Playing Through the Whistle: Steel, Football, and an American Town

This book tells the uniquely American tale of Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, a middle-class industrial boomtown built up around a massive mill owned by the Jones & Laughlin Steel Company.  As the economy evolved and the mills closed down, the town decayed while crime and the crack epidemic took hold. Luckily, the town made more than steel; it made elite football players, too—Mike Ditka, Ty Law, Darrelle Revis—despite its troubles or maybe because of them. few places churned out talent like Aliquippa.