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The Akron Anthology
9780996836739
Regular price $19.99 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%A part of Belt's City Anthology Series, this collection explores Akron, Ohio's past and what may happen there in the future. A portrait of the "city's rich, mysterious, odd-leaning inner life."
Between 1910 and 1920, Akron was the fastest growing city in the United States, tripling in size and exploding from a population of 69,000 to 208,000. Its period of rapid growth coincided with the expansion of the rubber and tire industry, which in turn corresponded with that of the automobile industry. But since the mid-1970s, industry has abandoned Akron, and the city has lost 31 percent of its population. Once opulent neighborhoods are now swaths of abandoned homes, and the factories that made Akron the Rubber Capital of the World lie dormant.
Edited by Jason Segedy, and bringing together established writers like Rita Dove and David Giffels with the work of emerging voices, The Akron Anthology collects essays, poems, and photographs from the writers, artists, and activists who call Akron home. Here you'll find stories that include:
- The diaries of a doorman
- The trials and triumphs of refugees who have relocated to the city
- A portrait of Jamie Stillman, world-renowned effects pedal manufacturer
- Archie the talking snowman.
Providing readers with diverse group of voices, this collection offers an intimate look at a storied Ohio city.
Conspiracy to Riot
9781948742689
Regular price $26.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%A memoir of a life in activism by one of the original defendants in the Trial of the Chicago 7, subject of the 2020 Oscar-nominated Aaron Sorkin film of the same name.
In March 1969, eight young men were indicted by the federal government for conspiracy to incite a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. First dubbed the "Conspiracy 8" and later the "Chicago 7," the group included firebrands like Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Bobby Seale. But it also included a little-known community activist and social worker from the South Side of Chicago named Lee Weiner, who was just as surprised as the rest of the country when his name was included in the indictment. The ensuing trial of the Chicago 7 became a media sensation, and it changed Weiner's life forever. In this irreverent, freewheeling memoir of an indelible moment in history--which Kirkus Reviews called "a welcome addition to the library of the countercultural 1960s left"--Conspiracy to Riot shows how a commitment to your ideals can change your destiny forever.
With startling relevance to today's polarized political climate, Conspiracy to Riot is a book for anyone who hopes for a better, more just world, and offers a blueprint for how to make it happen.
City of Hustle
9781953368355
Regular price $26.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%A part of Belt's City Anthology Series, a unique take on the South Dakota town residents call "the Best Little City in America."
In 1992, Money magazine named Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the best place to live in America. This rich anthology offers an inside look at the city through the eyes of both longtime residents and recent transplants. In over forty-five essays, you'll hear stories about the city's past, including the region's legacy of violence against Native Americans and Sioux Falls's status as a "divorce destination" in the late 1800s. But you'll also discover the ways the city's savvy planning and entrepreneurial gumption have helped it navigate twenty-first-century challenges. You'll read about: - the end of George McGovern's presidential run at a Sioux Falls Holiday Inn - the vibrant Jewish and Syrian-Muslim communities that helped form the city - the first sit-down strike in American labor history - firsthand accounts of how South Sudanese refugees are shaping the city today Edited by Patrick Hicks and Jon K. Lauck, City of Hustle: A Sioux Falls Anthology gives an insider's perspective on what's really going on in so-called "flyover country," and it shows why that name misses so much of the true richness that makes up life there every day.
Clutter: An Untidy History
9781948742726
Regular price $26.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%"Jennifer Howard has written a brilliant and beautiful meditation on the nature of our attachment to things. Reading Clutter made me long for a life without clutter."--Malcolm Gladwell
"I'm sitting on the floor in my mother's house, surrounded by stuff." So begins Jennifer Howard's Clutter, an expansive assessment of our relationship to the things that share and shape our lives. Inspired by the painful process of cleaning out her mother's house, Howard, a former contributing editor for The Washington Post, sets her own personal struggle with clutter against a meticulously researched history of just how the developed world came to drown in material goods.
With sharp prose and an eye for telling detail, she connects the dots between the Industrial Revolution, the Sears & Roebuck catalog, and the Container Store, and shines unsparing light on clutter's darker connections to environmental devastation and hoarding disorder. In an age when Amazon can deliver anything at the click of a mouse and decluttering guru Marie Kondo can become a reality TV star, Howard's bracing analysis has never been more timely.
Slim and compelling, Clutter is a book for anyone struggling to understand why they have so much stuff?and what to do about it.
Black in the Middle
9781948742696
Regular price $20.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%An ambitious, honest portrait of the Black experience in flyover country. One of The St. Louis Post Dispatch's Best Books of 2020.
Black Americans have been among the hardest hit by the rapid deindustrialization and accompanying economic decline that have become so synonymous with the Midwest. After the 2016 election, many traditional media outlets renewed their attention on the conditions of "Middle America," but they often marginalized or completely overlooked the experience of the Black people who live there.
