Those who have read Brian O'Neill's literate and hospitable columns over the years in the Post-Gazette will welcome what is really his love letter to Pittsburgh. It's not blind love. O'Neill has an unbiased eye, and in more than one place in this book he knows that tough love often is love in its purest form, even if it seems harsh.

Reared in Long Island, educated at Syracuse University and then employed in Roanoke, Va., before coming to Pittsburgh, O'Neill lived in Shadyside before settling by choice on the North Side. It was in Pittsburgh that he met and married his wife, Betsy (a doctor), and fathered two daughters as he reached his 40s. And he was, is and will remain by his own hopeful admission a writer at the Post-Gazette, where he has worked since 1993, after five years at the defunct Pittsburgh Press.

Each chapter in this compact and well-designed book, replete with current and past photographs of city scenes as needed (plus a beautiful cover reproduction of a painting of the cityscape by Ron Donoughe) could easily be read as a personal essay.

There's a chapter about LaMonte Pruitt, a high school and college basketball all-star, whose pro basketball career was ended by injury.

He worked thereafter for Union Railroad and, when laid off, supported himself by shining and repairing shoes until he was recalled by the railroad. O'Neill sees in Pruitt's decision to stay in Pittsburgh (regardless) the essence of whatever it is that weds many people like Pruitt to the city. He calls it rebounding in Pruitt's case, but, in many other lives, including his own, it was an acquired fidelity.

Are rebounding and acquired fidelities the central pillars of strength of those who live or return to live here by choice? In chapter after chapter O'Neill confirms and re-confirms this. There's his neighbor Tom Barbush, who thinks the minimum but key requirement for a "neighborly" neighborhood is knowing who your neighbor is. Tom abjures garage door openers, parks his car curbside so that he can possibly meet something more than the walls of a garage when he comes home.

Then there are the grandmothers from Holy Ghost Byzantine Catholic Church in McKees Rocks who carry on the tradition of rolling pierogis, the sale of which more than likely built the church in the first place. There is O'Neill's paean to Weldin's Stationery store on Wood Street for its casual determination to maintain its 1852 decor and decorum forever.

There is Sean Cannon, who commented cryptically on Pittsburghers' ongoing love of fireworks: "If they offered proctology exams followed by fireworks, Pittsburghers would go."

O'Neill certainly loves the city, but he knows the pitfalls of love. "Much as I love Pittsburgh," he writes, "we're more than a tad insular here, better at knowing the old days than what's over the next hill."

This, of course, has a good and a bad side. The good side is that true Pittsburghers know that Pittsburgh did have a past from pre-Revolutionary War days to right now. Rand McNally's designation of Pittsburgh as America's most livable city made it seem to many who demanded the "ocular proof" that Pittsburgh suddenly arose like Venus on the half shell. The sweat and vision of many men and women made this possible, and that remains a standard against which Pittsburghers in the present should be measured.

The excellence of medical service may well be, as former Mayor Tom Murphy hoped, the dynamism that would replace the steel industry, but is it a mark of civic greatness when a casino is looked upon as the ultimate way to keep Pittsburgh money here? O'Neill is not convinced, and frankly neither am I.

Fans of the Steelers and Penguins (and that means practically everyone) know what's over the next hill, but visceral fans of the Pirates have only nostalgia for comfort. The decline of the team has now passed umpteen painful summers.

O'Neill's loyalties are with the Pirates but not with their recent management.

His account leaves no doubt (though unstated) that Jim Leyland left when he got fed up watching his best players appear "in somebody else's lineup." There was no Joe L. Brown to staunch the bleeding and inspire fans to find another use for their hands besides wringing them.

O'Neill faces Pittsburgh's future with the same dogged determination that imbues his hopes for the Pirates. But he knows and specifies the challenges.

How can a city grow when it is legally prevented from growing as a city? "Here in Pennsylvania," he writes, "unlike other parts of America where cities grow, no small municipality can be annexed without a majority of its citizens voting for the change." Home-rulers are thus empowered by law to nix becoming part of the city, which is why O'Neill can write truthfully that "Pennsylvania's cities are shrinking" and probably will continue to do so.

Although considered the nation's most livable city, Pittsburgh ranks "254th in economic conditions and 250th in residential well-being." O'Neill concludes, "... if there's no move to compensate the communities that host all the tax-exempt properties, we may need the suburbs to take ownership of the city by melding the city into Allegheny County, and have all county residents be able to vote on the metropolitan issues that affect them."

That's hardly good news for O'Neill's Paris of the Appalachias, but true lovers know when the romance stops and where reality begins, and Brian O'Neill proves that he knows the difference on page after page. For genuine Pittsburghers, this is required reading.

Doug Oster writes a blog, "Growing With Doug," exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.