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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.
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 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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
Who We Lost
9781953368539
Regular price $18.95 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%Who We Lost is the first book that directly acknowledges the free-floating grief of the COVID-bereaved, affirms that it must be addressed, and offers a purposeful activity that respects mourners as well as the mourned.
In 2020, Martha Greenwald invited mourners to write memories of loved ones lost to COVID on the Who We Lost website. The site has been growing ever since, as the bereaved continue to write and publish stories, and the writers’ toolbox section of the website offers guidance and prompts for anyone wishing to contribute their story about who they lost to this grassroots public memorial.
The resultant book, Who We Lost: A Portable COVID Memorial, contains dozens of essays and a writing guide for those wishing to add their own story about a loved one who died from COVID. It is a community-generated tribute, a eulogy, a handbook, and a collective memorial.
The Girls
9781953368492
Regular price $24.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%From the best-selling author of Giant and So Big, a sweeping look at the lives of three generations of women on Chicago's South Side. Part of Belt's Revivals series and with a new introduction by Kathleen Rooney (Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk).First published in 1921, Edna Ferber's The Girls revolves around the "three Charlottes" of the Thrift family--Great-Aunt Charlotte, her niece Lottie, and Lottie's niece Charley. All single "old maids," as the narrator describes them, their lives weave together as they deal with issues involving money, work, friendship, family, and love as they strive to join Chicago's growing middle class in the early twentieth century. With a historic span that travels from the Civil War to World War I, Ferber highlights how the three generations of Charlottes lead very different lives. But we also see the ways their experiences rhyme with one another and how, despite the social advances in America, as Kathleen Rooney writes in her introduction, all three have to confront "a sexist and claustrophobic societal atmosphere in which any little act of self-assertion can feel like a leap from a precipice." Told through Ferber's assured and generous style, and full of her signature strong female characters, this rediscovered American classic deserves a spot on the shelf next to other great Chicago novels like Sister Carrie and The Adventures of Augie March.
Midwest Pie
9781953368522
Regular price $18.95 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%- A historical tour of midwestern pies that recalls when recipes were shared through faded note cards and junior league cookbooks.New England may say it's the "Great American Pie Belt," but pie has a rich and varied history in the American Midwest too. Stop by any church or community event in the heartland today and you're likely to see as many types of pie on the dessert table as there are people who made them. Midwest Pie highlights the treats, both sweet and savory, that have come to define this region. Here, you'll learn about bean pie's origins in the Nation of Islam, the popularity of "desperation pies" during the Depression, how Michigan miners ate lunch "pasties" in the mines, and much more. Full of accessible instructions and helpful sidebars, you'll learn the stories behind a variety of pies, including: Hoosier Pie
- Schnitz Pie
- Sawdust Pie
- Ohio Buckeye Pie
- Runza
Midwest Pie is the perfect collection for any home chef looking to learn more about the diversity and deliciousness of one of the region's most enduring culinary contributions.
El Dorado Freddy's
9781948742627
Regular price $20.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%A charming and accessible collection of poems dedicated to one of the most American of inventions--fast food.
El Dorado Freddy's may be the first book of fast-food poetry. In poems like "Olive Garden," "Culver's," "Popeye's Louisiana Kitchen," "Cracker Barrel," "Applebee's (after James Wright)," Caine--owner of the Raven Book Store in Lawrence, Kansas--"reviews" chain restaurants, bringing our attention to a slice of American life we often overlook, even though it's everywhere. Along the way, he touches on such topics as parenting, the Midwest, politics, and the pitfalls of nostalgia. Caine's wry, deceptively accomplished poems are paired with Tara Wray's color-drenched photos. The result is a literary yet goofy homage to American food and identity, set in a midwestern landscape dotted by the light of fast-food restaurants' glowing signs.
Perfect for those readers who love both poetry and Popeye's.
The Girls
9781953368553
Regular price $38.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%From the best-selling author of Giant and So Big, a sweeping look at the lives of three generations of women on Chicago's South Side. Part of Belt's Revivals series and with a new introduction by Kathleen Rooney (Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk).First published in 1921, Edna Ferber's The Girls revolves around the "three Charlottes" of the Thrift family--Great-Aunt Charlotte, her niece Lottie, and Lottie's niece Charley. All single "old maids," as the narrator describes them, their lives weave together as they deal with issues involving money, work, friendship, family, and love as they strive to join Chicago's growing middle class in the early twentieth century. With a historic span that travels from the Civil War to World War I, Ferber highlights how the three generations of Charlottes lead very different lives. But we also see the ways their experiences rhyme with one another and how, despite the social advances in America, as Kathleen Rooney writes in her introduction, all three have to confront "a sexist and claustrophobic societal atmosphere in which any little act of self-assertion can feel like a leap from a precipice." Told through Ferber's assured and generous style, and full of her signature strong female characters, this rediscovered American classic deserves a spot on the shelf next to other great Chicago novels like Sister Carrie and The Adventures of Augie March.
