Smoketown
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Narrated by:
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Prentice Onayemi
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By:
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Mark Whitaker
About this listen
The other great Renaissance of black culture, influence, and glamour burst forth joyfully in what may seem an unlikely place - Pittsburgh, PA - from the 1920s through the 1950s.
Today black Pittsburgh is known as the setting for August Wilson's famed plays about noble but doomed working-class strivers. But this community once had an impact on American history that rivaled the far larger black worlds of Harlem and Chicago. It published the most widely read black newspaper in the country, urging black voters to switch from the Republican to the Democratic Party and then rallying black support for World War II. It fielded two of the greatest baseball teams of the Negro Leagues and introduced Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Pittsburgh was the childhood home of jazz pioneers Billy Strayhorn, Billy Eckstine, Earl Hines, Mary Lou Williams, and Erroll Garner; Hall of Fame slugger Josh Gibson - and August Wilson himself. Some of the most glittering figures of the era were changed forever by the time they spent in the city, from Joe Louis and Satchel Paige to Duke Ellington and Lena Horne.
Mark Whitaker's Smoketown is a captivating portrait of this unsung community and a vital addition to the story of black America. It depicts how ambitious Southern migrants were drawn to a steel-making city on a strategic river junction; how they were shaped by its schools and a spirit of commerce with roots in the Gilded Age; and how their world was eventually destroyed by industrial decline and urban renewal. Whitaker takes listeners on a rousing, revelatory journey - and offers a timely reminder that Black History is not all bleak.
©2018 Mark Whitaker (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Should have been better
- By Royce Brown on 12-21-09
By: Paul J. Batura
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My Song
- A Memoir
- By: Harry Belafonte, Michael Shnayerson
- Narrated by: Harry Belafonte, Mirron Willis
- Length: 19 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Harry Belafonte is not just one of the greatest entertainers of our time; he has led one of the great American lives of the last century. Now, this extraordinary icon tells us the story of that life, giving us its full breadth, letting us share in the struggles, the tragedies, and, most of all, the inspiring triumphs.
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Amazing
- By Khafre on 12-30-11
By: Harry Belafonte, and others
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New World Coming
- The 1920s and the Making of Modern America
- By: Nathan Miller
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 18 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Jazz. Bootleggers. Flappers. Talkies. Model T Fords. Lindbergh's history-making flight over the Atlantic. The 1920s was also the decade of the hard-won vote for women, racial injustice, censorship, social conflict, and the birth of organized crime.
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My High School History Class Never Told
- By Charles Stembridge on 06-29-04
By: Nathan Miller
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A Flame of Pure Fire
- Jack Dempsey and the Roaring '20s
- By: Roger Kahn
- Narrated by: Kevin Yon
- Length: 17 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Through most of the Roaring '20s, Jack Dempsey was the heavyweight champion of the world. With his fierce good looks and matchless dedication to the kill, he was a fighter perfectly suited to his time. In A Flame of Pure Fire, renowned sports writer Roger Kahn not only chronicles the thrilling, brutal bouts of the Manassa Mauler, but also illustrates how the tumultuous 1920s shaped Dempsey - and how the champ, in turn, left an indelible mark on sports and American history.
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Ambitious but poorly executed
- By Keith on 10-02-19
By: Roger Kahn
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The Black Calhouns
- From Civil War to Civil Rights with One African American Family
- By: Gail Lumet Buckley
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Black Calhouns, Gail Lumet Buckley - daughter of actress Lena Horne - delves deep into her family history, detailing the experiences of an extraordinary African American family from Civil War to civil rights. Beginning with her great-great-grandfather, Moses Calhoun, a house slave who used the rare advantage of his education to become a successful businessman in postwar Atlanta, Buckley follows her family's two branches: one that stayed in the South and the other that settled in Brooklyn.
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The Black Calhouns
- By Marva on 10-15-24
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Black Detroit
- A People's History of Self-Determination
- By: Herb Boyd
- Narrated by: James Shippy
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The author of Baldwin's Harlem looks at the evolving culture, politics, economics, and spiritual life of Detroit - a blend of memoir, love letter, history, and clear-eyed reportage that explores the city's past, present, and future and its significance to the African American legacy and the nation's fabric.
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Selective Recall
- By Rick on 07-19-17
By: Herb Boyd
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Beale Street Dynasty
- Sex, Song, and the Struggle for the Soul of Memphis
- By: Preston Lauterbach
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Following the Civil War, Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee, thrived as a cauldron of sex and song, violence and passion. But out of this turmoil emerged a center of black progress, optimism, and cultural ferment. Preston Lauterbach tells this vivid, fascinating story through the multigenerational saga of a family whose ambition, race pride, and moral complexity indelibly shaped the city that would loom so large in American life.
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Narration Speed...It's Half the Battle
- By B. Westman on 03-21-17
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The Masters
- Golf, Money, and Power in Augusta, Georgia
- By: Curt Sampson
- Narrated by: Barrett Whitener
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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The Masters golf tournament weaves a hypnotic spell. It is the toughest ticket in sports, with black-market tickets selling for $10,000 and more. Success at Augusta National breeds legends, while failure can overshadow even the most brilliant of careers. But as Curt Sampson reveals in The Masters, a cold heart beats behind the warm antebellum facade of this famous Augusta course.
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Okay Listen, but
- By Scott D. Loeffler on 05-02-08
By: Curt Sampson
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King of the Blues
- The Rise and Reign of B.B. King
- By: Daniel De Visé
- Narrated by: Cary Hite
- Length: 17 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Riley “Blues Boy” King (1925-2015) was born into deep poverty in Jim Crow Mississippi. Wrenched away from his sharecropper father, B.B. lost his mother at age 10, leaving him more or less alone. Music became his emancipation from exhausting toil in the fields. Inspired by a local minister’s guitar and by the records of Blind Lemon Jefferson and T-Bone Walker and encouraged by his cousin, the established blues man Bukka White, B.B. taught his guitar to sing in the unique solo style that, along with his relentless work ethic and humanity, became his trademark.
