator John Heinz History Center on PittsburghGives Match Day 2009!

Tomorrow, Wednesday, Oct. 28, every donation made to the History Center on pittsburghgives.org will be matched $0.50 to the $1.00 by the Pittsburgh Foundation.

Participants must act fast as the Pittsburgh Foundation's generous offer of $300,000 is not just available to the History Center, but hundreds of other non-profit organizations across Western Pennsylvania. The challenge match will be in effect until 12 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 29 or until matching funds are exhausted. Here are some easy tips for getting started:

1.) Visit http://pittsburghgives.guidestar.org/.

2.) Click the green LogIn link at the top-right corner of the homepage.

3.) Click "Create Login."

4.) Complete the registration form and click "Register."

Then tomorrow, Wednesday, Oct. 28 beginning at 10 a.m. visit http://pittsburghgives.guidestar.org/, enter "Senator John Heinz History Center" under "Find Nonprofits," and make your minimum donation of $50 by credit card.

For more information or questions, please visit www.pittsburghgives.org. You may also contact Cara Lindberg at 412-454-6325 or calindberg@hswp.org.

KDKA-TV Televises History Center's Antiques Appraisal Show Tonight

Starting tonight, Oct. 19 at 7:30 p.m., KDKA-TV will begin airing monthly broadcasts of the second season of "Pittsburgh's Hidden Treasures, An Antiques Appraisal Show."

Hosted by History Center President and CEO Andy Masich and KDKA-TV news anchor Ken Rice, the 30-minute program highlights collectibles and family heirlooms nearly 2,000 members and visitors brought to the History Center for appraisals last fall. The event encouraged visitors to bring in their prized paintings, antique toys, sports memorabilia, and more to the History Center. Visitors met with professional appraisers for a verbal assessment of potential monetary value.

KDKA-TV camera crews roamed the History Center in search of the most unique items to be included in the nine-part series.

Upcoming air dates on KDKA-TV include:

• TONIGHT - Monday, Oct. 19 at 7:30 p.m.


• Monday, Nov. 23 at 7:30 p.m.


• Monday, Dec. 14 at 7:30 p.m.


• Monday, Jan. 18 at 7:30 p.m.

Stay tuned to http://www.heinzhistorycenter.org or check local television listings for additional information.

Publications and Book Reviews

By: Sherrie Flick, editorial assistant, Senator John Heinz History Center

What the Heart Can Bear: Selected and Uncollected Poems, 1979-1993
By Robert Gibb
(Pittsburgh: Autumn House Press, 2009)
150 pps., softcover $19.95

Poet Robert Gibb was born in Homestead, Pennsylvania. His latest collection, out with Pittsburgh-based Autumn House Press and his eighth book of poetry, is a selection of his early work. As Michael Waters notes, “This book belongs among those worn American classics crammed on the rough-hewn shelf nailed onto the mudroom walls.” Nature and earth and poignant observations of the world around him abound: “The fires of the fields rattle my sight, / And out in what I say is the wind, the dead go on / Without us, flaking in the falling air.”

Monongehela Dusk: A Novel
By John Hoerr
Illustrations by Bill Yund
(Pittsburgh: Autumn House Press, 2009)
310 pps., softcover $19.95

This novel by veteran labor journalist and McKeesport native John Hoerr, author of And the Wolf Finally Came, works its way from 1937 to 1950. Labor turmoil sweeps across Western Pennsylvania as traveling beer sales person Pete Bonner picks up a hitchhiker Joe Miravich. This fateful meeting forms an unlikely alliance to thwart the economic and political powers conspiring against them and which, 40 years later, turn the mill towns of the Monongahela Valley into blighted relics of the industrial era.

Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend
By Larry Tye

(New York: Random House, 2009)
Photographs, index, 398 pps., hardcover $26

Just a small section of journalist Larry Tye’s thick book focuses on the Pittsburgh years for Satchel Paige and his time with the Pittsburgh Crawfords. Chapter 3, “The Glory Trail,” chronicles 25-year-old Paige’s meet up with Crawford’s owner Gus Greenlee, the rivalry between the Homestead Grays and the Crawfords, and Paige’s rise to Negro league’s 1934 All-Star player. Tye notes that by the 1930s “Pittsburgh was to America’s black sports scene what Harlem was to its literary and arts life.”