Posts by Bill Steigerwald
My ‘Sprigle Lecture’ at the Carnegie Library
More than a hundred people jammed the International Poetry Room at the Carnegie Library in Oakland to hear me babble and rant about my Ray Sprigle book on Thursday July 6. I showed about 30 slides of Sprigle, his guide John Wesley Dobbs and various co-stars of my book. In the crowd was the amazingly…
Read MoreThe Pittsburgh Post-Gazette gives some kind ink to me and my book about its greatest journalist, Ray Sprigle
From the Post-Gazette: Author Bill Steigerwald recounts Ray Sprigle’s journey in ’30 Days A Black Man’ June 14, 2017 12:00 AM By Maria Sciullo / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Author Bill Steigerwald believes that Ray Sprigle was the Roberto Clemente of journalism. Both men were superstars in their fields but never achieved the level of deserved acclaim…
Read MoreLarge thanks to Bookish59 and LibraryThing for a sweet review of “30 Days …”
Big thanks to Brenda of Queens, N.Y., for the smart, snappy and complimentary 5-star review of 30 Days a Black Man that she wrote for LibraryThing, the cataloging and social networking site for book lovers. Brenda, aka “Bookish 59,” has read and reviewed hundreds of books. If they’re half as good as the she wrote…
Read MoreParents should be able to shop for public schools in a city the same way they shop for groceries or cars
It’s not possible to overstate the importance to libertarians of Richard Rothstein’s shocking The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. It’s a great book and a damning indictment of the abuse of federal, state and local government power by racist politicians, housing policy-makers, urban planners, interstate highway designers and…
Read MoreStatues of Confederate generals and the evil stuff they really symbolize
It’s easy to understand why Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart really digs New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu. Despite whatever political muck Landrieu’s had to step in to climb out of the cesspool of Louisiana politics, he has impressed everyone as a wise, decent and principled man when it comes to dealing with race and black-white…
Read MoreMore Bad Reporting on Pittsburgh, plus the Usual Uber Hate, from the New York Times
Once again, for the dozenth time in my lifetime, the New York Times parachutes in and writes about Pittsburgh in a lame, biased, sloppy way. Not only did the article erroneously talk about the Strip District being a place where steel mills once flourished, it also did its usual hate-job on Uber by under-mentioning the…
Read MoreTeaching economics to the man in the street or the man in the Oval Office is hard — unless you’re Professor Donald Boudreaux
Economics is not as difficult to understand as politicians, the main stream media or too many Econ 101 profs make it out to be. Every day for more than a decade at his web site Cafe Hayek Donald Boudreaux has provided coherent and valuable proof that basic principles like supply and demand — and more…
Read MoreRemembering when Pittsburgh’s ‘square white men’ dropped their A-bomb of development on the city’s ‘Little Harlem’
Pittsburgh and its people have pioneered a lot of important stuff over the years. Industrialism and post-industrialism are its major historical innovations. The city’s fortunes — and population — rose and fell precipitously with the rise and fall of manufacturing and steel from the late 1800s until the 1960s, when the heavy industries that once…
Read MoreA critique of Richard Florida’s new book “The Urban Crisis” in Forbes nails it — it is the zoning and land use regs, stupid
The smart young man — Scott Beyer of http://bigcitysparkplug.com/ — who wrote the smack-on critique of my pal Richard Florida’s new book The New Urban Crisis for Forbes — is coming to Pittsburgh next year. His visit will be part of his 30-city project to study the incredibly stupid things that have been done by…
Read MoreHow government used the law and racist policies to segregate America — and keep it that way
In the Jim Crow South, the system of segregation was, as we’ve been told for half a century, de jure — established and enforced by law. In the North, racial segregation, we were told, was de facto segregation — a result of private, uncoordinated choices made by individuals and institutions. In 30 Days a Black…
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