Edited by Terrion Williamson, the director of the Black Midwest Initiative, Black in the Middle places the voices of Black midwesterners front and center. Filled with compelling personal narratives, thought-provoking art, and searing commentaries, this anthology explores the various meanings and experiences of blackness throughout the Rust Belt, the Midwest, and the Great Plains. It brings together people from major metropolitan centers like Detroit and Chicago as well as smaller cities and rural areas where the lives of Black residents have too often gone unacknowledged to create "a timely, compelling collection that allows predominantly Black Midwesterners to reclaim their home, histories, and future."
A much-needed corrective to common narratives about the Midwest.
Runaway
9781953368317
Regular price $28.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%From Erin Keane, editor in chief at Salon, comes a touching memoir about the search for truths in the stories families tell. In 1970, Erin Keane's mother ran away from home for the first time. She was thirteen years old. Over the next several years, and under two assumed identities, she hitchhiked her way across America, experiencing freedom, hardship, and tragedy. At fifteen, she met a man in New York City and married him. He was thirty-six. Though a deft balance of journalistic digging, cultural criticism, and poetic reimagining, Keane pieces together the true story of her mother's teenage years, questioning almost everything she's been told about her parents and their relationship. Along the way, she also considers how pop culture has kept similar narratives alive in her. At stake are some of the most profound questions we can ask ourselves: What's true? What gets remembered? Who gets to tell the stories that make us who we are? Whether it's talking about painful family history, #MeToo, Star Wars, true crime forensics, or The Gilmore Girls, Runaway is an unforgettable look at all the different ways the stories we tell--both personal and pop cultural--create us.
The History of Democracy Has Yet to Be Written
9781953368386
Regular price $17.95 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%"This book made me laugh out loud and also gave me glimpses of an entire horizon of possibility I hadn't seen before."--Chris Hayes, host of MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes
End the filibuster. Abolish the Senate. Make everyone vote. Only if we do this (and then some), says Thomas Geoghegan, might we heal our fractured democracy.
In 2008, Geoghegan?then an established labor lawyer and prolific writer?embarked on a campaign to represent Chicago's Fifth District in Congress, in a special election called when Rahm Emanuel stepped down to serve as President Barack Obama's chief of staff. For ninety days leading up to the election, Geoghegan, a political neophyte at age sixty, knocked on doors, shook hands at train stations, and made fundraising calls. On election night he lost, badly.
But this humbling experience helped him develop a framework for reimagining American government in a way that is truly just, fair, and constitutional. Taking its title from Walt Whitman, The History of Democracy Is Yet to Be Written: How We Have to Learn to Govern All Over Again, combines hilarious tales from his time on the campaign trail with an incisive vision of how we might be able to create an America that fulfills its great promise. In a polarized country, where 100 million citizens don't vote, and those who do are otherwise rarely politically engaged, he makes an impassioned case for the possibility of a truly representative democracy, one built on the ideals of the House of Representatives, the true chamber of the people, and inspired by the poet who gives the book its name.
At once an engaging memoir and a call to arms, The History of Democracy Is Yet to Be Written will inspire and invigorate political veterans and young activists alike.
Sweeter Voices Still
9781948742818
Regular price $20.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%A groundbreaking nonfiction collection about queer life in the Midwest. "A marvelous ode to humanity and its passions."--Little Village
The middle of America?the Midwest, Appalachia, the Rust Belt, the Great Plains, the Upper South?is a queer place, and it always has been. The queer people of its cities, farms, and suburbs can't be reduced to just "blue dots" within "red states." Every story about a kid from Iowa who steps off the bus in Manhattan, ready to "finally" live, is a story about a kid who was already living in Iowa. Sweeter Voices Still is a collection full of stories about that kid, written by people just like them.
This collection, edited by Ryan Schuessler (The St. Louis Anthology) and Kevin Whiteneir, Jr., features queer voices you might recognize?established and successful writers and thinkers like Aaron Foley and Jeffery Bean?and others you might not. You'll find sex, love, and heartbreak and all the other beings we meet along the way: trees, deer, cicadas, sturgeon. Most of all, you'll find real people.
Perfect for anyone looking for fully realized stories about the nuanced, joyous complexity of queer identity in the Midwest.
Runaway
9781953368393
Regular price $18.95 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%From Erin Keane, editor in chief at Salon, comes a touching memoir about the search for truths in the stories families tell. In 1970, Erin Keane's mother ran away from home for the first time. She was thirteen years old. Over the next several years, and under two assumed identities, she hitchhiked her way across America, experiencing freedom, hardship, and tragedy. At fifteen, she met a man in New York City and married him. He was thirty-six. Though a deft balance of journalistic digging, cultural criticism, and poetic reimagining, Keane pieces together the true story of her mother's teenage years, questioning almost everything she's been told about her parents and their relationship. Along the way, she also considers how pop culture has kept similar narratives alive in her. At stake are some of the most profound questions we can ask ourselves: What's true? What gets remembered? Who gets to tell the stories that make us who we are? Whether it's talking about painful family history, #MeToo, Star Wars, true crime forensics, or The Gilmore Girls, Runaway is an unforgettable look at all the different ways the stories we tell--both personal and pop cultural--create us.
