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.
Regular price
$24.00
Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%
An inside look at the music born, bred, and perfected in Chicago.
Chicago house music originated in the city’s Black, gay underground in the late seventies and became one of the most popular musical genres in the world by the end of the century. In Chicago House Music: Culture and Community, Marguerite Harrold tells the story of the genre’s rise and the prolific creators who have sustained it for decades. You’ll learn about house music’s early innovators, like Ron Hardy and Frankie Knuckles, who transformed the social and political turmoil around them into a revolution in dance music. You’ll also hear remembrances from contemporary figures in the house community, like DJ Lady D, Avery R. Young, Czboogie and Edgar “Artek” Sinio, who have forged new paths as the genre has evolved. It’s a story about much more than music—it’s about a community struggling for acceptance, love, liberation, and freedom, and about the creative pioneers whose resilience helped turn house music into a worldwide phenomenon.
Full of interviews and first-hand accounts from the people who stood behind the turntables, carried crates of records, or danced until dawn, Chicago House Music is the history of an art form that continues to be a force for social interaction, spiritual liberation, and community today.
The Rockford Anthology
9781540270122
Regular price
$24.00
Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%
Screw Capital of the World. Forest City. Home of the Rockford Peaches of A League of Their Own fame. Rockford, Illinois, has many identities, most oriented toward the past. These days, the fastener industry has mostly rusted away, the trees are less plentiful than they once were, and professional women’s baseball is no more. What defines Rockford today?
According to The Rockford Anthology, it’s the people. Those who grew up here, who came by choice or by circumstance, or who decided to leave. People who lost someone or found a voice or built community here.
In this installment of Belt’s City Anthology series, the people of Rockford represent themselves in essays, poetry, and photographs. Here, you’ll meet someone who found the space to start a business after leaving the crowd in Chicago. Academy Award–nominee Bing Liu takes you on a personal tour of his childhood houses and the ghosts that lurk there. A local attorney and activist shares how the city pushed back when ICE wanted to bring a detention center to Rockford. And you’ll learn why New York Times bestselling author Kimberla Lawson Roby, stand-up comedian Ashley Ray-Harris, and an introverted expat living in Taiwan always say they’re from Rockford . . . not Chicago. Whether through stories of growing up or chronicles of fights to make the city better, a sense of Rockford’s present—and future—starts to come into focus.
The Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook
9781948742498
Regular price
$24.00
Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%
“Contributors from all corners of the city share space, each individual neighborhood weaving together into an evocative tapestry.” —Curbed Chicago
The Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook offers an intimate, idiosyncratic look at the third-largest city in the country, exploring community history and identity in a global city through essays, poems, photo essays, and art articulating the lived experience of its residents.
What did one pizzeria mean to a boy growing up in Ashburn? How can South Shore encompass so much beauty and so much pain? Where’s the best borscht in Ukrainian Village? Who’s got a handle on the ever-shifting identity of Rogers Park? All this and more is explored in this lyrical, subjective, completely non-comprehensive guide to Chicago.
With contributions from more than forty writers, including Megan Stielstra, Audrey Petty, Dmitry Samarov, Lily Be, and many others, covering forty-three of Chicago’s diverse neighborhoods, it is a snapshot of a city at an inflection point, representing grassroots history at its finest—and a must for anyone keen to understand what makes Chicago tick.
“Required reading.” —Chicago Tribune
“Stirring, entertaining and informative . . . [Brings] to vivid life the diverse people and wildly divergent experiences that populate Chicago.” —Chicago Detours
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 hailed as “an urgent call for reform” (Kirkus Reviews).
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.
“Foiles follows five current and former patients at Mount Sinai Hospital in Douglas Park as they deal with the demons of urban life. Their stories are engaging . . . but never voyeuristic.” —Chicago Magazine
“Offers an empathetic look at how the pressures of surviving in an urban environment—including unemployment, poverty and violence—make finding help even more difficult and shares a call to action to help heal our communities.” —Chicago Public Library
Rust Belt Chicago
9780997774375
Regular price
$20.00
Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%
“A lively grab bag of essays, fiction and poetry that reads at times like a who’s who of contemporary Chicago writers/residents”(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.
Rust Belt Chicago collects essays, fiction, and poetry from more than fifty writers who speak directly to the concerns the city shares with the Midwest at large, and the elements that set it apart. With contributions from writers like Aleksandar Hemon, Kathleen Rooney, and Zoe Zolbrod, 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.
The Battle of Lincoln Park
9781948742092
Regular price
$19.95
Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%
“A brief, cogent analysis of gentrification in Chicago . . . An incisive and useful narrative on the puzzle of urban development” (Kirkus).
In the years after World War II, a movement began to bring the middle class back to the Lincoln Park neighborhood on Chicago's North Side. In place of the old, poorly maintained apartments and dense streetscapes, “rehabbers” imagined a new kind of neighborhood—a modern community that combined the convenience, diversity, and character of a historic urban quarter with the prosperity and privileges of a new subdivision.
But as property values rose, longtime residents found themselves being evicted to make room for progress—and they began to assert their own ideas about the future of Lincoln Park. As divisions deepened over the course of the 1960s, debate gave way to increasingly violent demonstrations. Each camp became further entrenched as they tried to settle the eternal questions of city planning: Who is a neighborhood for? And who gets to decide?
The Girls
9781953368492
Regular price
$24.00
Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%
With “much humor” and “awareness of family dynamics” this classic novel “stands as an enduring portrait of women torn between duty and self-fulfillment”(Publishers Weekly).
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, The Girls is an American classic.
“This is one of those books that nails setting and character so well that plot is mostly beside the point. . . . Ferber splits the difference with clearer prose and keener insight than [Sister Carrie author Theodore] Dreiser managed, while incorporating some of the same dry humor that [Babbitt author Sinclair] Lewis used to describe midwestern strivers.” —Dmitry Samarov, Chicago Reader
“Written with such verve and insight that it could be a piece of historical fiction produced last week.” —Patrick T. Reardon, Third Coast Review
Bring Cash
9781540270177
Regular price
$18.95
Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%
Unlock the secrets of shopping estate sales—and why doing so is good for your home, your style, your wallet, the planet, and even your sense of empathy.
Have you ever wanted to get into shopping estate sales but felt intimidated by the unspoken rules and norms? Bring Cash is your pocket-sized guide to navigating estate sales like a pro. Whether you’re wondering when to arrive, if haggling is allowed, or how to identify true vintage, Kate Davis of Midwest Estate Sailing on Substack is your intrepid captain. You’ll learn how to decode sign-up sheets, how to date clothing, and that—of course—cash is king.
With helpful photos, practical tips, and thoughtful insights into why estate sales are worth exploring, especially in the Midwest, Bring Cash is as entertaining as it is informative. Davis shares advice and personal anecdotes like a savvy friend, and crowd-sourced stories of great estate-sale finds help inspire you to find your own Big Find—or small prize. Slip this into your bag and take it with you to turn weekend outings into rewarding adventures.
Conspiracy to Riot
9781953368225
Regular price
$16.95
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.
Conspiracy to Riot
9781948742689
Regular price
$26.00
Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%
This memoir by one of the famed Chicago Seven “chronicles the moments from [his] life that forged him as someone willing to jump atop cars with a bullhorn” (South Side Weekly).
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 became a media sensation, and it changed Weiner’s life forever.
An irreverent, freewheeling memoir of an indelible moment in history—which Kirkus Reviews calls “a welcome addition to the library of the countercultural 1960s left”—Conspiracy to Riot is startlingly relevant to today’s polarized political climate, reflecting on the power of activism to create a better, more just world and offering a blueprint for making it happen.
