Author Talk: William Miller

Steel City is the story of the 1890’s golden age of Pittsburgh when its technological innovations and wealth creation made it the Silicon Valley of its day. Pittsburgh was first in steel, food processing and electricity, and the leaders of those industries – Carnegie, Frick, Heinz and Westinghouse – are names we still know today.

Steel City brings you the cauldron that is Pittsburgh in the 1890s when the steel business made the city the industrial capital of not just the country, but the world. Through the eyes of Jamie Dalton, journalist, we witness the titanic events of that city in that age: the Johnstown Flood that killed more people than any U.S. natural disaster of the 19th century; the Homestead Steel Strike of 1892 when Henry Clay Frick sent in an army of Pinkertons to break the back of the labor movement; an anarchist’s assassination attempt on Frick in revenge for Homestead; the fight-to-the death between Frick and Andrew Carnegie for control of the country’s predominant steel company; and the inside story of what is still the largest corporate buy-out of all-time.

William J. Miller, Jr. grew up in Pittsburgh and was always fascinated by the living connections to its storied past: the Carnegie Library and Museum, the Carnegie Institute of Technology, and, in his own neighborhood, the Frick mansion, where Henry Frick’s daughter, Helen, still lived.

Come and join us for this fascinating book discussion and meet the author!