What do you think?
Rate this book
Pittsburgh: The Story of a City, 1780-1865
Originally published in 1937, [t]his standard history of Pittsburgh tells the city’s story from its violent days as an eighteenth-century outpost of empire to the onset of its great age of industrial expansion. With wonderful line illustrations by Ward Howe.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
360 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1937
1 person is currently reading
29 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 21, 2025
This isn't exactly an action-packed story, but boy, is it detailed.
May 19, 2017
As readers of my reviews know well, I like to start a review with the story of how I came upon a given book. This story is more of a confession… and I think the statute of limitations has expired on it, so I’ll just be honest about it. This was a book I was supposed to have read for a college class I took probably five years ago. It was, perhaps, my favorite class of my entire college career and if you know me, you’ll know why. I took “The History of Pittsburgh” with Dr. Carmen DiCiccio. I absolutely love my hometown and am proud to no end of our history, our story, our people, and our potential. I liked the professor almost as much as I loved the class. He is a brilliant, eccentric, hilarious, scholarly man and I try to visit him at least once or twice a year, to this day.
As assigned, I started to read this book for class, but given my slow pace of reading, as well as the pace of this book, the demands of my other classes, and of course, working full time, tackling this book wasn’t in the cards… at least not in its entirety. I picked through bits of it, at least well enough to get an A in the class. It wasn’t an easy A, either. Carmen doesn’t hand out A’s. Students have to earn them, but I digress.
This book has been sitting on my shelf for at least five years, almost taunting me to read it, so I figured, hey, no time like the present. The author’s self-diagnosed approach to the telling of this story is, rather than make it a tired recitation of facts and dates, Baldwin aims to present a coherent, flowing story to improve the reading experience.
I apologize in advance for parroting my last book review, but here it comes: I would love to tell you that this is a galloping, exciting race through the people and adventures that turned Pittsburgh from a burnt out fort abandoned by the French, into the industrial dynamo that it was, during the Civil War.
I would love to, but I can’t do it without lying through my teeth. There are a few reasons for this, one of which I cannot assign blame to Baldwin. This book was published in 1937. I take it from this reading experience that people today simply don’t write the way they used to in 1937. The read itself is painful, even outside of how the information is organized.
Speaking of organization, that is another source of pain. Baldwin does break the book up into chapters, but the book isn’t even neatly organized within that structure. Baldwin breaks up concepts into mini-segments, so, for example, the history of newspapers over a few decades may appear on a few pages, and then the history of newspapers breaks out again over a few pages, several chapters later.
That’s not even my biggest problem with this book. Certain topics are explained more coherently than others. For example, one hole in my knowledge of American history is the Whiskey Rebellion and after reading the relevant passage, I still don’t know much about it. In fact, I was mostly through the section before I even realized it -was- about the Whiskey Rebellion. In fact, nowhere is the phrase Whiskey Rebellion even mentioned, to my recollection. The chapter that discusses it is called, “Tom the Tinker Comes to Town”. I later learned that Tom the Tinker is closely associated with the Whiskey Rebellion, but if you didn’t know that going in, it wasn’t going to be an obvious reference. Even once I figured out the chapter’s topic, it was a difficult read and the story of the Whiskey Rebellion was largely inaccessible.
For his initial statement that the book would not be a recitation of lists, on occasion, he can’t help himself and the end result is rote boredom.
As an alleged adult, I feel a little guilty about my next complaint and that’s that the book could have benefited mightily from some illustrations. There are two maps at the end of the book that give some frame of reference, but as Baldwin describes certain things, visuals would have helped information sink in, immensely. I’m a fourth generation Pittsburgh on one side of my family and I still have no idea about some of the landmarks he described.
All in all, it’s a painful read. The disconcerting part is that Professor DiCiccio said that, of our assigned reading, a different book would be the most challenging read. That one also sits on my bookshelf, where I imagine it will remain for some time. Would I read this book again? If someone threatened me, maybe. I have to wonder about Dr. DiCiccio’s motivation for assigning this book. I sincerely hope there are better books on the subject that are more engaging and ultimately, informative. I may poke around in the future to see if I can find such a book. I’ll report back, should I find one.
I grant this book three stars out of 10.
As assigned, I started to read this book for class, but given my slow pace of reading, as well as the pace of this book, the demands of my other classes, and of course, working full time, tackling this book wasn’t in the cards… at least not in its entirety. I picked through bits of it, at least well enough to get an A in the class. It wasn’t an easy A, either. Carmen doesn’t hand out A’s. Students have to earn them, but I digress.
This book has been sitting on my shelf for at least five years, almost taunting me to read it, so I figured, hey, no time like the present. The author’s self-diagnosed approach to the telling of this story is, rather than make it a tired recitation of facts and dates, Baldwin aims to present a coherent, flowing story to improve the reading experience.