The Cincinnati Neighborhood Guidebook
9781953368447
Regular price $24.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%Part of Belt's Neighborhood Guidebook Series, The Cincinnati Neighborhood Guidebook is an in-depth look at the City of Seven Hills, written by the people who live and work there every day.Cincinnati, Ohio, is a complex mix of many different things: its present and its past, its transitions and its legacies; what defines it and distinguishes it; what makes people love it and what makes some eventually leave it. This collection, written by both lifelong Cincinnatians and recent transplants, offers a sampling of life there today--the tensions, debates, the life-and-death battles, and, not least of all, the joys that make this city so alive. It's a genuinely felt collection that offers a unique perspective on an evolving and energized city, a homegrown portrait showcasing the voices of people who know something about the way life feels--and why it feels that way--in their communities. It's about all the ways Cincinnati's differences are the very things that make the city so alive.
Here, you'll find stories that look at: How Mount Auburn changed in the aftermath of the police shooting of Samuel DuBose - The Catholic legacy in Mount Adams - A busy intersection in gentrifying Over-the-Rhine - The fading rural landscape of Camp Dennison - How life by the Ohio River defines and shapes life in Ludlow Edited by Nick Swartsell and with short essays by Gail Finke, Pauletta Hansel, Dani McClain, Ronny Salerno, Katie Vogel, and many others, this collection offers an intimate tour of the city's seven hills, its fifty-two neighborhoods, and its countless stories. Natives of Cincinnati will recognize both their streets and their histories, and readers from outside the city will get an unfiltered look at the locale known as "The Queen City."
Our Endless and Proper Work
9781948742948
Regular price $16.95 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%Writer and editorial consultant Ron Hogan helps readers develop an ongoing writing practice not as a means to publication, but as an end in and of itself.
Many people pick up the guitar without eyeing a career as a professional musician or start painting without caring if their work appears in a gallery. But with writing, the assumption seems to be that publication is the main goal. Why?
In Our Endless and Proper Work, the second in Belt's series of books about writing and publishing―along with Anne Trubek's So You Want to Publish a Book?―Ron Hogan argues writing should be an end in itself for more people. The founder of the literary site Beatrice, and creator of the popular newsletter "Destroy Your Safe and Happy Lives," Hogan offers concrete steps to help writers develop an ongoing creative practice. Chapters include:
- Reclaiming Your Time for Writing
- Finding Your Groove
- Preparing Yourself for the Long Haul
- Your Voice is Valuable.
Sprinkled throughout are adorable illustrations by "Positive Doodles" creator Emm Roy.
A concise, inspirational book for anyone looking to take up writing--not for money and fame, but because it can help you lead a happier, more whole and engaged life.
The Dayton Anthology
9781948742801
Regular price $20.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%A part of Belt's City Anthology Series, The Dayton Anthology offers a portrait of a city recovering from the twin 2019 crises of devastating tornadoes and the mass shooting that took the lives of nine residents in the Oregon District.
In over fifty essays and poems, contributors reflect on these traumas and the longer-term ills of disinvestment and decay that have plagued Dayton and the Miami Valley for years. But they also draw our attention to the resilience of the people who call Dayton home. This is the city that brought the world the Wright brothers' invention of flight, the cash register, and the hydraulic pump. It also gave us the soaring poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar and the comedy of Dave Chappelle. Edited by Shannon Shelton Miller and with contributions from Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley and former Ohio Governor Bob Taft.
A delightful tour of a city that never counts itself out, that captures the true diversity of Dayton's residents.
The Louisville Anthology
9781948742702
Regular price $20.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%"A book that looks to stir emotions. It holds a lot of anger."--LEO Weekly. Part of Belt's City Anthology Series.
What is Louisville's identity in the twenty-first century? Is it the southernmost midwestern city, the midwestiest southern town, or somewhere in between? Living on the border of two regions creates a hybrid sensibility full of contradictions that can be difficult to articulate beyond "from Louisville, not Kentucky." In this collection of evocative essays and poems by natives and transplants, The Louisville Anthology offers locals and visitors a closer look at compelling private and public spaces around town. It's an attempt to articulate what defines Louisville beyond its most recognized cultural exports. Edited by Erin Keene, editor-in-chief at Salon.com, this is a portrait of a city caught between onward and remember-when. Here, readers will encounter stories about:
- Louisville's early punk scene
- Life as a transplant in Butcherville
- A Trip to Cave Hill Cemetery
- A Trek to find Muhammad Ali's Louisville.
A perfect book for Louisville natives or for those looking for a more nuanced look at an often-stereotyped region of the country.
