The first time I visited Pittsburgh for more than a couple of days was Christmas week about 20 years ago. I stayed at the ...

The first two decades of the 20th century were an extraordinary time for Pittsburgh and for the whole world that bought the steel produced in western Pennsylvania’s mills. The Pittsburgh region ...

Like it or not, the Carnegie International eclipses everything the Carnegie Museum of Art does. Every director has grumbled about how it commandeers all available resources. But it’s a time-honored ...

My twin brother, Allan Block, and I are the third generation in a family business that’s more than 100 years old. My grandfather, Paul Block, was an immigrant from East Prussia, and grew up, through ...

The critic Susan Sontag explores this issue perceptively in her seminal 1966 book, Against Interpretation. She examines the problem of morality versus aesthetics through the opposite side of the ...

It’s a hell of a thing to know your birth coincides with a line of demarcation in your hometown. On one side is prosperity. On the other, ruin. I was born in Youngstown in 1977. At the time, it was an ...

A couple of weeks ago, I was on vacation in Michigan, walking down a path to collect my dog, when two old friends said hello from a cottage porch. One, from Cincinnati, gets the magazine and asked ...

Though the dictionary definition of feminism — “the belief in social, economic, and political equality of the sexes,” — remains elusive, Sherrie Flick, author of the autobiographical essay collection ...

Everyone is born with a gift from God. Some people discover their gift, and use it to a positive end. Some discover their gift, but squander it. And others, for one reason or another, never discover ...

The last time Roberto Clemente stepped up to home plate was on a field on Puerto Rico’s west coast where he was teaching boys to play baseball. Locals had coaxed him into taking a swing, and he ...

Within days of Allegheny County’s first confirmed case of coronavirus in March, city and county officials moved to shutter nonessential businesses, with their efforts buttressed by stay at home orders ...

In a review of a Shakespeare production several years ago I argued that, as a general rule, it has proven easier to do Shakespeare new rather than well, but with Quantum Theatre’s current production ...