Wicked Pittsburgh - Paperback

by Richard Gazarik (Author)

Join author Richard Gazarik as he reveals the wicked history of the Steel City.

Muckraking journalist Walter Liggett dubbed Pittsburgh the Metropolis of Corruption in 1930 when he reported the city had more vice per square foot than New York, Detroit, Cleveland or Boston. Decades earlier, the Magee-Flinn political machine ruled public officials, and crooked police helped racketeers protect brothels and gambling dens. Mayor (later Governor) David Lawrence was indicted several times for graft but acquitted each time. Even Pittsburgh Steelers founder Art Rooney Sr. colluded with gangsters, according to FBI reports.

Author Biography

Richard Gazarik spent more than four decades as a journalist in Western Pennsylvania. He has won awards for his writing and investigative reporting into public and corporate corruption in Pennsylvania and has written extensively about the bombing of Pam Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland; the terrorist attack on United Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on September 11, 2001; and the rescue of the Quecreek Miners in 2002. He is the author of Black Valley: The Life and Death of Fannie Sellins (2011) and Prohibition Pittsburgh (The History Press, 2017). He is a graduate of West Virginia University.