I apologize in advance for parroting my last book review, but here it comes: I would love to tell you that this is a galloping, exciting race through the people and adventures that turned Pittsburgh from a burnt out fort abandoned by the French, into the industrial dynamo that it was, during the Civil War.
I would love to, but I can’t do it without lying through my teeth. There are a few reasons for this, one of which I cannot assign blame to Baldwin. This book was published in 1937. I take it from this reading experience that people today simply don’t write the way they used to in 1937. The read itself is painful, even outside of how the information is organized.
Speaking of organization, that is another source of pain. Baldwin does break the book up into chapters, but the book isn’t even neatly organized within that structure. Baldwin breaks up concepts into mini-segments, so, for example, the history of newspapers over a few decades may appear on a few pages, and then the history of newspapers breaks out again over a few pages, several chapters later.
That’s not even my biggest problem with this book. Certain topics are explained more coherently than others. For example, one hole in my knowledge of American history is the Whiskey Rebellion and after reading the relevant passage, I still don’t know much about it. In fact, I was mostly through the section before I even realized it -was- about the Whiskey Rebellion. In fact, nowhere is the phrase Whiskey Rebellion even mentioned, to my recollection. The chapter that discusses it is called, “Tom the Tinker Comes to Town”. I later learned that Tom the Tinker is closely associated with the Whiskey Rebellion, but if you didn’t know that going in, it wasn’t going to be an obvious reference. Even once I figured out the chapter’s topic, it was a difficult read and the story of the Whiskey Rebellion was largely inaccessible.
For his initial statement that the book would not be a recitation of lists, on occasion, he can’t help himself and the end result is rote boredom.
As an alleged adult, I feel a little guilty about my next complaint and that’s that the book could have benefited mightily from some illustrations. There are two maps at the end of the book that give some frame of reference, but as Baldwin describes certain things, visuals would have helped information sink in, immensely. I’m a fourth generation Pittsburgh on one side of my family and I still have no idea about some of the landmarks he described.
All in all, it’s a painful read. The disconcerting part is that Professor DiCiccio said that, of our assigned reading, a different book would be the most challenging read. That one also sits on my bookshelf, where I imagine it will remain for some time. Would I read this book again? If someone threatened me, maybe. I have to wonder about Dr. DiCiccio’s motivation for assigning this book. I sincerely hope there are better books on the subject that are more engaging and ultimately, informative. I may poke around in the future to see if I can find such a book. I’ll report back, should I find one.
I grant this book three stars out of 10.
June 22, 2017
More than I ever thought I'd learn about Pittsburgh.
Read
February 14, 2019Finished this book on Valentine's Day 2019. In a later chapter they talk about Abraham Lincoln passing through Pittsburgh on Valentine's Day 1861, soon after his electoral victory. The enthusiastic crowd congregating at the city to get a peep of Honest Abe and marching around his hotel chanting, perhaps the most enthusiastic the city has ever been, according to the book. Maybe I don't have that level of enthusiasm for the book, like the past generation of Pittsburgh had for Lincoln, but I did enjoy the second half.
Disclaimer, the book is old - As the book was published in the 1930s, there are some politically incorrect parts, like using the word "darkie" for African Americans or "savage" and "redman" for Native American.
What I did enjoy about the book was some of the stories, particularly after the Whiskey Insurrection that talked about the developing social atmosphere of life at the river town before the American Civil War. There's a decent handful of amusing stories in the second half of the book that involve some of the more rugged aspects of the young city's existence as well as plenty of colorful figures and gossip from the age.
Probably the first 125 pages (the French and Indian War/Fort Pitt and the Whiskey Rebellion) could be found in a more modern book, but the second half that covers the early 19th century, I would recommend to anyone from Pittsburgh that likes local history. Most of the sites talked about fit into downtown or are extremely close to the river, you could easily walk to all the places within a day.
Disclaimer, the book is old - As the book was published in the 1930s, there are some politically incorrect parts, like using the word "darkie" for African Americans or "savage" and "redman" for Native American.
What I did enjoy about the book was some of the stories, particularly after the Whiskey Insurrection that talked about the developing social atmosphere of life at the river town before the American Civil War. There's a decent handful of amusing stories in the second half of the book that involve some of the more rugged aspects of the young city's existence as well as plenty of colorful figures and gossip from the age.
Probably the first 125 pages (the French and Indian War/Fort Pitt and the Whiskey Rebellion) could be found in a more modern book, but the second half that covers the early 19th century, I would recommend to anyone from Pittsburgh that likes local history. Most of the sites talked about fit into downtown or are extremely close to the river, you could easily walk to all the places within a day.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews