Ron Schuler's Blog: Schuler Sightings
September 26, 2023
Schuler Interviewed on 'TechVibe Radio' about 'The Steel Bar'
Ron Schuler, author of THE STEEL BAR: PITTSBURGH LAWYERS AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA, talked with TechVibe Radio hosts Audrey Russo and Jonathan Kersting about THE STEEL BAR and his work-in-progress, 7 BALLPARKS IN PITTSBURGH.
Kersting and Russo talked with Schuler about how Pittsburgh has been at the center of so many important issues in American history, from the legitimacy of the Constitution during the Whiskey Rebellion, to the battles between Labor and Capital during the Gilded Age, to the rise of federal regulation and the delocalization of American corporations. They also discussed some of the reasons behind Pittsburgh's decline during the 1970s and 80s, and the tech revival in Pittsburgh that persists today. "If you care about Pittsburgh at all, just buy [THE STEEL BAR]," said Russo. "You won't regret it."
Schuler also discussed his upcoming book, 7 BALLPARKS, saying "If you think it's going to be a book about baseball, it's not ... it's also about land use, the history of gambling in Pittsburgh, the history of municipal corruption in Pittsburgh, the Great Migration, racial tensions, iconography in architecture ..." It is not just about the ballparks themselves, Schuler says, but about "where they came from."
For more than a decade, TechVibe Radio has been the Pittsburgh region's only technology-focused radio show telling the story of our region's tech companies and the women and men running them. Every tech company has a story, and TechVibe hosts Audrey Russo and Jonathan Kersting tell it in a fun, conversational format for everyone to appreciate Pittsburgh as a center of tech and innovation. TechVibe Radio reaches across southwestern Pennsylvania every Sunday at 6 a.m. on 100.1 FM | AM 1020 KDKA.
Check out the interview here: https://www.pghtech.org/podcasts/Ron_...
Kersting and Russo talked with Schuler about how Pittsburgh has been at the center of so many important issues in American history, from the legitimacy of the Constitution during the Whiskey Rebellion, to the battles between Labor and Capital during the Gilded Age, to the rise of federal regulation and the delocalization of American corporations. They also discussed some of the reasons behind Pittsburgh's decline during the 1970s and 80s, and the tech revival in Pittsburgh that persists today. "If you care about Pittsburgh at all, just buy [THE STEEL BAR]," said Russo. "You won't regret it."
Schuler also discussed his upcoming book, 7 BALLPARKS, saying "If you think it's going to be a book about baseball, it's not ... it's also about land use, the history of gambling in Pittsburgh, the history of municipal corruption in Pittsburgh, the Great Migration, racial tensions, iconography in architecture ..." It is not just about the ballparks themselves, Schuler says, but about "where they came from."
For more than a decade, TechVibe Radio has been the Pittsburgh region's only technology-focused radio show telling the story of our region's tech companies and the women and men running them. Every tech company has a story, and TechVibe hosts Audrey Russo and Jonathan Kersting tell it in a fun, conversational format for everyone to appreciate Pittsburgh as a center of tech and innovation. TechVibe Radio reaches across southwestern Pennsylvania every Sunday at 6 a.m. on 100.1 FM | AM 1020 KDKA.
Check out the interview here: https://www.pghtech.org/podcasts/Ron_...
May 29, 2021
Caruso, Bender Win Gold Medal for Angeleños Cover
Marquez Press is proud to announce that Nick Caruso and Mark Bender have won an Independent Publishers Gold Medal for their work on the cover for Ron Schuler's novel Angeleños: L.A.'s Golden Age.
Winning in the category of "Fiction - Cover Design," Caruso's audacious front cover design features sunset-infused, vertically stacked text, layered into an Art-Deco-inspired scene illustrated by Bender—a visual allusion to one of the novel's main characters, a 1930's era L.A. private club bartender, shaking a cocktail in the background as the hands of privileged club guests linger over a blood-red Manhattan in the foreground. The back cover, also featuring artwork by Bender, shows two iconic speeding vehicles from 1940s Los Angeles that figure prominently in the novel—a Cadillac coupe and a Pacific Electric streetcar.
Nick Caruso is an award-winning designer across multiple platforms, including fiction and non-fiction books, branding, exhibition design, posters and apparel. Before launching his own studio in Pittsburgh, Nick worked as a designer for studios and publishers in New York City, and created the covers for New York Times bestselling books. He has served as an adjunct design professor at Carnegie Mellon University. His clients include Grand Central/Jimmy Fallon, SPIN Magazine, Johns Hopkins University, The Warhol Museum, Artisan Books, Henry Holt & Company, Wiley, WW Norton/Countryman Press, Metropolis Magazine, WR Case & Sons, Potter Style/Random House, Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster.
Mark Bender has been recognized by Communication Arts Magazine, 3X3 Magazine, Creative Quarterly, Archive 200 Best Illustrators and the New York Society of Illustrators. He has been included in the society’s annual exhibitions and in Original Art, the best in children’s book illustration. A member of both the NY Society of Illustrators and the Pittsburgh Society of Illustrators, he has also been awarded both gold and silver Addys and a prestigious silver medal from the New York Society of Illustrators.
The Independent Publishers silver and bronze medal-winners for "Fiction - Cover Design" were Hugh D’Andrade's design for Across the Deep by Lisa McGuinness (Bonhomie Press) and Naia Poyer's design for an anthology edited by Lenore Hart, The Night Bazaar Venice: Thirteen Tales of Forbidden Wishes and Dangerous Desires (Northampton House Press).
Angeleños: L.A.'s Golden Age, Ron Schuler's first novel, focuses on the interconnected tales of a Mexican American immigrant family and a Midwestern Anglo migrant family in Los Angeles during the 1920s, 30s and 40s.
Winning in the category of "Fiction - Cover Design," Caruso's audacious front cover design features sunset-infused, vertically stacked text, layered into an Art-Deco-inspired scene illustrated by Bender—a visual allusion to one of the novel's main characters, a 1930's era L.A. private club bartender, shaking a cocktail in the background as the hands of privileged club guests linger over a blood-red Manhattan in the foreground. The back cover, also featuring artwork by Bender, shows two iconic speeding vehicles from 1940s Los Angeles that figure prominently in the novel—a Cadillac coupe and a Pacific Electric streetcar.
Nick Caruso is an award-winning designer across multiple platforms, including fiction and non-fiction books, branding, exhibition design, posters and apparel. Before launching his own studio in Pittsburgh, Nick worked as a designer for studios and publishers in New York City, and created the covers for New York Times bestselling books. He has served as an adjunct design professor at Carnegie Mellon University. His clients include Grand Central/Jimmy Fallon, SPIN Magazine, Johns Hopkins University, The Warhol Museum, Artisan Books, Henry Holt & Company, Wiley, WW Norton/Countryman Press, Metropolis Magazine, WR Case & Sons, Potter Style/Random House, Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster.
Mark Bender has been recognized by Communication Arts Magazine, 3X3 Magazine, Creative Quarterly, Archive 200 Best Illustrators and the New York Society of Illustrators. He has been included in the society’s annual exhibitions and in Original Art, the best in children’s book illustration. A member of both the NY Society of Illustrators and the Pittsburgh Society of Illustrators, he has also been awarded both gold and silver Addys and a prestigious silver medal from the New York Society of Illustrators.
The Independent Publishers silver and bronze medal-winners for "Fiction - Cover Design" were Hugh D’Andrade's design for Across the Deep by Lisa McGuinness (Bonhomie Press) and Naia Poyer's design for an anthology edited by Lenore Hart, The Night Bazaar Venice: Thirteen Tales of Forbidden Wishes and Dangerous Desires (Northampton House Press).