Standpipe
9781948742825
Regular price $16.95 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%A brief, elegant memoir of the author's work as a Red Cross volunteer delivering emergency water to residents of Flint, Michigan. "A heartfelt portrait of a city, and a man, grieving."?Kirkus Reviews
A collection of short essays and "exquisitely chiseled vignettes," Standpipe: Delivering Water in Flint sets the struggles of a midwestern city in crisis against David Hardin's narrative of his personal journey as his mother succumbs to dementia and death. Written with a poet's eye for detail and quiet metaphor, Standpipe offers an intimate look at one man's engagement with both civic and familial trauma. It's also a vivid investigation into how we all heal as a community.
This gentle, observant book is for readers looking to understand the human experience of the Flint Water Crisis, and as well as "the deplorable conditions in Flint and the injustices that have plagued it for generations."
The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World
9781953368546
Regular price $38.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%The true story of Marshall "Major" Taylor, who overcame racial prejudice to become one of the most dominant cyclists in history. Part of Belt's Revival series and with an introduction by Zito Madu.
The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World, which Taylor self-published in 1928, gives a riveting first-person account of his rise to the highest echelons of professional cycling. Born in Indianapolis, he eventually became the first African American cycling world champion, going on to set seven world records in the sport. Readers will learn about Taylor's exploits as an athlete, including his early taste of success in a grueling six-day race, his unparalleled dominance as a sprinter, and some of his most bitter defeats. But the man who achieved international fame as the "Black Cyclone" also details the extreme prejudice he faced both on and off the track. It's a story about one of the greatest athletes in American history but also a moving testament to Taylor's resilience and determination in the face of overt racism and seemingly impossible odds.
As he tells us himself, "I am writing my memoirs . . . in the spirit calculated to solicit simple justice, equal rights, and a square deal for the posterity of my down-trodden but brave people, not only in athletic games and sports, but in every honorable game of human endeavor."
Pittsburgh Neighborhood Guidebook
9781948742719
Regular price $20.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%Part of Belt's Neighborhood Guidebook Series, a probing look at the Steel City's diverse locales.
Pittsburgh is made up of more than ninety different neighborhoods. And while The Pittsburgh Neighborhood Guidebook can't detail every last one of them, it does its best, exploring the contrasts and contradictions that define the city's neighborhoods and how they play out through the personal narratives of those who live there. Edited by Ben Gwin (Clean Time), in these pages you'll find stories about:
- Old Lawrenceville, Garfield, and Squirrel Hill
- Swisshelm Park and Oakland in East Pittsburgh
- Crafton-Ingram, Thorn Street, and the bars of Dormont.
In over thirty poems and essays by lifetime residents, transplants, and transients, The Pittsburgh Neighborhood Guidebook offers a portrait of a city that's constantly being hailed for its renaissance but that is still marked by the old remnants of wealth inequality, gentrification, and racism.
The newest installment in Belt's Neighborhood Guidebook Series, The Pittsburgh Neighborhood Guidebook is a book for anyone who thinks they know Pittsburgh, or just wishes they did.
(Mis)Diagnosed
9781948742993
Regular price $16.95 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%"A passionate and well-informed study on the importance of improving inclusiveness in mental health evaluations."―Kirkus Reviews
In a clear, empathetic style, Jonathan Foiles, author of the critically acclaimed This City Is Killing Me, takes us through troubling examples of bias in mental health work. Placing them in context of past blunders in the history of psychiatry and the DSM, he looks closely at questions that lay bare the intersections between mental health care, race, gender, and sexuality:
- Why are women more likely to be labeled borderline personalities?
- Is transphobia being treated today like homosexuality was in the past?
- Has "protest psychosis," a term used to diagnose Black men during the civil rights era, simply been renamed schizoaffective disorder?
- How different is our current label of "intellectual disability" from the history of eugenics?
- What does it actually mean to be diagnosed with a "mental illness"?
This slim but wide-ranging collection of essays wrestles with these questions and offers potential ways forward in a world where mental health diagnoses can be helpful, but not necessarily absolute.
A pragmatic and sympathetic guide to how we might craft a better and more just therapeutic future for all people.
Pure America
9781948742733
Regular price $26.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%Longlisted for the 2022 PEN America John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction, a "riveting and tightly argued" history of eugenics and its ripple effects, by acclaimed historian Elizabeth Catte.
Between 1927 and 1979, more than 8,000 people were involuntarily sterilized in five hospitals across the state of Virginia. From this plain and terrible fact springs Elizabeth Catte's Pure America, a sweeping, unsparing history of eugenics in Virginia, and by extension the United States. Virginia's eugenics program was not the misguided initiative of well-meaning men of the day, writes Catte, it was a manifestation of white supremacy. It was a form of employment insurance. It was a means of controlling "troublesome" women and a philosophy that helped remove poor people from valuable land. It was cruel and it was wrong. As was amply evidenced by her acclaimed 2018 book What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia, Catte has no room for excuses; no patience for equivocation. What does it mean for modern America, she asks here, that such buildings are given the second chance that 8,000 citizens never got?
