More Belt Books

The largest freshwater system on Earth, like you’ve never seen it before. 

The Great Lakes region is home to one-tenth of the United States’ population, and one-quarter of Canada’s. Even if we remember the mnemonic HOMES, we might forget what a natural wonder they are. Cartographer Alex B. Hill, author of Detroit in 50 Maps, shifts our perspectives and offers a fresh look at the five lakes and the vibrant region surrounding them. Split into four categories—history & culture, ecology, infrastructure, and physical—these fifty-plus maps show the lakes’ influence and confluences, from the Underground Railroad to monarch butterfly migration. See how many NFL teams play on a Great Lake, where mysterious shipwrecks and Bigfoot sightings cluster, the lakes' effect on snowfall, and even how “not so Great” lakes have vied for (and in one case, temporarily won) a coveted Great designation. Shrinking wetlands, oil spills, and rising temperatures due to climate change reflect both the fragility of the lakes and the vital role they play. 

Great Lakes in 50 Maps is perfect for anyone who appreciates the history, nature, and future of the world’s greatest group of lakes.

From David Wilson, the artist behind the bestselling Rust Belt Arcana tarot deck.

Great Lakes Tarot includes 78 original illustrations. The cards feature plants, animals, water, industry, and people of the region. This deck is for tarot fans, of course, but it's also for anyone interested in the Great Lakes region, enormous reserves of freshwater, fishing, shipping, wildflowers, ecosystems, coastlines, the Midwest, the Rust Belt, and Canada.

There are as many versions of Greater Cincinnati as there are residents of the region. That’s roughly two million different perceptions of the city.

In Cincinnati in 50 Maps, editor Nick Swartsell and cartographer Andy Woodruff present over fifty ways of looking at the Queen City, from its early roadways and Indigenous earthworks to its shifting neighborhood borders. A visualization of relative population density can tell one story, and one showing where jobs are clustered tells another. New maps with up-to-date data sit beside historical maps that show things like exactly how communities were razed to make room for highways. Broken up into five sections—Mapping the Past, the Shape of Cincinnati, Communities and Culture, Getting Around, and Health and Environment—these visual representations show both the commonalities and the contradictions of an ever-changing American city.

These maps present reported statistics in new ways, and they represent the things that make Cincinnati the unique place that residents know and love: Find every place you can get Cincinnati chili, the location of every public stairway, and where the infamous Cincy traffic is worst.

Anyone who calls or ever called Cincinnati home will find something familiar, something surprising, and something revealing in this glossy, full-color volume.

"The Rust Belt Arcana tarot is incredible. I wholeheartedly recommend it for tarot enthusiasts, naturalists, and witches alike."—Allison Sasso, Veil and Vow Tarot

Our popular Rust Belt Arcana tarot deck is back in stock! The tarot deck contains 78 watercolor prints by David Wilson (co-author and illustrator of Matt Stansberry's Rust Belt Arcana: Tarot and Natural History in the Exurban Wild).

Cards are standard tarot size (2.75" x 4.75" / 300gs). We are confident this is the first ever Rust Belt themed tarot deck, and pretty sure it is the prettiest one as well. Now with a new printed box!

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 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.

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.

Dive into Cleveland’s deep past and return with a new vision for how we should think about the region today.

The land we call “northeast Ohio” was originally forged through eons of glacial pressure, geologic shifts, and the relentless movement of the Cuyahoga River. Since the last Ice Age, however, it has also been transformed countless times by the many people who have called it home.

In An Alternative History of Cleveland, Jon Wlasiuk uncovers the mysteries, devastations, and human incursions that have shaped the region. Here, you’ll encounter the giant megafauna that roamed the area until their mysterious extinction, Indigenous civilizations who first shaped the land and harnessed its natural resources, industrial pioneers like John D. Rockefeller and Charles Brush who corralled electricity and crude oil in the service of capitalist progress, the environmental devastation that polluted the Cuyahoga and caused toxic algae blooms in Lake Erie, and the numerous Clevelanders today who want to reshape the city’s relationship with the natural environment. Though separated by thousands of years, these stories contain a common theme: the city of Cleveland remains bound to nature, despite our best efforts to liberate ourselves from its limits.

Part natural history, part archeological essay, and part a contemporary call to arms to reclaim and rewild Cleveland’s future, this unforgettable trek into the heart of “the Land” will change the way you see the city forever.

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. 

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.

Ferguson, Missouri, became the epicenter of America’s racial tensions after the 2014 murder of Michael Brown and the protests that followed in its wake.

Though this suburb just outside St. Louis might have seemed like an average midwestern town, the activism that exploded there after Brown’s killing laid bare how longstanding municipal planning policies had led to racial segregation, fragmentation, poverty, and police targeting.

