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The Buffalo Soldier
9781589803916
Regular price $16.99 Sale price $12.74 Save 25%Red State Blues
9781948742061
Regular price $20.00 Sale price $15.00 Save 25%Much was made of the 2016 electoral flip when traditionally Democratic states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Ohio tipped the presidency to Donald Trump. Countless think pieces explored this newfound exotic constituency of blue voters who suddenly swung red. But what about those in the Midwest who remain true blue?
Red State Blues speaks to the lived experience of progressives, activists, and ordinary Democrats who are pushing back against simplistic narratives of the Midwest as "Trump Country"--a narrative that has erased the region's rich history of grassroots, progressive politics. They've been living there all along, and as the essays in this collection demonstrate, they're not leaving anytime soon.
Edited by Martha Bayne (Rust Belt Chicago, The Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook), the collection includes work from:
- Sarah Kendzior, author of The View from Flyover Country
- Kenyon College president Sean Decatur
- Pittsburgh city councilman Dan Gilman
- Phil Christman, and many more.
A nuanced look at the true complexity of a region that has always refused to submit to stereotypes about it.
The Damnation of Theron Ware
9781948742184
Regular price $14.95 Sale price $11.21 Save 25%First published in 1896, this unsung masterpiece of American literature details the rise and fall of a Methodist minister in upstate New York. Part of Belt's Revivals series and with a new introduction by Ruth Graham.
The Damnation of Theron Ware is the story of a young pastor who comes to a small town in the Adirondacks to spread the gospel. Once he gets there, his congregation slowly leads him down a path of secular enlightenment, encouraging him to question the very same scripture he has devoted his life to. Through new friends, he has encounters beautiful art and music and gains new insights into the world of Darwinian science. But when he finds himself carried away by these fresh new experiences, where they lead him is not at all what he expected.
A forerunner of the classic naturalistic novels of the early twentieth century, Harold Frederic's work is considered one of the great American novels of his time, a book that belongs on the same shelf with Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, and Theodore Dreiser.
How to Live in Detroit Without Being a Jackass
9781948742313
Regular price $20.00 Sale price $15.00 Save 25%In one of Curbed: Detroit's Top 11 Books about Detroit, Aaron Foley, editor of The Detroit Neighborhood Guidebook, offers the definitive inside look at one of America's most talked-about and least understood cities.
With a wry sense of humor, Foley, a native Detroiter, walks you through the most difficult questions about the Motor City, offering seven simple rules for making it there. Perfect for coastal transplants, wary suburbanites, unwitting gentrifiers, or start-up disruptors, this recently updated guidebook offers advice on everything from the glories of Vernors ginger ale to how to rehab a house to how to not sound like an uninformed racist. In twenty short chapters, Foley walks you through:
- How Detroiters do business
- The unofficial guide to enjoying Faygo
- How to be gay in Detroit
- How to raise a Detroit kid
- How to party in Detroit.
Both hilarious and insightful, this no-frills look at Motown is written for those who live there but also, as Vanity Fair put it, "for anyone participating in contemporary global urbanization who would like to avoid behaving like a subjugating dick."
Rust Belt Chicago
9780997774375
Regular price $20.00 Sale price $15.00 Save 25%A part of Belt's City Anthology Series. "A lively grab bag of essays, fiction and poetry that reads at times like a who's who of contemporary Chicago writers/residents."--The Chicago Tribune
Chicago is a city built on meat, railroads, and steel, on opportunity and exploitation. But its identity has long involved so much more than manufacturing. Today, the city continues to lure new residents from around the world, and from across a region rocked by recession and deindustrialization.
The problems that plague the region don't disappear once you pass the Indiana border, though. In fact, they're often amplified. And Chicago is a complicated city because of that, defined by movement that's the anchor of the Midwest, but bound to its neighbors by a shared ecosystem and economy.
Rust Belt Chicago collects essays, fiction, and poetry from more than fifty writers who speak directly to the concerns the city shares with the region at large, and the elements that set it apart. With contributions from writers like Aleksandar Hemon, Kathleen Rooney, and Zoe Zolbrod, and here you'll find stories about:
- Buying Bread on Devon Street
- The Cantinas of Pilsen
- Bike commutes through the North Side
- Adventures on the El.
Writing with affection, frustration, anger, and joy, the writers in this collection capture all the harmony and dissonance that define one cacophonous place.
A wide-ranging insider's look at one of the world's most iconic cities.
The New Midwest
9780997774283
Regular price $16.95 Sale price $12.71 Save 25%A sleek volume that expands our understanding of the Midwest through the writers who have portrayed it. Hailed by The Chicago Tribune for seeing the Midwest "for what it really is."
In the public imagination, Midwestern literature has not evolved far beyond stories of heartland laborers and hardscrabble immigrants from past centuries. But as the region has changed, so has its fiction. In this book, Mark Athitakis explores how shifts in work, class, place, race, and culture have been reflected or ignored by contemporary novelists and short story writers. Authors Athitakis considers include Marilynne Robinson, Toni Morrison, Jane Smiley, Leon Forrest, Aleksandar Hemon, Bonnie Jo Campbell, and Stewart O'Nan.
This book is a call to reconsider the way we think about Midwestern fiction, and one that is sure to prompt some new must-have additions to your reading list.