Amazon.com description: Product Description: Imagine walking along the two-hundred foot expanse of a charcoal and paper mural, the cityscape of Pittsburgh's past and present unfolding before your eyes. You stop intermittently, spotting a particular building or street corner. Old memories return: "That's Forbes Field", you might say, or, "I used to catch the bus to school at that corner". You leave the art exhibit fulfilled, vowing to return, and begin ticking off the names of friends or family who must see this work of art.With Steel Shadows, you don't have to visit exhibition halls at Carnegie Mellon University or the John Heinz History Center to enjoy Douglas Cooper's unique, realistic, and highly personal images of Pittsburgh. Steel Shadows brings his large charcoal and paper art home to you. This unique collection of imagery and prose combines the personal with Cooper's highly technical and intricate craft. Through narrative and illustration, Douglas Cooper will show you a Pittsburgh you know and love, but have never seen in this way before.Cooper details the inspiration for his artistic vision, as well as the formal properties of his art and how it relates to architecture. The book features double-page spreads and excerpts from Pittsburgh authors telling the stories of the city's ethnic and eclectic neighborhoods, combining details of bridge building and steel making with poetry, historical accounts, and stories of the daily lives of Pittsburghers, all set against the backdrop of the city's raw industrial landscape.Steel Shadows is a book for students of art, architecture, urban studies, and oral history. Most of all, it is a book for people with Pittsburgh ties, a book to share with friends and family, and a book torekindle memories of this former steel town, now an artistic and cultural center.