In over one hundred maps, Patty Heyda charts the systemic forces that have defined Ferguson, and the first-ring suburb in America more broadly. Through an in-depth look at the contradictions undergirding city planning and design, it illuminates how tax incentives, housing codes, urban design, policing, philanthropy, and even landscaping often work against the betterment of residents’ lives. At its heart lies a key question: Just who are our cities being built for?

A profound rethinking of what maps can be, Radical Atlas of Ferguson USA will challenge city planners, designers, and everyday citizens to change their perspective of public space.

Foreword by Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman.

The best personal essays from a contested region, from Belt Publishing’s ten years as a press.

Everyone has an opinion on the Rust Belt—whether it’s the “real America” or a place that no longer exists called by a name that has long outlived its usefulness, as our own president has said. But undeniably, there’s something that connects the post-industrial cities. Maybe the question isn’t what defines that connection, but who.

Over the past ten years, Belt Publishing has been putting out books that prioritize the voices of the many people who live here. We’ve collected our favorite writing from across our collections, from Pittsburgh to Detroit, Chicago to St. Louis, Milwaukee to Cleveland, and more. Here, writers document growing up in segregated St. Louis and elucidate the coded Islamophobia of southern Michigan. Writers include Megan Stielstra, 2022 Missouri Author of the Year Vivian Gibson, Aaron Foley, Kathleen Rooney, Sarah Kendzior, and more.

This full-color book of maps, one of Belt Publishing’s 50 Maps Series, presents the capital and biggest city in Ohio like you’ve never seen it before. 

Columbus is a place perpetually in search of an identity. Once called a “cow town,” it is now a sprawling metropolitan area and home to the behemoth Ohio State University. How can one best represent the city, in all its complications and contradictions? 

One way is through maps, as editor Brent Warren and cartographer Vicky Johnson-Dahl explore here. These fifty-plus maps show things that are inherently Columbus, from ComFest to the present and former locations of the city’s iconic arches. But you will also find maps that offer surprising ways of looking at the city, whether charting immigrant populations, LGBTQ+ landmarks, or mass transit that was never actually built. Divided into four sections—Situating the City, Getting to Know the City, Getting Around, and People and Places—Columbus in 50 Maps will excite current, former, and future Columbusites as well as people with an interest in the region or creative urban cartography.

PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay-Finalist

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

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.

In the summer of 2014, a strange thing happened to one of the largest freshwater bodies on the planet: Lake Erie’s western shore turned bright green with toxic algae that could have killed 400,000 Ohioans. Stranger still, it was kind of Patrick Wensink’s fault. Okay, partially his fault, but also to blame was industrial corn farming, greenhouse gasses, the Worst Road In America, his attraction to toxic relationships, Richard Nixon, Charles Dickens, cyanobacteria, high school bullies, and, most importantly, the untold history of the Great Black Swamp: a large swatch of what is now Ohio and Indiana that was once a dangerous, malaria-ridden wetland.

Toxic green algae has become a global problem. While the scientific community scrambles to find a solution, Wensink discovers that the answer might be hiding in his former home, a million acres of table-flat farmland so desolate that even other Ohioans look down upon it.

Great Black Swamp: Toxic Algae, Toxic Relationships, and the Most Interesting Place in America that Nobody’s Ever Heard Of mixes ecological reporting, Midwestern history, and memoir. As Wensink travels through Northwest Ohio, he tells us about his childhood there, his failing marriage, American history, Lake Erie, and the hopeful ecological interventions scientists are performing in the former Great Black Swamp. 

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.

Phil Christman is one of the best cultural critics working today. Or, as a reviewer of his previous book, Midwest Futures, put it, one of the most underappreciated writers of [his] generation.You may also know Phil from his columns in Commonweal and Plough, or his viral essay What Is It Like To Be A Man?, the latter adapted in his new book, How to Be Normal.

Christman's second book includes essays on How To Be White, How to Be Religious, How To Be Married, and more, in addition to new versions of the above. Find in it also brilliant analyses of middlebrow culture, bad movies, Mark Fisher, Christian fundamentalism, and more.

With exquisite attention to syntax and prose, the astoundingly well-read Christman pairs a deceptively breezy style with radical openness. In his witty, original hands, seemingly normal subjects are rendered exceptional, and exceptionally.

What does the future hold for the Midwest?

A vast stretch of fertile farmland bordering one of the largest concentrations of fresh water in the world, the Midwestern US seems ideally situated for the coming challenges of climate change. But it also sits at the epicenter of a massive economic collapse that many of its citizens are still struggling to overcome. The question of what the Midwest is (and what it will become) is nothing new. As Phil Christman writes in this idiosyncratic new book, ambiguity might be the region's defining characteristic. Taking a cue from Jefferson’s grid, the famous rectangular survey of the Old Northwest Territory that turned everything from Ohio to Wisconsin into square-mile lots, Christman breaks his exploration of Midwestern identity, past and present, into 36 brief, interconnected essays. The result is a sometimes sardonic, often uproarious, and consistently thought-provoking look at a misunderstood place and the people who call it home.

