Beyond Steel collects Briem’s encyclopedic knowledge of the city during and after its steelmaking heyday. Briem tells stories about the boundary between resilience and obstinacy, particularly as manifested in the ultimately unsuccessful pursuit of economic development through smokestack chasing. “Long before the 1980s arrived,” he writes, “future prospects for Greater Pittsburgh had decoupled from the prospects of the American steel industry, a reality that to this day remains difficult to accept for a region so long identified with the seemingly monolithic industry.” At once optimistic and cautious, Beyond Steel should help inform debates about how communities across the Rust Belt navigate issues of dynamism, heritage, and deindustrialization.

ISM-Pittsburgh: Beyond Steel: Pittsburgh and the Economic Transformations