Belt Publishing

Name: Pittsburgh in 50 Maps
Brand: Stentor Danielson
SKU: 9781953368850
Price: 30.0 USD
Availability: InStock

Founded in 2013, Belt promotes voices from the Rust Belt, smart narrative and serious nonfiction on any topic, as well as commercial fiction with a regional foothold.

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Pittsburgh in 50 Maps

Stentor Danielson

$30.00

What You Are Getting Wrong about Appalachia

Elizabeth Catte

$18.95

An Alternative History of Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh Neighborhood Guidebook

Ben Gwin

$20.00

A Lovely Place, a Fighting Place, a Charmer

Gary M Almeter

$20.00

The Pittsburgh Anthology

Eric Boyd

$20.00

The Whiskey Rebellion and the Rebirth of Rye

Mark Meyer

$19.95

Stentor Danielson

Pittsburgh in 50 Maps

9781953368850

$30.00

Pittsburgh in 50 Maps offers unique new views of a city at a crossroads—culturally, economically, and demographically.

There are countless ways to map a city. Roads, bridges, and waterways help you navigate the twists and turns; topography gives you the lay of the land; population trends show you a region’s changing fortunes. But the best maps let you feel what a city’s really like. Whether you call it the Steel City, the City of Bridges, City of Champions, Hell with the Lid Off, or even the Paris of Appalachia, Pittsburgh’s distinctive character is undeniable. Pittsburgh in 50 Maps considers the boundaries of the city’s 90 distinct neighborhoods (plus Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood), the legacy of the steel industry, and how immigration continues to shape the city. You’ll also find the areas with the highest concentrations of bike lanes, supermarkets, tree cover, and fiberglass dinosaurs. Each colorful map offers a new perspective on one of America’s most consistently surprising cities and the people who live here.

Sure to be a conversation starter for Pittsburgh locals, transplants, and expats, Pittsburgh in 50 Maps is for anyone keen to understand the city in new and unexpected ways.

Elizabeth Catte

What You Are Getting Wrong about Appalachia

9780998904146

$18.95

An antidote to bigotry and a “perfect primer for readers seeking factual, realistic portrayals of the rural and working-class experience” (Los Angeles Times).

In 2016, headlines declared Appalachia ground zero for America’s “forgotten tribe” of white working-class voters. Journalists flocked to the region to extract sympathetic profiles of families devastated by poverty, abandoned by establishment politics, and eager to consume cheap campaign promises. What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia is a frank assessment of America’s recent fascination with the people and problems of the region. The book analyzes trends in contemporary writing on Appalachia, presents a brief history of Appalachia with an eye toward unpacking stereotypes, and provides examples of writing, art, and policy created by Appalachians as opposed to for Appalachians—ultimately offering a much-needed insider’s perspective on the region.

“The most damning critique of Hillbilly Elegy.” —New York Review of Books

“Succeeds in providing a richer, more complex view.” —Publishers Weekly

“A necessary response to the bigotry against a much-maligned culture.” —Chris Offutt, award-winning author of Code of the Hills

Ed Simon

An Alternative History of Pittsburgh

9781948742924

$18.95

“[An] epic, atomic history of the Steel City . . . a work of literature, a series of linked creative nonfiction essays, an historical story cycle.” ―Phillip Maciak, Los Angeles Review of Books

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 Pittsburgh through a series of interconnected segments, covering all manner of 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.

“[A] rich and idiosyncratic history . . . Even Pittsburgh history buffs will learn something new.” —Publishers Weekly

“Simon tells the story of the city and all the changes that made it what it is today in a way that's entirely new, by the hand of someone who is deeply familiar.” ―Juliana Rose Pignataro, Newsweek

“A sparkling new take on everyone’s favorite Rust Belt metropolis.” ―Justin Velluci, Jewish Chronicle

“A brilliant look at how geology and art, politics and religion, disaster and luck combine to build America’s great cities―one that will leave you wondering what secrets your own hometown might be hiding.” ―Anjali Sachdeva, author of All the Names They Used for God

Vicky Johnson-Dahl

Buffalo in 50 Maps

9781953368485

$30.00

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.