With over a hundred photos collected by G. Faye Dant, and with an introduction by renowned Twain scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin.

When Mark Twain published Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1885, he turned Hannibal, Missouri, into one of the most famous towns in the American imagination. But like Twain’s novel, Hannibal’s idyllic façade often elided the darker racial violence that had marked its past, and it overlooked the history and humanity of the Black residents who have called Hannibal home for generations. Without them, there would be no “America’s hometown.”

In Hannibal’s Invisibles, G. Faye Dant, a Hannibal resident and the executive director of Jim’s Journey: The Huck Finn Freedom Center, tells the incredible story of the Black community in this small Missouri town, giving voice to a history that has been marginalized far too long. Hear first-hand accounts from those who survived enslavement, faced racism after emancipation, endured Jim Crow, and contributed to the triumphs of the civil rights movement. These are the stories of Black doctors, entrepreneurs, and teachers who helped uplift the community, and remembrances of the countless individuals who gave richness and meaning to Hannibal’s everyday life. The vintage photographs and historical documents collected here are a celebration of these resilient people who built and sustained this corner of the Midwest, despite the immense obstacles they met at every turn. 

A dictionary wrapped in some serious dialectology inside a gift book trailing a serious whiff of Relevance -The New York Times

In this book on Midwestern accents, and sayings, Edward McClelland explains what Midwesterners say and how and why they say it. He examines the causes of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, explains the nasality of Minnesota speech, and details why Chicagoans talk more like people from Buffalo than their next-door neighbors in Wisconsin. He provides humorous definitions of jargon from the region, including:

-squeaky cheese -city chicken -shampoo banana -the Pittsburgh toilet -FIB -bubbler -Chevy in the Hole -jagoff

The book also includes detailed glossaries of slang from Buffalo, the Great Lakes, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Wisconsin slang and sayings.

This delightful romp through the region is the perfect gift for Midwesterners, and the perfect book for anyone wanting to learn more about the region's dialects.

A varied, handy collection of Rust Belt culinary favorites, updated for today's vegan diet.

The Rust Belt Vegan Kitchen is a community cookbook created by professional and home chefs who live and work in the Rust Belt. Recipes collected here represent the diversity of the region, and include vegan versions of:

- Polish pierogis

- Detroit coney dogs

- Hungarian paprikash

- Slovak kolaches

- Mexican conchas

- German sauerkraut balls

- Cincinnati chili

- Slovenian fish fry

- Chitterings, and many more.

The cooks and chefs collected here offer stories about their recipes as well as family and culinary traditions. The book also includes resources on how to stock a vegan pantry, guides to useful equipment, and basic how-tos for veganizing staples.

Infusing old world recipes with a new level of creativity for a changing audience, The Rust Belt Vegan Kitchen is unpretentious, accessible, and fun.

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.

A brief, cogent analysis of gentrification in Chicago ... an incisive and useful narrative on the puzzle of urban development.--Kirkus Reviews

In the years after World War II, a movement began to bring the middle class back from the Chicago suburbs to the Lincoln Park neighborhood on the city's North Side. In place of the old, poorly maintained apartments and dense streetscapes of taverns and butchers, rehabbers imagined a new kind of neighborhood--a renovated, modern community that held on to the convenience, diversity, and character of a historic urban quarter, but also enjoyed the prosperity and privileges of a new subdivision.

But as the old buildings came down, cheap studios were combined to create ever more spacious, luxurious homes. Property values swiftly rose, and the people who were being evicted to make room for progress began to assert their own ideas about the future of Lincoln Park. Over the course of the 1960s, divisions within the community deepened. Letters and picket lines gave way to increasingly violent strikes and counterstrikes as each camp tried to settle the same existential questions that beguile so many cities today: Who is a neighborhood for? And who gets to decide?

A riveting historical look at gentrification and urban renewal projects that still resonates across every American city today.

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.

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.

Phil Christman is one of the best cultural critics working today. Or, as a reviewer of his previous book, Midwest Futures, put it, one of the most underappreciated writers of [his] generation.You may also know Phil from his columns in Commonweal and Plough, or his viral essay What Is It Like To Be A Man?, the latter adapted in his new book, How to Be Normal.

Christman's second book includes essays on How To Be White, How to Be Religious, How To Be Married, and more, in addition to new versions of the above. Find in it also brilliant analyses of middlebrow culture, bad movies, Mark Fisher, Christian fundamentalism, and more.

With exquisite attention to syntax and prose, the astoundingly well-read Christman pairs a deceptively breezy style with radical openness. In his witty, original hands, seemingly normal subjects are rendered exceptional, and exceptionally.

