Lives of Their Own
Blacks, Italians, and Poles in Pittsburgh, 1900-1960
John Bodnar, Roger Simon, and Michael P. Weber
University of Illinois Press, 1982
Lives of Their Own depicts the strikingly different lives of black, Italian, and Polish immigrants in Pittsburgh. Within a comparative framework, the book focuses on the migration process itself, job procurement, and occupational mobility, family structure, home-ownership, and neighborhood institutions. By blending oral histories with quantitative data, the authors have created a convincing multilayered portrait of working-class life in one of our great industrial cities.
[more]