Angeleños: L.A.'s Golden Age, Ron Schuler's first novel, focuses on the interconnected tales of a Mexican American immigrant family and a Midwestern Anglo migrant family in Los Angeles during the 1920s, 30s and 40s.
January 9, 2021
Schuler Elected Fellow of American Bar Foundation
Ron Schuler, lawyer and author, has been elected a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation (ABF).
Membership in the ABF is limited to one percent of lawyers licensed to practice in each jurisdiction. Members are nominated by their peers and selected by the ABF Board.
The ABF is a global honorary society that recognizes attorneys, judges, law faculty and legal scholars whose public and private careers have demonstrated outstanding dedication to the highest principles of the legal profession and to the welfare of their communities. ABF Fellows hail from nearly 40 countries and hold a wide variety of influential roles. Notable Fellows include Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsberg, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Sonia Sotomayor, and Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts.
Schuler has been practicing corporate, M&A, start-up, technology, and securities law for over 30 years. He is a graduate of Pomona College and Cornell Law School.
Schuler was a lead member of the City of Pittsburgh's legal team for the planning and construction of PNC Park, home to Major League Baseball's Pittsburgh Pirates, and wrote the "Forbes Field II Task Force Final Report" (1996), the urban planning justification for PNC Park's location. He is also the founding chairman of Pittsburgh's community-supported jazz radio station, WZUM-FM. He is the author of an American history book set in Pittsburgh, The Steel Bar: Pittsburgh Lawyers and the Making of America, and a historical novel set in Los Angeles in the first half of the 20th century, Angeleños: L.A.'s Golden Age.
Membership in the ABF is limited to one percent of lawyers licensed to practice in each jurisdiction. Members are nominated by their peers and selected by the ABF Board.
The ABF is a global honorary society that recognizes attorneys, judges, law faculty and legal scholars whose public and private careers have demonstrated outstanding dedication to the highest principles of the legal profession and to the welfare of their communities. ABF Fellows hail from nearly 40 countries and hold a wide variety of influential roles. Notable Fellows include Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsberg, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Sonia Sotomayor, and Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts.
Schuler has been practicing corporate, M&A, start-up, technology, and securities law for over 30 years. He is a graduate of Pomona College and Cornell Law School.
Schuler was a lead member of the City of Pittsburgh's legal team for the planning and construction of PNC Park, home to Major League Baseball's Pittsburgh Pirates, and wrote the "Forbes Field II Task Force Final Report" (1996), the urban planning justification for PNC Park's location. He is also the founding chairman of Pittsburgh's community-supported jazz radio station, WZUM-FM. He is the author of an American history book set in Pittsburgh, The Steel Bar: Pittsburgh Lawyers and the Making of America, and a historical novel set in Los Angeles in the first half of the 20th century, Angeleños: L.A.'s Golden Age.
November 29, 2020
STEEL BAR Web Events Feature Gilded Age, Making of Book
November 2020 saw two well-attended webinar events on Ron Schuler's American history book, The Steel Bar: Pittsburgh Lawyers and the Making of America.
In the first, on November 11, 2020 for the Sewickley Valley Historical Society, Ron Schuler spoke to an audience of approximately 80 viewers on the Gilded Age relationship between two larger-than-life tycoons, Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick. In "The Gilded Age in Four Acts," Schuler discussed four important events in American history -- the Johnstown Flood of 1889, the Homestead Steel Strike of 1892, the settlement of the World's Greatest Lawsuit between Carnegie and Frick in 1901, and the creation of America's first billion-dollar corporation, U.S. Steel, in 1901. "Each of them were seminal events in the growing power of the American corporation in the hands of these 19th century tycoons. They each occurred in and around Pittsburgh, and were each influenced by the interactions between Carnegie and Frick and their very talented lawyers." Carnegie and Frick's lawyers of choice, James Hay Reed and Philander Knox, were the founders of the present day global law firm of Reed Smith; Reed briefly served as a federal judge, while Philander Knox served three presidents as Attorney General and Secretary of State, and as a U.S. Senator. "The influence of Pittsburgh lawyers on American political and commercial institutions around the turn of the 20th century really begins to come to life in the stories of Carnegie, Frick, Westinghouse and other robber barons of the era."