"Grounded, well-rendered, and highly disturbing," Pure America is another necessary corrective to the historical record, a must-read for anyone concerned with how to repair its damage.
Radical Humility
9781948742962
Regular price $16.95 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%This innovative essay collection explores the personal and civic function of humility from a range of popular and scholarly perspectives.
What does humility mean and why does it matter in an age of golden escalators and billionaire entrepreneurs? How can the cultivation of humility empower us to see success in failure, to fight against injustice, to stretch beyond our usual ways of thinking, and to foster a culture of listening in an age of digital shouting?
Edited by Rebekah Modrak and Jamie Vander Broek, Radical Humility: Essays on Ordinary Acts brings together contributions from scholars, psychologists, and artists to offer some answers to these questions. Contributions include:
- Charles M. Blow on Trump's arrogance
- Lynette Clemetson on doing good journalism in an age of the attention economy
- Tyler Denmead on whiteness's lack of humility
- Eranda Jayawickreme on learning how to admit what you don't know.
Having witnessed the personal and civic costs of narcissism and arrogance, these and other writers consider humility as a valuable process?a state of being?with the power to impact institutions, systems, families, and individuals, and give voice to the ways in which humility is practiced in many ordinary but extraordinary actions.
This groundbreaking collection deserves a place in the library of anyone seeking alternatives to a culture of self-aggrandizing excess.
A Pandemic in Residence
9781948742931
Regular price $16.95 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%A debut essay collection of remarkable breadth and erudition by a young Pakistani American doctor and writer. "Wry and smart."―The New York Times Book Review
During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Selina Mahmood―in the middle of the first year of a neurology residency―found scraps of time between grueling shifts to write. The resulting collection is her personal and meticulous chronicle of an unprecedented year in medicine. It's also the debut of a young and uncommon talent.
In the tradition of Oliver Sacks and Paul Kalanithi, Dr. Mahmood takes the science of neurology and spins it into poetry, exploring theories of the mind, Pakistani-American identity, immigration, family, the history of medicine, and, of course, the challenges of becoming a physician in the midst of a global health crisis. Skipping nimbly across continents and drawing inspiration from an array of sources ranging from Thomas Edison to Yuval Harari to Beyoncé, she has crafted an elegant, incisive, and utterly original investigation. As Salon put it, this book is "A profound, moving and unfiltered account of not just a frontline worker's experience at an unprecedented moment, but a story of family and identity, of pop songs and PPE."
A must-read for anyone seeking insight into the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as a broader understanding of our universal search for meaning.
The History of Democracy Has Yet to Be Written
9781953368003
Regular price $26.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%"This book made me laugh out loud and also gave me glimpses of an entire horizon of possibility I hadn't seen before."--Chris Hayes, host of MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes
End the filibuster. Abolish the Senate. Make everyone vote. Only if we do this (and then some), says Thomas Geoghegan, might we heal our fractured democracy.
In 2008, Geoghegan?then an established labor lawyer and prolific writer?embarked on a campaign to represent Chicago's Fifth District in Congress, in a special election called when Rahm Emanuel stepped down to serve as President Barack Obama's chief of staff. For ninety days leading up to the election, Geoghegan, a political neophyte at age sixty, knocked on doors, shook hands at train stations, and made fundraising calls. On election night he lost, badly.
But this humbling experience helped him develop a framework for reimagining American government in a way that is truly just, fair, and constitutional. Taking its title from Walt Whitman, The History of Democracy Is Yet to Be Written: How We Have to Learn to Govern All Over Again, combines hilarious tales from his time on the campaign trail with an incisive vision of how we might be able to create an America that fulfills its great promise. In a polarized country, where 100 million citizens don't vote, and those who do are otherwise rarely politically engaged, he makes an impassioned case for the possibility of a truly representative democracy, one built on the ideals of the House of Representatives, the true chamber of the people, and inspired by the poet who gives the book its name.
At once an engaging memoir and a call to arms, The History of Democracy Is Yet to Be Written will inspire and invigorate political veterans and young activists alike.
An Alternative History of Pittsburgh
9781948742924
Regular price $18.95 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%Ed Simon tells the story of Pittsburgh through this exploration of its hidden histories--the LA Review of Books calls it an "epic, atomic history of the Steel City."
The land surrounding the confluence of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio rivers has supported communities of humans for millennia. Over the past four centuries, however, it has been transformed countless times by the many people who call it home. In this brief, lyrical, and idiosyncratic collection, Ed Simon, a staff writer at The Millions, follows the story of America's furnace through a series of interconnected segments, covering all manner of Pittsburgh-beloved people, places, and things, including:
- Paleolithic Pittsburgh
- The Whiskey Rebellion
- The attempted assassination of Henry Frick
- The Harmonists
- The Mystery, Pittsburgh's radical, Black nationalist newspaper
- The myth of Joe Magarac
- Billy Strayhorn, Duke Ellington, Andy Warhol, and much, much more.
