Smoketown: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance

From the bestselling author of The Afterlife of Malcolm X comes a brilliant, lively account of the Black Renaissance that burst forth in Pittsburgh from the 1920s through the 1950s—“Smoketown will appeal to anybody interested in black history and anybody who loves a good story…terrific, eminently readable…fascinating” (The Washington Post).

Today black Pittsburgh is known as the setting for August Wilson’s famed plays about noble, but doomed, working-class citizens. But this community once ...