On November 17, Schuler was the featured guest during an "Evening with the Author" web event for the Allegheny County Bar Association (ACBA), to an audience of nearly 70 guests. During what was largely a free-flowing Q-and-A session, Schuler talked about his intentions for the book and gave some highlights of its 10 years in the making. "From the start, I saw the book as an American history book rather than a parochial keepsake," Schuler explains. "Pittsburgh's history is really co-extensive with the history of American democracy, and the story of Pittsburgh's lawyers shows the influence of the region on American institutions -- from defining the limits of dissent within the new Republic, to the evolution of the American corporation, to the struggles between capital and labor, to the era of reform ushered in by the trust-buster, President Theodore Roosevelt, to the decline and rebirth of a great American city." Mixed in with these larger themes, Schuler explains, are the stories of women and African Americans breaking barriers as they entered the legal profession, municipal corruption and political witch hunts, and the changing nature of the practice of law. Schuler conducted over 100 interviews and gathered his research from archival sources throughout the Northeast; but some of his most important discoveries were made through what he refers to as "reverse genealogy" -- tracing the descendants of some of his book's characters and uncovering lost caches of material and memories that resided in private, family hands. "Finding some of these descendants actually led to rebuilding portions of the historical record that were otherwise lost. It was a very gratifying experience."
Schuler is scheduled to present STEEL BAR programs to the Western Pennsylvania chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel in December on lawyers and leadership, with co-presenter Stephen Yslas, the former corporate vice president and general counsel of Northrop Grumman and former police commissioner of Los Angeles; to the Federal Courts section of the ACBA, on the story behind the seminal U.S. Supreme Court case of NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel, in January 2021; and for the Homer S. Brown Division of the ACBA, in February 2021, on the story of diversity in the Pittsburgh bar.
In the first, on November 11, 2020 for the Sewickley Valley Historical Society, Ron Schuler spoke to an audience of approximately 80 viewers on the Gilded Age relationship between two larger-than-life tycoons, Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick. In "The Gilded Age in Four Acts," Schuler discussed four important events in American history -- the Johnstown Flood of 1889, the Homestead Steel Strike of 1892, the settlement of the World's Greatest Lawsuit between Carnegie and Frick in 1901, and the creation of America's first billion-dollar corporation, U.S. Steel, in 1901. "Each of them were seminal events in the growing power of the American corporation in the hands of these 19th century tycoons. They each occurred in and around Pittsburgh, and were each influenced by the interactions between Carnegie and Frick and their very talented lawyers." Carnegie and Frick's lawyers of choice, James Hay Reed and Philander Knox, were the founders of the present day global law firm of Reed Smith; Reed briefly served as a federal judge, while Philander Knox served three presidents as Attorney General and Secretary of State, and as a U.S. Senator. "The influence of Pittsburgh lawyers on American political and commercial institutions around the turn of the 20th century really begins to come to life in the stories of Carnegie, Frick, Westinghouse and other robber barons of the era."
On November 17, Schuler was the featured guest during an "Evening with the Author" web event for the Allegheny County Bar Association (ACBA), to an audience of nearly 70 guests. During what was largely a free-flowing Q-and-A session, Schuler talked about his intentions for the book and gave some highlights of its 10 years in the making. "From the start, I saw the book as an American history book rather than a parochial keepsake," Schuler explains. "Pittsburgh's history is really co-extensive with the history of American democracy, and the story of Pittsburgh's lawyers shows the influence of the region on American institutions -- from defining the limits of dissent within the new Republic, to the evolution of the American corporation, to the struggles between capital and labor, to the era of reform ushered in by the trust-buster, President Theodore Roosevelt, to the decline and rebirth of a great American city." Mixed in with these larger themes, Schuler explains, are the stories of women and African Americans breaking barriers as they entered the legal profession, municipal corruption and political witch hunts, and the changing nature of the practice of law. Schuler conducted over 100 interviews and gathered his research from archival sources throughout the Northeast; but some of his most important discoveries were made through what he refers to as "reverse genealogy" -- tracing the descendants of some of his book's characters and uncovering lost caches of material and memories that resided in private, family hands. "Finding some of these descendants actually led to rebuilding portions of the historical record that were otherwise lost. It was a very gratifying experience."
