The New York Times Book Review - Herb Boyd
…engrossing…Smoketown brilliantly offers us a chance to see this other black renaissance and spend time with the many luminaries who sparked it as well as the often unheralded journalists who covered it, including P. L. Prattis, John C. Clarke, Frank Bolden, Billy Rowe and the photographer Teenie Harris. It's thanks to such a gifted storyteller as Whitaker that this forgotten chapter of American history can finally be told in all its vibrancy and glory.
Publishers Weekly
12/18/2017
Former CNN and Newsweek editor Whitaker (Cosby: His Life and Times) rebounds from his controversial Cosby biography with an informative and illuminating account of Smoketown, an African-American community in Pittsburgh. Centered in the city’s Hill District, Smoketown thrived from the 1920s to the ’50s. Though Smoketown was smaller than New York’s Harlem or Chicago’s South Side, Whitaker compares the flourishing enclave where his grandparents lived to “fifteenth-century Florence and early-twentieth-century Vienna: a miraculous flowering of social and cultural achievement.” Smoketown’s culture was made possible, Whitaker writes, by the great migration from the South and the city’s exceptional educational opportunities. Whitaker writes of such prominent Smoketown figures as Robert L. Vann, publisher of the Pittsburgh Courier, the most widely read black newspaper in America; playwright August Wilson, who celebrated the power of community “whether in the ordinary life of rooming houses and jitney stations, or in the grandest accomplishments of the Hill District in its heyday.” He also acknowledges Smoketown’s contributions to the sports world, including boxer Joe Louis and baseball stars Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige, and profiles musical icons Billy Eckstine, Duke Ellington, Lena Horne, and Billy Strayhorn, as well as photographer Charles “Teenie” Harris. Whitaker shines a well-deserved and long-overdue spotlight on this city within a city. Maps & photos. Agent: Lynn Nesbit, Janklow & Nesbit. (Feb.)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"[A] rewarding trip to a forgotten special place and time...With the publication of Mr. Whitaker’s enjoyable and long-overdue time trip back to Smoketown, he and Simon & Schuster have given the Hill District and its talented ghosts the national props they’ve always deserved."
Nicholas Lemann
That Smoketown is a joy to read shouldn't obscure the seriousness of its intentions. In vividly recreating the mid-twentieth-century heyday of black Pittsburgh, an almost magical locale for journalism, sports, music, politics, and business, Whitaker is also offering an alternate version of African-American history. This is a story of strength, pride, and achievement, where racism is never absent but also never more powerful than the strong will of his large, fascinating cast of characters.
Bookpage
A thoroughly researched celebration of the black community and culture in Pittsburgh from the 1920s through the 1950s. Pittsburgh’s black residents, Whitaker argues, offered cultural contributions that significantly shaped black history—and the nation. With the diligence of a seasoned anthropologist, Whitaker spotlights the city’s stunning feats of black achievement and resilience through the lens of his extensive cast of influencers and icons. While some of the names may be unfamiliar, each subject’s narrative is a nuanced portrayal meant to challenge our country’s often narrow, dismissive version of black history. Cultural heavyweights such as boxer Joe Louis are treated as historical catalysts rather than extraordinary oddities. Black history, as evident in the cultural renaissance of Pittsburgh, is not defined by oppression. Despite the setbacks of systemic racism and discrimination, black excellence flourishes regardless of the white gaze.”
David Maraniss
Mark Whitaker has given Pittsburgh's wondrously rich black culture its due at long last.
Smoketown is illuminating history and an absolute delight to read.
George F. Will
Who knew that Pittsburgh had an African American renaissance as vibrant as Harlem's and arguably more consequential? Mark Whitaker knew, and he rescues from unjust obscurity an American episode that continues to reverberate.
The New York Times Book Review
Smoketown brilliantly offers us a chance to see this other black renaissance and spend time with the many luminaries who sparked it as well as the often unheralded journalists who covered it...It’s thanks to such a gifted storyteller as Whitaker that this forgotten chapter of American history can finally be told in all its vibrancy and glory.
USA Today
Pittsburgh was one of the country’s citadels of black aspiration in music, sports, business and culture. This is the world affectionately summoned back to life with zest and passion by Mark Whitaker in Smoketown. There’s something close to enchantment to be found in the stories Whitaker unpacks piece by piece, name by glittering name. Black excellence, black talent and black achievement were of such incandescence in Pittsburgh for most of the late century’s first half that one imagines them piercing through the thickest mesh of soot and smog draping the city during its coal-and-steel heyday. . . . Some of these stories have had books of their own. Others seem poised for books of their own. For now, this one, fashioned with love and rigor, provides these stories a sturdy, substantial home.
The Washington Post
Terrific, eminently readable . . . fascinating . . . Smoketown will appeal to anybody interested in black history and anybody who loves a good story. In short, anybody.
Pittsburgh Quarterly
A terrific look at the sophisticated history of black Pittsburgh . . . deeply researched and gracefully written . . . definitive.