Buffalo in 50 Maps
9781953368485
Regular price $34.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%The third entry in Belt's urban cartography series, Buffalo in 50 Maps offers a truly unique view of the City of Good Neighbors, from the East Side to Millionaires' Row to Cazenovia Park.
The best maps give you a feeling for what a place is really like, and Buffalo in 50 Maps offers a brand-new look at both the past and present of the Queen City of the Great Lakes. Through its colorful maps and insightful commentary, you'll discover the history of the city's changing boundaries, its numerous breweries, and its most popular bus routes. Learn how long it takes to get to a Bills game on Sunday, why the city smells like Cheerios, or where the city's immigrants have recently opened businesses. You'll also discover the city's food deserts, how the layout of its streets led to intense segregation, and how its vacant lots reveal where reinvestment and development have actually taken place.
It's a beautiful and nuanced look that's perfect for Buffalo natives but also for those who just want to get to know the city a little bit better.
Trust the Circle
9781953368607
Regular price $28.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%When Rubén Castilla Herrera died suddenly in 2019, he left an acute void in Ohio's grassroots organizing community. Notably at the forefront of many regional social justice campaigns, his life and work still reverberate through the lives of those he fought so hard for: immigrants, refugees, farmworkers, the displaced, and many, many others who refuse to simply comply with injustice. Synthesizing oral histories, community voices, and ideas from queer Latinidad and migrant worker activism, Trust the Circle details Herrera's intimate and vulnerable way of seeing the world and his role in it as an agent of change. Here, you'll learn about: - His childhood in Texas and Oregon, where he and his siblings were forced into agricultural labor after the early death of their mother, and where Herrera first encountered the Chicano activism of César Chávez and Dr. José Ángel Gutiérrez. - His move to Columbus, Ohio, and the development of his unique circle-based leadership approach. - His coming-out as a queer Latinx man in middle age. - His tireless work toward the end of his life to help provide sanctuary for undocumented migrants during the Trump administration. Marked by the voices and remembrances of those who knew Herrera best, Trust the Circle is a biography about one grassroots organizer and the profound changes he was able to accomplish. But it's also about the ways that an intersectional and inclusive approach to organizing can be applied anywhere there is injustice.
Love and Industry
9781953368584
Regular price $19.95 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%Sonya Huber, author of the award-winning Pain Woman Takes Your Keys, and Other Essays from a Nervous System, offers a candid, lyrical look inside the unsung world of exurban Illinois.New Lenox, Illinois, is a small town deep in the corn grid of the Midwest, where it runs up against the grid of south Chicagoland, a placeless location marked by geographical flatness and dwindling industry. It's also where Sonya Huber grew up, and in the twenty essays collected here, she lovingly explores the ways New Lenox--and the Midwest more generally--has come to define her life. Here, you'll find portraits of Huber's parents as they tirelessly run a small business, homages to the Gen-X joys of wearing flannel, secret insights about being a Pizza Hut waitress, and odes to the ecstasy of blasting classic rock as your car hurls along I-80. Whether she's writing about All in the Family, detailing the region's influence on David Foster Wallace, or exploring the poetry embedded in a can of Miller High Life, her vision is astute and her prose convincing. Sometimes experimental and always inventive, Love and Industry: A Midwestern Workbook takes seriously Chicagoland's farthest reaches--gritty, sweeping, a region full of its own distinct feelings of "almostness"--and transforms them into a map of the heart, a ramshackle territory marked by memory, family, regret, determination, and wonderment
Car Bombs to Cookie Tables (Revised)
9781948742672
Regular price $26.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%The Youngstown story often is told with a beginning in iron and steel and ending in decay with a subplot driven by violent mobsters and corrupt politicians. Aiming to provide a more well-rounded examination of Youngstown, this collection of essays provides an authentic look at the city through a diverse set of experiences from the perspectives of those who have lived there. Readers will gain a sense of the past, present, and future of the city. Edited by Jacqueline Marino and Will Miller, the book features contributions by Christopher Barzak, Rochelle Hurt, Eric Murphy, Ed O'Neill, Sarah Sepanek, David Skolnick, Sarah Stankorb, C Lee Tressell, Jay Williams, Andrea Wood & 35 others.
So You Want to Publish a Book?