Schuler is scheduled to present STEEL BAR programs to the Western Pennsylvania chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel in December on lawyers and leadership, with co-presenter Stephen Yslas, the former corporate vice president and general counsel of Northrop Grumman and former police commissioner of Los Angeles; to the Federal Courts section of the ACBA, on the story behind the seminal U.S. Supreme Court case of NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel, in January 2021; and for the Homer S. Brown Division of the ACBA, in February 2021, on the story of diversity in the Pittsburgh bar.
October 2, 2020
ANGELEÑOS Featured by LA County Library
In the "My Library" feature of the September 2020 newsletter of the Los Angeles County Library Foundation, Ron Schuler's book Angeleños: L.A.'s Golden Age was featured in a piece on "Mexican American histories." Schuler observed that the availability of well-documented historical narratives on such inflection points in Mexican American history as the Bisbee Deportation of 1917, the 1931 La Placita Immigration Raid and even the Zoot Suit Riots is something that needs to be corrected in the public record of Southwestern American history. The piece, which also discussed Schuler's relationship with the County Library system during his youth, as well as the existence of the Los Angeles County Library Chicano Research Center, was accompanied by a photo of his mother and grandparents from the late 1940s.
Angeleños: L.A.'s Golden Age, Schuler's first novel, focuses on a Mexican American immigrant family and a Midwestern migrant family in Los Angeles during the 1920s, 30s and 40s. It is available in hardcover, paperback and kindle editions through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, or through your local bookstore.
September 8, 2020
ANGELEÑOS: Ron Schuler's Latest Release is a Novel of Old L.A.
Marquez Press is pleased to announce the release of ANGELEÑOS: L.A.'S GOLDEN AGE (a Novel) on September 8, 2020.
A grandson of Mexican immigrants, Ron Schuler draws deeply upon his family background in his first novel to tell a fictionalized tale of two families who arrive in East Los Angeles in 1919: the Martín family, fleeing the Revolution in Zacatecas, Mexico through Arizona copper mines and ranchos southeast of L.A.; and the Baumiller family, after a wildcat strike goes awry in Kansas City, Kansas, starting a new life in the American City of Last Resort. A descendant of both families—half-Mexican, half-Anglo, known by his genealogy website handle “bauwau685”—returns to the West Coast and searches for his roots among the traces of these families and amid the Golden Age of L.A. itself … its old boxing gyms and speakeasies, its after-hours clubs, Bible rallies and quack doctors, California politicians and the fringes of Hollywood, the unraveling of the streetcar system and the sinister launch of the aerospace industry, and against an undercurrent of atmospheric and internalized racism toward Mexican-Americans. In the process, “bauwau685” uncovers tragic secrets that were never meant to be exposed and discovers the extent to which identities can be fabricated and reimagined in a city in which image is everything, and truth is ephemeral.
Lori Jakiela, author of BELIEF IS ITS OWN KIND OF TRUTH, MAYBE (Atticus Books, 2015) writes the book is written in "lush but tightly-wrought prose reminiscent of Raymond Chandler and Gabriel García Márquez." She writes that the book is "a gift for any reader interested in that most essential human quest – how we can understand our lives through the lives and hearts of those who came before us."
