Department of History

August Wilson: Pittsburgh Places in His Life and Plays

Laurence Glasco & Christopher Rawson

A guide to historic sites and places that figure in the life and plays of August Wilson. Most of these are set in the Hill District, where Wilson was born and grew up. The book includes photographs of the sites as well as fold-out maps for self-conducted walking tours.

Big Data in History

Patrick Manning

Big Data in History introduces a project to create a world-historical archive that will trace the last four centuries of historical dynamics and change. The archive will link research on social, economic, and political affairs, plus health and climate, for societies throughout the world.

Early North America in Global Perspective

Molly Warsh & Philip D. Morgan

Early North American history is a field in flux. In the last thirty years, the field of Atlantic History has transformed scholarly studies of colonial America, bringing to light the many connections linking the Americas to Africa and Europe. Recently, though, historians have begun to question the utility of the Atlantic framework. Some suggest that it overlooks global phenomena, while others argue for a hemispheric or continental perspective on North America's early history. The fourteen essays gathered here introduce students to some of the finest historians of early America who are working to address these questions in expansive and stimulating ways.

The Political Economy of Empire in the Early Modern World

Pernille Røge & Sophus A. Reinert

This volume recasts our understanding of the practical and theoretical foundations and dynamic experiences of early modern imperialism. The imperial encounter with political economy was neither uniform across political, economic, cultural, and religious constellations nor static across time. The contributions collected in this volume address, with undeniable pertinence for the struggles of later periods, the moral and military ambiguity of profits and power, as well as the often jealous interactions between different solutions to the problem of empire. The book presents a powerful mosaic of imperial theories and practices contributing to the creation of the modern world and to the most pressing concerns of our time.

À Bord du Négrier: Une Histoire Atlantique de la Traite (The Slave Ship: A Human History)

Marcus Rediker

Marcus Rediker's book, The Slave Ship: A Human History (New York: Viking-Penguin; London: John Murray, 2007) has been published this month in Frenchas À Bord du Négrier: Une Histoire Atlantique de la Traite by Éditions du Seuil.

Childcare in Black and White: Working Parents and the History of Orphanages

Jessie Ramey

Set at the turn of the last century as industrial capitalism was wrecking havoc on America's working families, this book tell the story of parents using orphanages as an early form of childcare in times of family crisis. Using quantitative analysis of the records of over 1,500 children in an African American and a white orphanage in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the study reveals the gender, race, and class inequalities built into the very foundation of our modern child welfare system.

Northern Ireland's Lost Opportunity

Tony Novosel

Northern Ireland's Lost Opportunity is a unique in-depth investigation into working-class Loyalism in Northern Ireland as represented by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), the Red Hand Commando (RHC) and their political allies.

Radical Moves: Caribbean Migrants and the Politics of Race in the Jazz Age

Lara Putnam

Radical Moves takes readers from tin-roof dancehalls to the elegant black-owned ballrooms of Jazz Age Harlem to trace the roots of the black internationalist and anticolonial movements that would remake the twentieth century.

Histories of Race and Racism: The Andes and Mesoamerica from Colonial Times to the Present

Laura Gotkowitz, editor

Histories of Race and Racism examines the experiences and representations of Andean and Mesoamerican indigenous peoples from the early colonial era to the present. Contributors to the volume - anthropologists, historians, and sociologists-compare the interplay of race and racism with class, gender, nationality, and regionalism in Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru. Their essays shed new light on the present by describing how race and racism have mattered in particular Andean and Mesoamerican societies at specific moments in time.

Uprooted: How Breslau became Wroclaw during the Century of Expulsions

Gregor Thum

With the stroke of a pen at the Potsdam Conference in 1945, Breslau, the largest German city east of Berlin, became the Polish city of Wroclaw. Within only a couple of years, Polish settlers from all parts of prewar Poland had to replace Breslau's six hundred thousand German inhabitants. By examining how the city's new inhabitants coped with this situation, Uprooted sheds light on the long-term psychological, cultural and political consequences of forced migrations in twentieth-century Europe.

The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom

Marcus Rediker

Raceball: How the Major Leagues Colonized the Black and Latin Game

Rob Ruck

Brings together the history of African Americans, the Caribbean, and Major League Baseball.It looks at how the meaning of sport has changed for these communities, and what was gained and what was lost when the major leagues integrated.