The definitive history of the legal profession in Pittsburgh, THE STEEL BAR examines Pittsburgh’s role in the development of American democratic and commercial institutions and how its lawyers helped to shape American history in significant ways.
“Ron Schuler’s THE STEEL BAR is a magnificent tour-de-force … This book belongs on the
shelf of any serious student of law, history, and the role played by the bench and bar
in forging America’s remarkable destiny.”
--Ken Gormley, New York Times bestselling author and President, Duquesne
University
Hardcover, Paperback or ebook
678 pages, 7 x 10
Includes illustrations, bibliography and index.
ISBN 978-1-73318-410-6 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-73318-411-3 (paperback)
A grandson of Mexican immigrants, Ron Schuler draws deeply upon his family background in his first novel to tell a fictionalized tale of two families who arrive in East Los Angeles in 1919. A descendant of both families—half-Mexican, half-Anglo—returns to the West Coast and searches for his roots amid the Golden Age of L.A. itself. In the process, he uncovers tragic secrets that were never meant to be exposed and discovers the extent to which identities can be fabricated and reimagined in a city in which image is everything, and truth is ephemeral.
"Lush but tightly-wrought prose reminiscent of Raymond Chandler and Gabriel García
Márquez … a gift for any reader interested in that most essential human quest – how we
can understand our lives through the lives and hearts of those who came before us."
-- Lori Jakiela, author of Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe
Winner, Gold Medal, 2021
Cover Design - Fiction
Independent Publisher Book Awards
Hardcover, paperback or ebook
268 pages, 6 x 9
ISBN: 978-1-7331841-2-0 (hardcover)
ISBN: 978-1-7331841-3-7 (paperback)
Pittsburgh has been called both “Hell with the Lid On” and “Hell with the Lid Off.” It is a city rich in contrasts and rich in history. And amid the swirling currents that have made up the vibrant flow of the city’s life navigated the Jews, an immigrant group that began settling in the region in the 1840s. They might not have rivaled the likes of Carnegie and Frick, but they had their own movers and shakers. Come meet A. Leo Weil who battled municipal corruption and graft; the Kaufmann brothers of department store fame; Barney Dreyfuss who steered the Pittsburgh Pirates to world championships; Bertha Rauh, community service volunteer extraordinaire; and a whole host of others who made their contribution to the development of this town.
"Kudos to historian Barbara Burstin … [A] labor of love that relates the early history of
our city in the context of the Jewish experience."
-- Pittsburgh Quarterly
Paperback
371 pages, 6 x 9
ISBN: 978-1-7331841-4-4