Richard Soto, founder of the Chicano Research Center in Stockton, California, writes that ANGELEÑOS is "a well-thought-out novel about immigrants and migrants—newcomers trying to figure out how to live and fit into Los Angeles during the 1920s, 30s and 40s … Schuler carefully builds his characters and places them in a well-researched and accurate depiction of the era, weaving them through a maze of historical events toward the unexpected and surprising end."
The book is available in hardcover, paperback and eBook on Amazon, or through your local bookstore.
A grandson of Mexican immigrants, Ron Schuler draws deeply upon his family background in his first novel to tell a fictionalized tale of two families who arrive in East Los Angeles in 1919: the Martín family, fleeing the Revolution in Zacatecas, Mexico through Arizona copper mines and ranchos southeast of L.A.; and the Baumiller family, after a wildcat strike goes awry in Kansas City, Kansas, starting a new life in the American City of Last Resort. A descendant of both families—half-Mexican, half-Anglo, known by his genealogy website handle “bauwau685”—returns to the West Coast and searches for his roots among the traces of these families and amid the Golden Age of L.A. itself … its old boxing gyms and speakeasies, its after-hours clubs, Bible rallies and quack doctors, California politicians and the fringes of Hollywood, the unraveling of the streetcar system and the sinister launch of the aerospace industry, and against an undercurrent of atmospheric and internalized racism toward Mexican-Americans. In the process, “bauwau685” uncovers tragic secrets that were never meant to be exposed and discovers the extent to which identities can be fabricated and reimagined in a city in which image is everything, and truth is ephemeral.
Lori Jakiela, author of BELIEF IS ITS OWN KIND OF TRUTH, MAYBE (Atticus Books, 2015) writes the book is written in "lush but tightly-wrought prose reminiscent of Raymond Chandler and Gabriel García Márquez." She writes that the book is "a gift for any reader interested in that most essential human quest – how we can understand our lives through the lives and hearts of those who came before us."
Richard Soto, founder of the Chicano Research Center in Stockton, California, writes that ANGELEÑOS is "a well-thought-out novel about immigrants and migrants—newcomers trying to figure out how to live and fit into Los Angeles during the 1920s, 30s and 40s … Schuler carefully builds his characters and places them in a well-researched and accurate depiction of the era, weaving them through a maze of historical events toward the unexpected and surprising end."
The book is available in hardcover, paperback and eBook on Amazon, or through your local bookstore.
August 27, 2020
"Virtual Roadshow" Talks with Ron Schuler about Pittsburgh Tech
Alex Trader from "Unlocking Potential: Virtual Roadshow" interviewed Ron Schuler, author of The Steel Bar: Pittsburgh Lawyers and the Making Of America, about the beginning of Pittsburgh's technology industry. See the interview, presented by the "Unlocking Potential" podcast on August 18, 2020, here.
July 13, 2020
Schuler Interviewed on Antitrust on "Shaping Opinions" Podcast
Ron Schuler, author of The Steel Bar: Pittsburgh Lawyers and the Making of America, is interviewed about Pittsburgh and the beginnings of Antitrust enforcement in America in Tim O'Brien's "Shaping Opinion" podcast.
The podcast episode ("Antitrust Showdown"), which was released today, can be streamed at Shaping Opinion
The podcast episode ("Antitrust Showdown"), which was released today, can be streamed at Shaping Opinion
June 22, 2020
Schuler Featured in Podcast on Birth of Pittsburgh's Tech Industry
Ron Schuler, author of The Steel Bar: Pittsburgh Lawyers and the Making of America, is featured in a podcast called "Unlocking Potential" which debuts today, talking about the birth of the tech industry in Pittsburgh, with Margaret O'Mara, historian and author of The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America; Eric Sanchez, CEO of IoT Media; and moderator Bram Weinstein (formerly ESPN SportsCenter).
The podcast episode ("Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow") can be downloaded/streamed at: iTunes and Spotify.
The podcast episode ("Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow") can be downloaded/streamed at: iTunes and Spotify.