Gail Lumet Buckley
The fascinating and never-before-told story of Pittsburgh’s black renaissance—a vibrant and creative community that produced a great black newspaper, a great black baseball team, a great black industrial tycoon, a great black painter, a great black playwright, and some of the greatest black musical talent in America. Thank you, Mark Whitaker.
David Levering Lewis
Mark Whitaker says his remarkable mid-twentieth century Pittsburgh “was a black version of the story of early twentieth-century Vienna.” Mr. Whitaker is so riveting a storyteller that the reader even wonders if Belle Epoque Vienna had the equivalent of a Billy Eckstine, Mary Lou Williams, Billy Strayhorn, Joe Louis, or an August Wilson.
The Guardian
An enticing history of the black culture of mid-20th century Pittsburgh, filled with engaging musicians, athletes, and journalists.
Nicholas Lemann
That Smoketown is a joy to read shouldn't obscure the seriousness of its intentions. In vividly recreating the mid-twentieth-century heyday of black Pittsburgh, an almost magical locale for journalism, sports, music, politics, and business, Whitaker is also offering an alternate version of African-American history. This is a story of strength, pride, and achievement, where racism is never absent but also never more powerful than the strong will of his large, fascinating cast of characters.
USA Today
Pittsburgh was one of the country’s citadels of black aspiration in music, sports, business and culture. This is the world affectionately summoned back to life with zest and passion by Mark Whitaker in Smoketown. There’s something close to enchantment to be found in the stories Whitaker unpacks piece by piece, name by glittering name. Black excellence, black talent and black achievement were of such incandescence in Pittsburgh for most of the late century’s first half that one imagines them piercing through the thickest mesh of soot and smog draping the city during its coal-and-steel heyday. . . . Some of these stories have had books of their own. Others seem poised for books of their own. For now, this one, fashioned with love and rigor, provides these stories a sturdy, substantial home.
Booklist
A thoroughly researched celebration of the black community and culture in Pittsburgh from the 1920s through the 1950s. Pittsburgh’s black residents, Whitaker argues, offered cultural contributions that significantly shaped black history—and the nation. With the diligence of a seasoned anthropologist, Whitaker spotlights the city’s stunning feats of black achievement and resilience through the lens of his extensive cast of influencers and icons. While some of the names may be unfamiliar, each subject’s narrative is a nuanced portrayal meant to challenge our country’s often narrow, dismissive version of black history. Cultural heavyweights such as boxer Joe Louis are treated as historical catalysts rather than extraordinary oddities. Black history, as evident in the cultural renaissance of Pittsburgh, is not defined by oppression. Despite the setbacks of systemic racism and discrimination, black excellence flourishes regardless of the white gaze.”
FEBRUARY 2018 - AudioFile
Regularly overshadowed by Harlem and Chicago, Pittsburgh was also a major force in the black renaissance of the first half of the twentieth century. Whitaker’s book opens a window on this vibrant sector of black culture. Prentice Onayemi offers an engaging, easy-on-the-ears narration. His mellow tone carries listeners through some overly detailed passages. He varies his tone to fit the material and sometimes just to change the pace. For direct quotes, he changes his pitch or adopts an accent to set those words apart. The only weakness is the author’s narrative structure, which at times follows a seemingly serpentine path from one anecdote to another before making a point. But the stories are interesting, and Onayemi tells them well. R.C.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2017-10-30
A "glittering saga" about the other black Renaissance.Veteran newsman and reporter Whitaker (Cosby: His Life and Times, 2014, etc.) explored his own family's black history in My Long Trip Home (2011), which included stories about his Pittsburgh grandparents' funeral business. Here, he returns to the city to reveal its incredibly rich black heritage from the late 19th century to the 1950s. As the author writes, Pittsburgh had a "glorious stretch" as "one of the most vibrant and consequential communities of color in U.S. history." Drawing on a five-page cast of characters, he tells this lively story with a linked series of family histories. In the Gilded Age, Pittsburgh had no shortage of wealthy entrepreneurs: Carnegie, Westinghouse, Heinz, Mellon, and Frick. But there was also Cumberland "Cap" Posey, a black steamboat engineer and coal tycoon who had the foresight to invest in the Pittsburgh Courier, a black newspaper that is at the heart of this story. In 1910, Posey hired a black attorney, Robert Lee Vann, the "calculating crusader," who would be its farsighted editor. Every step of the way, as Whitaker vividly chronicles Pittsburgh's key black figures in music, sports, and politics, the Courier is front and center. Its sports reporters championed the rise of the Brown Bomber, Joe Louis; as his popularity grew, the paper's circulation skyrocketed, and it became America's most influential black newspaper. Pittsburgh now had the best Negro League baseball teams, thanks to racketeer-turned-promotor Gus "Big Red" Greenlee, and the Hill District, home of the future "bard of a broken world," playwright August Wilson. Sports reporter Wendell Smith played a major role in integrating baseball with his coverage of Satchel Paige and Jackie Robinson, and the Courier also chronicled the rise of two of music's greatest pianists, the self-taught prodigy Erroll Garner and the jazz composer Billy Strayhorn.An expansive, prodigiously researched, and masterfully told history.