Accessible and funny, An Alternative History of Pittsburgh is a must-read for anyone curious about this storied city, and for Pittsburghers who think they know it all too well already.
The Indianapolis Anthology
9781948742917
Regular price $20.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%Part of Belt's city anthology series, a reconsideration of one of America's most misunderstood cities.
Is Indianapolis just another midwestern city to fly over on the way to bigger and better destinations? Or is it, as locals know, a place where different peoples and ideals converge to create a rich cultural center? The Indianapolis Anthology showcases Naptown's vibrancy and diversity with pieces from journalists, poets, historians, established community voices, and first-time writers. The Circle City is more than the home of the Indianapolis 500, John Dillinger, Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds, Kurt Vonnegut, Prozac, and Wonder Bread. In these pages, you'll find:
- lawn chairs in the beds of pick-ups
- Punk rock in Naptown
- suffragists and entrepreneurs
- cement pietàs
- dog bakeries and yoga studios
- red brick bungalows and war memorials
- steakburgers and Mexican seafood; pho and sauerbraten.
In other words, you'll find images from a city that is truly a cross section of today's America. Edited by Norman "Buzz" Minnick and with contributions from Etheridge Knight, Terrance Hayes, Michael Martone, and Karen Kovacik.
An insiders' look that will make you see a great midwestern city in a brand-new light.
Stories of Ohio
9781948742214
Regular price $14.95 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%Part of Belt's Revivals Series and with a new introduction by Belt Publishing founder, Anne Trubek.
A novelist, critic, and playwright, William Dean Howells was friends with such luminaries as Mark Twain, Henry James, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Though he's best known for his East Coast novels like The Rise of Silas Lampham and A Hazard of New Fortunes, Howells never forgot his roots in Ohio. And in Stories of Ohio, he offers a series of short vignettes that chronicle the state's history, including:
- the Native burial grounds of the Serpent Mound
- the first European settlers on the frontier
- Ohio's role in the War of 1812
- the Civil War generals and presidents the state birthed in the late nineteenth century.
Though this history primarily focuses on life in Ohio before the nineteenth century, it will help today's reader see the state in a brand-new light.
This unsung classic of American literature helps shed light on both Ohio and the career of a writer known as the "Dean of American Letters."
Detroit in 50 Maps
9781953368027
Regular price $30.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%Detroit in 50 Maps shows you the Motor City from entirely new perspectives, from neighborhood coffee shops to the legacy of redlining.
There are thousands of ways to map a city. Roads, bridges, and railways help you navigate the twists and turns; topography gives you the lay of the land; population growth shows you its changing fortunes. But the best maps let you feel what that city's really like. Detroit in 50 Maps deconstructs the Motor City in surprising new ways. Track where new coffee shops and coworking spaces have opened and closed in the last five years. Find the areas with the highest concentrations of pizzerias, Coney Island hot dog shops, or ring-necked pheasants. In each colorful map, you'll find a new perspective on one of America's most misunderstood cities and the people who live here.
A conversation starter for Detroiters past, present, and future, Detroit in 50 Maps is for anyone keen to understand the city in new and surprising ways.
The Pocket Pawpaw Cookbook
9780998018898
Regular price $16.95 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%"I have yet to meet a person who is drawn to pawpaws who is not a good person."
Pawpaws are found in the fleeting, honeyed weeks between August and October. They are fleshy and awkward to eat, sweetly fragrant, and they do not travel well at all. But they were once a favorite of Native Americans, and George Washington presumably loved them for dessert. Today, they are beloved by foragers, keepers of regional food traditions, and anyone seeking relief from the industrial food chain.
In The Pocket Pawpaw Cookbook, Sara Bir sets the humble pawpaw center stage, with detailed information on how to harvest, source, store, and?of course?cook with these uniquely midwestern delicacies. Here you'll find recipes for:
- pawpaw cornbread
- pawpaw pudding
- key lime pawpaw cheesecake
- banana-pawpaw ketchup
Sidebars address questions as varied as "Where can I buy frozen pawpaws?" and "How do I use pawpaw in a cocktail?" Written with humor and love for a curious subject, The Pocket Pawpaw Cookbook will inspire you to experiment in the kitchen and get out into the woods. With an introduction by Alexis Nikole Nelson, TikTok star and @blackforager.
The Milwaukee Anthology
9781948742382
Regular price $20.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%Part of Belt's City Anthology Series. "[A] mosaic of a book."--Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The Milwaukee Anthology is a book about hope and hurt in one of America's toughest zip codes. In the essays, narratives, poems, and art included here, you won't find Summerfest or Laverne and Shirley, but you will find honest first-hand stories about Riverwest, Sherman Park, Hmong New Year's shows, 7 Mile Fair, and the Rolling Mill commemoration. Edited by Justin Kern, and with more than 50 contributors including Dasha Kelly, Pardeep Kaleka, and Michael Perry, this collection includes stories about:
- Redlining in the city
- Painting a community mural in Sherman Park
- Reflections after the Oak Creek Sikh Temple Shooting
- The city's upstart microbrewing industry
- The rise of Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks.