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Excellent
- By Sonny Garcia on 01-02-24
By: Daniel De Visé
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42 Faith
- The Rest of the Jackie Robinson Story
- By: Ed Henry
- Narrated by: Ed Henry
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Journalist and baseball lover Ed Henry reveals for the first time the backstory of faith that guided Jackie Robinson into not only the baseball record books but the annals of civil rights advancement as well. Through recently discovered sermons, interviews with Robinson's family and friends, and even an unpublished book by the player himself, Henry details a side of Jackie's humanity that few have taken the time to see.
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42Faith
- By Phillip L. on 04-11-17
By: Ed Henry
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Unbeaten
- By: Mike Stanton
- Narrated by: Keith Szarabajka
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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From the best-selling author of The Prince of Providence comes a revelatory biography of Rocky Marciano, the greatest heavyweight champion of all time.The son of poor Italian immigrants, with short arms and stubby legs, Rocky Marciano accomplished a feat that eluded legendary heavyweight champions like Joe Louis, Jack Dempsey, Muhammad Ali, and Mike Tyson: He never lost a professional fight. His record was a perfect 49-0.
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Great book, terrible accents in the reading
- By Ishmael Angaluuk Hope on 11-02-21
By: Mike Stanton
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Levittown
- Two Families, One Tycoon, and the Fight for Civil Rights in America's Legendary Suburb
- By: David Kushner
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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In the decade after World War II , one entrepreneurial family helped thousands of people buy into the American dream of owning a home. The Levitts, William, Alfred, and their father, Abe, pooled their talents to create storybook towns with affordable little houses. They laid out the welcome mat - but not to everyone. Levittown had a Whites-only policy.
By: David Kushner
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1969
- The Year Everything Changed
- By: Rob Kirkpatrick
- Narrated by: Jonah Cummings
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Woodstock, the moon landing, Charles Manson, Richard Nixon, the Vietnam War, and more. A must-have for baby boomers and the generations that came after! In this rich and comprehensive narrative, Rob Kirkpatrick chronicles an unparalleled year in American society in all its explosive ups and downs.
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What a year!!
- By kathy deal on 11-17-20
By: Rob Kirkpatrick
What listeners say about Smoketown
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jasen
- 11-28-22
Interesting historical perspective
It was fascinating to learn about Pittsburgh's place in African American history and that of the nation at large.
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- Amazon Customer
- 02-27-24
An Untold History of Pittsburgh
I grew up around Pittsburgh and have read pretty widely, and almost everything here was news to me. No surprise there. Smoketown doesn’t set out to be a comprehensive history of Black Pittsburgh; it’s a series of histories that, together, form a kind of Romare Bearden collage of many of the people, places, and things that made twentieth century Black Pittsburgh, and by extension Pittsburgh itself, great. As the stories pile up, it’s hard not to feel moved by the staggering level of accomplishment arising from just a few neighborhoods. There is also a profound sense of injustice as the effects of systemic discrimination begin to compound and literally eat away at the superstructure of what was. An informative, gripping, necessary read, well-written and equally well-performed.
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- Dr. Pepper
- 05-01-18
Hopes for Pittsburgh aka "Up South"
This book provides an outstanding history of Pittsburgh as a city, but more so Black life in Pittsburgh. It lays out the struggles and challenges Blacks faced at the hands of racism, hate and ignorance. A sometimes tragic story of segregation and opportunities denied, told with as much eloquence as a gruesome story can be told. There were many stories of success celebrated in this book, mostly in sports and entertainment, but each an up hill battle. Hopefully Pittsburgh and America will one day see beyond skin color... but until then, books like this are vitally important to prevent history from repeating itself.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Renee Bryant
- 09-03-19
I learned so much!
You shall perish from a lack of knowledge!! There are so many beautiful stories about our “Black” American history. I’m grateful that someone made this available to us. This book is a gem.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Monique AJ Smith
- 04-04-24
Pittsburgh surprises
it was full of surprises of Pittsburgh greats. So well intertwined. From Lena Horne to August Wilson, who knew they were from Pittsburgh. The characters were so well fleshed out. Well done.
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- Mortimer Jones
- 09-30-21
Absolutely stellar scholarly effort
One of the better historical pieces I listened to in quite some time. Bravo!
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- all our stories
- 01-01-24
A very informative book.
Just when I thought I knew all about the Harlem Renaissance, I came to find this book. I throughly enjoyed this book. It peeked my interest about August Wilson and others. I’ll be looking to learn more about him now.
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- Anonymous User
- 01-04-23
Good book, well written
I love the way the author surreptitiously introduces one story or historical figure into the next era of Pittsburgh. It’s very interesting learning the background of many famous individuals and the geopolitical circumstances that led them to fame. You can tell an immense amount of research was completed for every aspect of this book
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- Dee
- 03-06-23
Enjoyed this book
I found this book interesting and I learned from reading it. I loved reading about Jackie Robinson, Lena Horne and Billy Strayhorne, and all the others that broke through barriers. It was interesting and the way the chapters were written was excellent. I would recommend this book highly. Also the narration was very good.
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- Patricia Don
- 02-20-22
History Telling At Its Best!
How did I miss this book? An iconic cultural Renaissance in Pennsylvania! I was amazed at all of the talented people who came up from the South to this place called Smoketown. This well written and narrated piece of fiction is a treasure that history lovers will cherish. My Book Club will love it!
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