Ben Gwin

Pittsburgh Neighborhood Guidebook

9781948742719

$20.00

Explore Pittsburgh through poetry and essays with this probing guide to 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, 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

· And much more

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.

Gary M Almeter

A Lovely Place, a Fighting Place, a Charmer

9781953368263

$20.00

A “diverse collection” of essays, stories, and poems about Baltimore that provide “a wide-ranging account of what the city feels like today” (Baltimore Magazine).

To many outsiders, Baltimore--sometimes derisively called “Mobtown” or “Bodymore”—is a city famous for its poverty and violence, twin ills that have been compounded by decades of racial segregation and the loss of manufacturing jobs. But that portrait has only given us a skewed view of a truly unique and diverse American city, the place that produced Babe Ruth, Elijah Cummings, Nancy Pelosi, Edgar Allan Poe, John Waters, Frank Zappa, Billie Holiday, and Thurgood Marshall, among other notables.

In over thirty-five essays, poems, and short stories, the authors take an unfiltered look at the ins and outs of Baltimore's past and present. You’ll hear about the first time an umbrella appeared in the Inner Harbor, nineteenth-century grave robbers, and the city’s history with redlining and blockbusting. But you’ll also get a deeper sense of what life is like in Baltimore today, including stories about urban gardening in Bolton Hill, the slow demise of local journalism, what life was like in the city during COVID, and the legacy of Freddie Gray. As Ron Kipling Williams writes in his essay about the city’s magnetic appeal, “Baltimore has always been a city worth fighting for,” and running through all these pieces is the story of Baltimore’s resilience. Edited by an award-winning author and a former staff writer for The Wire, this anthology offers an unfiltered look at Baltimore, far more nuanced than the stories that are generally told about it.

“Let[s] the people of this city define their home through reflections in prose, poetry, recipes, and even a comic strip . . . speaks to the heart of the city.” —Baltimore Fishbowl

Eric Boyd

The Pittsburgh Anthology

9780985944193

$20.00

“Characterizing a place can be an elusive project, but The Pittsburgh Anthology is . . . diverse, surprising, eloquent, playful, scrappy, and tenacious.” —Ploughshares

Pittsburgh is ever-changing—once dusted with soot from the mills, parts of the city now gleam with the polish of new technologies and little remains of what had been there before. The essays and artwork in this anthology aim for the surprising, elusive stories that capture a Pittsburgh that is in transition. Contributors run the gamut from MacArthur-award winning photographer, LaToya Ruby Frazier to 15-year-old Nico Chiodi, the book’s youngest contributor who chronicles the doings of the North Side Banjo Club. “Everyone in this book,” writes editor, Eric Boyd, “is talking about the city, the things surrounding it; all of the pieces have been created with experience, intimacy, and personality. This book, I hope, will speak to you, not at you. Because we all know this city is changing. We’re just not exactly sure what that means.”

Included are contributions by Amy Jo Burns, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Ben Gwin, Cody McDevitt, David Newman, and many more.

“These voices are varied and quirky, some polished and professional sounding, some a little rough around the edges. But they are uniformly interesting and genuine.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“What editor Eric Boyd has chosen to do is temper all of the Most Livable City rah rah with essays, stories and poems of a grittier, more complex nature.” —Pittsburgh Magazine

“This collection is stimulating for insiders and outsiders alike, a portrait Boyd has designed to be from-the-streets, warts-and-all.” —Bill O’Driscoll, PGH City Paper

Mark Meyer

The Whiskey Rebellion and the Rebirth of Rye

9780998904160

$19.95

“A mix of elevating spirits and fractious politics” this history of the whiskey industry in the rust belt “goes down nice and smooth.” —John Allison, Pittsburgh Quarterly

A short history of rye whiskey’s founding, floundering, and current flourishing in Pittsburgh. The book takes the reader on a fun tour of the Whiskey Rebellion, the role of Pittsburgh robber barons in developing the rye industry, and the rebirth of craft distillery in the twentieth century. Includes an illustrated guide to making rye whiskey and recipes.