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While researching a recent story about Mal Goode, the son of a Homestead steelworker who became the first black reporter for an American television network, I began reading another book that documents Pittsburgh in Goode’s time: Smoketown: The Untold Story of The Other Great Black Renaissance by Mark Whitaker.

As it turns out, Goode doesn’t appear in Whitaker’s well-reviewed 2018 book, which surprised me a little: In their terrific new biography, “Mal Goode Reporting,” authors Rob Ruck and Liann Tsoukas document that he was a prominent voice for civil rights here from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. And he worked for the Pittsburgh Courier newspaper, which plays a major role in “Smoketown.”

This is not a criticism of Whitaker, the former editor in chief of CNN Worldwide, former editor of Newsweek and a trailblazer in his own right as the first black man to head a national weekly newspaper. Even without Goode, “Smoketown” is full of vivid characters, incidents and anecdotes. It is another one of those books that every Pittsburgher should read.

“Smoketown” doesn’t rely heavily on primary sources. Because the film depicts the world of sports, music and journalism in black Pittsburgh from about 1910 to mid-century, few of the subjects are still around to give interviews.

Rather, it is an accessible yet thoughtful synthesis that builds on what others have written, including countless articles from the Courier itself. Above all, Whitaker is a great storyteller with a great sense of how figures as diverse as Courier publisher Robert L. Vann, numbers king and sports impresario Gus Greenlee, and jazz singer Lena Horne influenced and were shaped by their times and Pittsburgh itself—and how Pittsburghers, in turn, reshaped the country.

For example, if you want to learn more about how the Courier evolved from a self-published poetry publication by an HJ Heinz employee to a newspaper with national influence, Smoketown is a good place to start.

The book paints a compelling portrait not only of Vann, who was influential as a publisher in Washington, D.C., but also of reporter “Ches” Washington, whose extensive coverage of the rise of boxing champion Joe Louis was designed to boost the paper’s growth; of sports columnist Wendell Smith, the ghostwriter and mentor of Jackie Robinson; and of the often-overlooked women of the Courier, particularly civil rights reporter (and advice columnist) Evelyn Cunningham.

Then there’s Gus Greenlee, who was at the center of black life here for decades as a number cruncher, philanthropist and owner of the Crawford Grill jazz temple in the Hill District and the Pittsburgh Crawfords Negro Leagues baseball team. And also Cumberland Posey, the son of a wealthy black industrialist who became a star athlete in two sports at the college and professional level before buying the Homestead Grays and becoming Greenlee’s rival.

Perhaps most epic is Whitaker’s depiction of Pittsburgh’s famous jazz scene, which includes portraits not only of Horne and composer, arranger and Horne confidant Billy Strayhorn, but also of musicians Earl “Fatha Hines,” Art Blakey and Kenny Clarke and the role they played in the careers of bebop pioneers such as Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. Last but not least, there is Billy Eckstine, the dashing Pittsburgh singer whose popularity once rivaled that of Sinatra.

Finally, Whitaker devotes an entire chapter to August Wilson, who was born in 1945, toward the end of the era covered by “Smoketown,” but whose plays evoke the rich cultural legacy of black life in Pittsburgh throughout the century.

Largely through the stories of figures like Vann and Posey, “Smoketown” is also valuable for its portrayal of Pittsburgh’s black middle and upper classes, which are often overlooked in social histories. (Whitaker also pays tribute to National Negro Opera founder Mary Cardwell Dawson.)

Whitaker himself has roots in Pittsburgh: The genesis of “Smoketown” came from researching his memoirs, during which he learned that his grandparents and great-grandparents had lived in Pittsburgh, where his father ran a funeral home in The Hill and later in Beltzhoover. It feels like another variation on the old saying about people who leave and sooner or later come back to Pittsburgh like a boomerang.