It's an anthology about a place on the lake that can make you say "yes" and wonder "why" in the same thought. A place that's both a big town and small city, run down and redeveloped, tararrel and terror.
A collection that shows the Cream City is much weirder and more wonderful than you may think it is.
Midwest Architecture Journeys
9781948742573
Regular price $40.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%"The Midwest finally gets its due through essays penned by architects and critics, who shine a much-deserved spotlight on the region's architecture, from its celebrated landmarks to its lesser-known projects."
Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright may be the Midwest's (and the nation's) most famous architects, but the region has always been fertile ground for both master and amateur builders. Through a gorgeous array of photographs and short essays, Midwest Architecture Journeys takes readers on a trip to visit some of the region's most inventive buildings by architects such as Bertrand Goldberg, Bruce Goff, David Haid, Earl Young, and Lillian Leenhouts. It also includes stops at less obvious but equally daring sites, such as:
- The Cahokia mounds
- Buffalo grain silos
- Flint parking lots
- Dayton flea markets
- Fermilab
- New Glarus restaurants
- Minneapolis underground buildings
- Bronzeville churches
- Pruitt-Igoe public housing
- Cleveland's abandoned warehouses.
This "vital collection of essays," full of stunning photographs, proves that what might seem flat is actually monumental, and what we assume to be boring is brimming with experimentation.
The "perfect coffee table book" that's also perfect for your next road trip.
The Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook
9781948742498
Regular price $24.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%Part of Belt's Neighborhood Guidebook Series, The Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook is an intimate exploration of the Windy City's history and identity. "Required reading"--The Chicago Tribune
Officially, Chicago has 77 neighborhoods. Unofficially, though, that number's closer to 200. But what does that mean for the people who actually call Chicago home? In an eclectic collection of essays, poems, photos, and visual art, The Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook aims to explore the city's overlooked corners. Edited by Martha Bayne, and with help from the Read/Write Library, the book builds on 2017's critically acclaimed Rust Belt Chicago: An Anthology. Here, you'll find compelling stories from all over the city:
- What one pizzeria meant to a boy growing up in Ashburn
- The South Shore's beauty and pain
- The best borscht in Ukranian Village
- The alleys of the Gold Coast
- Rogers Park's ever-shifting identity.
This lyrical and subjective guide to Chicago features work by Megan Stielstra, Audrey Petty, Alex Hernandez, Sebastián Hidalgo, Dmitry Samarov, Ed Marszewski, Lily Be, Jonathan Foiles, and many more. It's a book about the day-to-day lives of people in the city and above all else, about the changes those people have witnessed, suffered, and enacted.
In this idiosyncratic guidebook, Chicagoans will recognize both their streets and their stories, and readers from outside the city will get an intimate portrait of one of America's most iconic cities.
Cleveland in 50 Maps
9781948742559
Regular price $30.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%An urban atlas that is about so much more than directions, Cleveland in 50 Maps offers new perspectives on one of America's most misunderstood cities.
The best maps let you feel what a place is really like, and Cleveland in 50 Maps deconstructs the Forest City in a way that's never been done before. With colorful maps and insightful commentary, follow the changing locations of breweries, music venues, and commuter rail lines. Track the Cleveland Clinic's growing east side footprint, year-by-year attendance at the Jake, and the addition of communities to the Cultural Gardens. Find out which local high schools produce the most NFL players and which locations major presidential candidates visited in 2016. Discover the massive salt mine under Lake Erie and the barricades on the border of Shaker Heights. In each one of these artful gems, you'll gain a deeper understanding of how people actually experience the city of Cleveland and how its diverse communities actually take shape there.
A beautiful insider's look that's perfect for native Clevelanders or urban explorers who are looking to get to know their city even better.
Life Sentences
9781948742597
Regular price $16.95 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%A collection of poetry and prose by six incarcerated men. Featuring an introduction by Amber Epps and an afterword by novelist John Edgar Wideman.
The six authors of Life Sentences?Fly, Faruq, Khalifa, Malakki, Oscar, and Shawn?met at the State Correctional Institution in Pittsburgh and came together in 2013 to form the Elsinore Bennu Think Tank for Restorative Justice. The men met weekly for years, along with other writers, activists, and political leaders who bonded over the creation of this book, a hybrid of prison memoir, philosophy, history, policy document, and manifesto.
Centered around the principles of restorative justice, which aims to heal communities broken by criminal and state violence through collective action, Life Sentences is more than a literary collection. It is a how to guide for those who are trapped inside any community. It's also a letter of invitation, asking readers to join with the incarcerated and their families so we can all continue to fly over walls, form loving connections with each other, and teach one another to be free.
An urgent collection that sheds light on the criminal justice system, written by those most directly involved in it.
