The Soul of Pittsburgh:
Essays on Life, Community and History

Ed Simon

The History Press, $24.99

Waxing wistfully poetic, James D. Van Trump, co-founder of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, once wrote these words about his hometown: “Here, I say to myself, looking along the serrated line of the South Side hills or the far escarpments up the Allegheny or even the brief tree-hung streets of Schenley Farms, here is enough to excite forever the curiosity of the mind or to spur the farthest searches of the heart.”

Two recent books take Van Trump at his word, and make deeply personal and idiosyncratic explorations of the city. Ed Simon’s previous book about the Steel City was entitled “An Alternative History of Pittsburgh” and traced the city’s history from the late Paleozoic Era up to the modern age in brief essays that hit on highlights such as the first formation of the region’s coal, Gen. Edward Braddock’s defeat at the Battle of the Monongahela, Andrew Carnegie’s arrival in Pittsburgh and the 1960 World Series.

For his follow-up, “The Soul of Pittsburgh: Essays on Life, Community and History,” Simon, who is the editor of Belt Magazine and a staff writer at Lit Hub, takes a much more personal line of inquiry. “If the first book focused on history, on that process of ordering one damn thing after another, then this current volume is more concerned with what it feels like to be a Pittsburgher today,” writes Simon in his introduction. Simon is an excellent guide and seems to have something smart and witty to say about nearly everything.

He’s particularly engaging on yinzer linguistics, our variegated neighborhoods, confounding paper streets and the Black & Gold diaspora. With these two books, Simon can lay claim to being Pittsburgh’s finest contemporary expositor.

Pittsburgh in 50 Maps

Stentor Danielson

Belt Publishing, $30

Stentor Danielson is associate professor of geography at Slippery Rock University. His “Pittsburgh in 50 Maps” is just that — a look at the city via some super-specific maps.

Here you’ll find maps detailing everything from race and ethnicity to the area’s tree cover to political and religious designations. Gentrification, air pollution and fracking all get their own maps as well.

My favorites, though, are the map that tracks every intersection where a Pittsburgh Left is possible and the map entitled “The Parking Spot Outside the Evergreen Café on Penn Avenue.”