A part of Belt's City Anthology Series, A Detroit Anthology offers a unique take on the Motor City told by longtime residents and newcomers, including activists, teachers, artists, and students--a 2015 Michigan Notable Book.

People have long told stories about Detroit, but too often those stories are from outsiders looking in, telling the city what it's all about. In A Detroit Anthology, Anna Clark, a Detroit-based journalist for ProPublica, collects the kinds of stories about the Motor City that people tell at the bar, waiting at the bus stop, sitting on their porch, or at church social hours. Featuring essays, photographs, art, and poetry by Tyehimba Jess, Grace Lee Boggs, Aaron Foley, John Carlisle, Desiree Cooper, Dream Hampton, Tracie McMillan, and many others. The Millions describes it as a book that gives voice to people who now live or once lived in this fascinating, tortured place, the survivors, good people who know what pain is, people who understand that the city exerts an undying pull on them. The Detroit stories here might not all be glowing or gloomy, but they're 100% real.

A wide-ranging and diverse portrait of a city, perfect for those who want to get to know Detroit for the first time or for those native Detroiters who want a more candid look at the city they call home.

Part of Belt's City Anthology Series. A strong series of personal essays, historical exploration, nature writing, and photography. ... Love's anthology gathers [Gary's] resilience without shying away from the city's hard realities.―Chicago Review of Books

Once the second-largest city in Indiana, and home to the world's largest steel mill, Gary has suffered greatly in the postindustrial global economy. Population numbers now approach pre-Great Depression lows. Large swathes of its land are urban prairie, and a recent survey found a quarter of its built environment is in a dilapidated or dangerous condition. But Gary is also a national center of Black culture and political power. It is home to the Indiana Dunes National Park and globally rare ecosystems. Union, community organizing, and environmental justice struggles there have profoundly shaped social and political life in the United States.

Edited by Samuel A. Love, The Gary Anthology's contributors include essayists, poets, and journalists, but also graffiti writers, ministers, activists, organizers, and steel workers. Their insights into the city complicate our simplified narratives about violence and urban decay, offering readers the chance to hear from those who are reshaping the city from the bottom up.

A nuanced look of a city that is full of everyday joys and tragedies and a vibrant rebuke to stale notions that Gary is dead.

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.

An accessible, intimate look at the oft-neglected history of Arab Americans in Greater Indianapolis who have made a remarkable impact on the region since the late 1800s.From establishing local businesses to working in the fields of health care and education, Arab Americans have made indelible contributions to the cultural vitality, economic growth, and social fabric of central Indiana. Arab Indianapolis features the stories of Arab Americans--some famous, some not--who have shaped the Capital City's past and will continue to define its future. It details a history hidden in plain sight, one sometimes buried beneath Indianapolis's most iconic landmarks such as Lucas Oil Stadium, Monument Circle, the Indiana War Memorials, the Governor's Residence, and Riverside Park. Highlights include: Helen Corey, the first Arab American to hold statewide elected office and the author of one of the most famous books on Syrian cuisine

• Jeff George, a Syrian American from the region who went on to play quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts
• The Syrian Christian community and the building of St. George Orthodox Church
• Indianapolis's connection to St. Jude Children's Hospital
• Governor Mitch Daniels, Indiana governor and grandson to Syrian immigrants

Through short essays, over eighty beautiful photographs, interviews, and even a few recipes, this collection embraces the full humanity of Arab Americans in the Midwest. It will give you a deeper sense of the myriad lives of Arab-descended Hoosiers who call Indianapolis home. Arab Indianapolis is an indispensable resource for anyone looking to know the full story of how Arab Americans continue to shape one of the Midwest's most iconic cities.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A part of Belt's City Anthology Series. These pieces . . . stand as proof of the determination and optimism of a city that just won't quit.

A collection of essays and personal narratives, Happy Anyway: A Flint Anthology captures a confounding, contradictory city, proving that Flint is far more than just an industrial town picking itself up after a big company has moved out or the site of a devastating public health crisis. The stories collected here delve into the actual lives taking place within the city―the crime, joblessness, homelessness, and hopelessness, but also the happiness and resilience. They are about who is able to truly lay claim to being from Flint and what it means to finally leave―or to stay, even when bikes, jewelry, or love continually disappear. From both established and new writers, you'll find stories here that include:

- Home ownership in Mott Park during the 2008 housing crisis

- The history and mysteries of Glenwood Cemetery

- What the Flint water crisis means for parents trying to raise young children.

Edited by Scott Atkinson, a former reporter for The Flint Journal, the 24 essays collected here shed new light on a city that has perpetually been defined by outsiders. As Atkinson notes, These are stories from the middle. They are stories of triumph not because anything has been won, but because they are stories of Flint's continued fight.

A candid, unflinching look inside a city whose history tells a truly American story.

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.