9781948742665
Regular price $16.95 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%In So You Want to Publish a Book?, Anne Trubek, founder of Belt Publishing, demystifies the publishing process.
This insightful guide offers concrete, witty advice and information to authors, prospective authors, and those curious about the inner workings of the industry. Learn the differences between "Big Five" and independent presses, and how advances and royalties really work. Discover the surprising methods that actually move books off the shelves. Develop the lingo to make editors swoon, and challenge yourself to find the errors intentionally embedded in the text!
Team Building
9781953368331
Regular price $17.95 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%From the author of Clean Time comes a firsthand account of the organizing effort inside one of the world's largest tech companies and its impact on one Pittsburgh family.In 2019, Ben Gwin played an integral role in organizing the contract workers at Google's Pittsburgh offices. In Team Building, he takes us inside the employees' fight for better benefits and more flexible scheduling, offering us a candid account of today's labor movement and the forces in America that aim to divide workers and maintain the status quo. But this is also a personal story of struggle and triumph. As Ben works with the union, he's suddenly faced with the prospect of raising his teenage daughter alone after her mother dies of a drug overdose. As he juggles work and the challenges of single fatherhood, he offers us a frank portrait of daily American life, where it sometimes feels like every moment is an uphill battle. Expertly crafted and tightly structured, Team Building artfully explores the ways our working conditions reach deeply into our lives outside the office. It's an honest and ultimately hopeful look at the importance of building solid foundations with the teams that matter most.
The Belt Cookie Table Cookbook
9781948742832
Regular price $14.95 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%The Belt Cookie Table Cookbook celebrates the Rust Belt tradition of the cookie table with forty-one classic recipes from authentic Mahoning Valley cooks.
What's a cookie table? Funny you should ask! The cookie table is a tradition beloved by residents of Youngstown, Pittsburgh, and parts in between. It has its roots in a time when wedding cakes were far too dear for newly arrived immigrants to purchase. Instead, family and friends showed their love for a bride and groom by baking from scratch hundreds (sometimes thousands) of cookies and other small sweet treats to be shared at the reception.
The Belt Cookie Table Cookbook includes cookies from different cultures, cookies with different textures, spices, shapes, and a trove of interesting backstories. Simple cookies, ridiculously indulgent cookies, experimental cookies?they're all here. And most of all, this cookbook shares the tradition of the cookie table, a heartfelt way of building community that has endured through generations. In the tradition of the community cookbook. Author Bonnie Tawse, a former Atlas Obscura Field Agent, collects 41 recipes that include everything from pizzelles to potato chip cookies. Buy it with Belt's Car Bombs to Cookie Tables: The Youngstown Anthology for the full experience!
A wonderful testament to a local baking tradition of the Midwest and a must for any kitchen large or small.
Midwest Futures
9781948742610
Regular price $26.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%A virtuoso book about midwestern identity and the future of the region. Named a Commonweal Notable Book of 2020, a finalist for a Midwest Independent Book award, and winner of the Independent Publisher Awards' 2020 Bronze Medal for Great Lakes Nonfiction.
The Midwest: Is it middle? Or is it Western? As Phil Christman writes in this idiosyncratic, critically acclaimed essay collection, these and other ambiguities might well be the region's defining characteristic. Deftly combining history, criticism, and memoir, Christman breaks his exploration of midwestern identity, past and present, into a suite of thirty-six brief, interconnected essays. Ranging across material questions of religion, race, class, climate, and Midwestern myth making, the result is a sometimes sardonic, often uproarious, and consistently thought-provoking look at a misunderstood place and the people who call it home.
As James Fallows of The Atlantic noted, it's "A combination of history, memoir, reportage, and lit-crit that taught me a lot about a region I've reported on.... Check it out."
For anyone who has ever wondered why being from the Midwest is synonymous with "normalcy," even when nothing could be further from the truth.
Rust Belt Femme
9781948742634
Regular price $26.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%One of NPR's "Best Books of 2020," and winner of the 2020 Independent Publisher Awards' gold medal for LGBTQ+ nonfiction, Raechel Anne Jolie's blazing memoir is now available in paperback.
Raechel Anne Jolie's early life in a working-class Cleveland exurb was full of race cars, Budweiser-drinking men, and the women who loved them. When she was four, though, her life changed forever when her father was hit by a drunk driver and suffered a debilitating brain injury.
Rust Belt Femme is the chronicle of her survival. Fearlessly honest, wry, and tender, Jolie digs into both the pain of past traumas and the joy of teenaged discovery to craft a love letter to the brassy, big-haired women who raised her and the 90s alternative, riot grrrl culture that shaped her into who she is today: a queer femme with PTSD and a deep love of the Midwest.