This City Is Killing Me
9781948742474
Regular price $16.95 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%Jonathan Foiles weaves together psychology and public policy, exploring the trauma underlying urbanization in a book Kirkus Reviews calls an "urgent call for reform."
When Jonathan Foiles was a graduate student in social work, he had to choose between specializing in either mental health or public policy. But once he began working, he found it impossible to tell the two apart. As he counseled poor patients from Chicago's South and West Sides, he realized individual therapy couldn't account for all the ways unemployment, poverty, lack of affordable housing, and other policy decisions impacted the well-being of both individuals and communities.
Through a series of beautifully written and accessible case studies, Foiles lets us in on the stories of individual poor Chicagoans. He teaches us how he makes diagnoses, explains how therapists before him would analyze his patients, and teaches us about the profound ways that policy decisions contribute to individual suffering.
A remarkable, unique work of medical writing that serves as a call to action, this report by an experienced mental health professional is a must-read for anyone interested in the overlaps between mental health, public policy, and urbanization.
One of Ours
9781948742535
Regular price $14.95 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1923, One of Ours is the story of Claude Wheeler, the son of a Nebraska farmer. As a young man, Claude is dissatisfied with Nebraska farm like as well as his marriage to a childhood friend, desperate for a more cosmopolitan life. When America joins the Great War, Claude decides to enlist, where he finds excitement and fulfillment--as well as tragedy--on the battlefield.
One of Ours was considered a failure by some male critics of the day: H. L. Mencken said it "drops to the level of a serial in the Ladies' Home Journal, fought out not in France, but on a Hollywood movie-lot," and Ernest Hemingway panned Cather for not having experienced the front-line herself.
However, the Pulitzer committee considered it the greatest novel of the year, and this accessible, dramatic novel sold many more copies than Cather's more famous ones, O, Pioneers! and My Antonia.
The St. Louis Anthology
9781948742443
Regular price $20.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%"A dazzling portrait of a Midwestern city whose relationships among socio-economics, religion, civil rights, and class are consistently complex." A part of Belt's City Anthology Series.
St. Louis is a fragmented place. It's physically dissected by rivers, highways, walls, and fences, but it's also a place where one's race, class, religion, and zip code may as well be cards in a rigged poker game, where the winners' prize is the ability to ignore the fact that the losers have drastically shorter life expectancies. But it can also be a city of warmth, love, and beauty?especially in its contrasts.
Edited by Ryan Schuessler (Sweeter Voices Still: An LGBTQ Anthology from Middle America), the collection features nearly 70 essays penned by St. Louis writers, journalists, clerics, poets, and activists including Aisha Sultan, Galen Gritts, Vivian Gibson, Maja Sadikovic, Nartana Premachandra, Sophia Benoit, Robert Langellier, Samuel Autman, Umar Lee, and more. Here you'll learn about:
- The rent strike of 1969
- Religious life in Pruitt-Igoe public housing
- Protest art in Ferguson
- Segregation in the Vandeventer neighborhood
- A church closing in Kinloch.
The St. Louis Anthology dares to confront the city's nostalgia and its traumas, celebrating those who have faced both who live complex lives in this city against a backdrop of its red brick, muddy rivers, and sticky summer nights when the symphony of cicadas and jazz is almost loud enough to drown out the gunshots.
A perfect introduction to St. Louis for people who want to learn more about it and a great resource for those people from St. Louis who want to hear stories told by their own neighbors.
Radical Suburbs
9781948742368
Regular price $16.95 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%"Radical Suburbs is a revelation. Amanda Kolson Hurley will open your eyes to the wide diversity and rich history of our ongoing suburban experiment."--Richard Florida
America's suburbs are not the homogenous places we sometimes take them for. Today's suburbs are racially, ethnically, and economically diverse, with as many Democratic as Republican voters, a growing population of renters, and rising poverty. The cliche of broad lawns and white picket fences is well past its expiration date.
The history of suburbia is equally surprising. Rather than bland, sprawling cookie-cutter developments, some American suburbs were once fertile ground for utopian planning, communal living, socially conscious design, and integrated housing. In Radical Suburbs, Amanda Kolson Hurley, an editor at Bloomberg Businessweek, takes us on a tour of some of these radical communities, including:
- the co-housing commune of Old Economy, Pennsylvania
- a tiny-house anarchist community in Piscataway, New Jersey
- a government-planned garden city in Greenbelt, Maryland
- a racially integrated subdivision (before the Fair Housing Act) in Trevose, Pennsylvania
- experimental Modernist enclaves in Lexington, Massachusetts
- and the mixed-use, architecturally daring Reston, Virginia.
Here you will find blueprints for affordable, walkable, and integrated communities, filled with a range of environmentally sound residential options. It's a timely reminder, as NPR put it, that "any place, even a suburb, can be radical if you approach it the right way."
An insightful study that will make you rethink your assumptions about suburbia and possibly remake its future.