Personal and political, lyrical and fierce, Rust Belt Femme speaks to anyone who was once a misfit kid trying to find their place in the world.
The Last Children of Mill Creek
9781948742641
Regular price $18.95 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%Vivian Gibson's bestselling memoir of growing up in the 1950s in a segregated St. Louis neighborhood has been hailed by critics as "a spare, elegant jewel of a work" and "a love letter to Gibson's childhood."
Vivian Gibson grew up in Mill Creek Valley, a segregated working-class neighborhood in St. Louis that was razed in 1959 to build a highway, an act of racism disguised under urban renewal as "progress." A moving memoir of family life at a time very different from the present, The Last Children of Mill Creek chronicles the everyday lived experiences of Gibson's large family?her seven siblings, her crafty, college-educated mother, and her hard-working father?and the friends, shop owners, church ladies, teachers, and others who made Mill Creek into a warm, tight-knit African American community. In Gibson's words, "This memoir is about survival, as told from the viewpoint of a watchful young girl?a collection of decidedly universal stories that chronicle the extraordinary lives of ordinary people."
Winner of a Missouri Humanities award for literary achievement, The Last Children of Mill Creek is an important book for anyone interested in urban development, race, and community history?or for anyone who was once a child.
Color Me In Boston
9781467197809
Regular price $9.99 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%Color your way through Boston!
Best-selling author-illustrator Martha Day Zschock introduces young readers to the beautiful and exciting city of Boston. Young travelers and locals alike can color the boats in the harbor, visit the duckling statues and Swan Boats in Boston's parks, and explore museums. Color in ice cream and lobster and historic sites as you celebrate all that Boston has to offer
Be Not Afraid of My Body
9781953368904
Regular price $19.99 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%From an exhilarating new voice, a breathtaking memoir about gay desire, Blackness, and growing up.
Darius Stewart spent his childhood in the Lonsdale projects of Knoxville, where he grew up navigating school, friendship, and his own family life in a context that often felt perilous. As we learn about his life in Tennessee—and eventually in Texas and Iowa, where he studies to become a poet—he details the obstacles to his most crucial desires: hiding his earliest attraction to boys in his neighborhood, predatory stalkers, doomed affairs, his struggles with alcohol addiction, and his eventual diagnosis with HIV. Through a mix of straightforward memoir, brilliantly surreal reveries, and moments of startling imagery and insight, Stewart’s explorations of love, illness, chemical dependency, desire, family, joy, shame, loneliness, and beauty coalesce into a wrenching, musical whole.
A lyrical narrative reminiscent of Saeed Jones’s How We Fight for Our Lives and Kiese Laymon’s Heavy, Be Not Afraid of My Body stands as a compelling testament to growing up Black and gay in America, and to the drive in all of us to collect the fragments of our own experience and transform them into a story that does justice to all the multitudes we contain.
The Minotaur at Calle Lanza
9781953368669
Regular price $19.95 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%Venice, 2020. As a pandemic rages across the globe, Zito Madu finds himself in a nearly deserted city, its walls and basilicas humming with strange magic. As he wanders a haunted landscape, we see him twist further into his own past: his family's difficult immigration from Nigeria to Detroit, his troubled relationship with his father, the sporadic joys of daily life and solitude, his experiences with migration, poverty, foreignness, racism, and his own rage and regret. But as it is with all labyrinths, after finding its center, will he come away unscathed, or will he transform into the gripping, fantastical monstrousness that's out to consume him whole?
With nods to Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges, this surrealist debut memoir takes us into the labyrinth of memory and the monsters lurking there.
Cat and Bird
9781953368690
Regular price $19.99 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%From the critically acclaimed author of Shizuko’s Daughter (a New York Times Notable Book) and Yarn, comes a fascinating new memoir about animals, loss, and finding a home in the world.
Cat and Bird, a “memoir in animals,” is anchored around Kyoko Mori’s relationship with the six house cats who defined the major eras of her life as a writer: Dorian, Oscar, Ernest, Algernon, Miles, and Jackson. As she details the rhythms and routines of their days together, she weaves a narrative tapestry out of her past: the deep family tragedy and resilience that marked her childhood in Japan, her move to the American Midwest as a young adult, her experiences as a bird rehabilitator and cat trainer, her marriage and divorce, and the joys and profound heartbreaks that come with pet ownership. Full of razor-sharp observations and generous prose, Cat and Bird whirls into a moving meditation about grief, writing, the imagination, the solitary life, and the wonders of companionship with creatures both domestic and wild.