More Belt Books

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.

The coronavirus pandemic laid bare the unsustainability of our public higher education system. In Sustainable. Resilient. Free., author and educator John Warner maps out a path for change.

In 1983, U.S. News and World Report started to rank colleges and universities, throwing them into competition with each other for students and precious resources. Over the course of the next thirty or so years, a Reagan-era ethos of privatization and competition transformed students into consumers and colleges into businesses.

Now, tuition is unaffordable. Student loan debt is more than $1.6 trillion, and a majority of college faculty work in adjunct positions for low pay and with no job security. Colleges seem to exist only to enroll students, collect tuition, and hold classes. When learning happens, it is in spite of the system, not because of it.

In Sustainable. Resilient. Free., John Warner (Why They Can't Write) envisions a future in which our public colleges and universities are reoriented around enhancing the intellectual, social, and economic potentials of students while providing broad-based benefits to the community at large. As Warner explains, it's not even all that complicated. It's no more costly than the current system. We just have to choose to live the values we claim to hold dear.

A critical read for anyone invested in the future of public higher education.

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.

This book made me laugh out loud and also gave me glimpses of an entire horizon of possibility I hadn't seen before.--Chris Hayes, host of MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes

End the filibuster. Abolish the Senate. Make everyone vote. Only if we do this (and then some), says Thomas Geoghegan, might we heal our fractured democracy.

In 2008, Geoghegan―then an established labor lawyer and prolific writer―embarked on a campaign to represent Chicago's Fifth District in Congress, in a special election called when Rahm Emanuel stepped down to serve as President Barack Obama's chief of staff. For ninety days leading up to the election, Geoghegan, a political neophyte at age sixty, knocked on doors, shook hands at train stations, and made fundraising calls. On election night he lost, badly.

But this humbling experience helped him develop a framework for reimagining American government in a way that is truly just, fair, and constitutional. Taking its title from Walt Whitman, The History of Democracy Is Yet to Be Written: How We Have to Learn to Govern All Over Again, combines hilarious tales from his time on the campaign trail with an incisive vision of how we might be able to create an America that fulfills its great promise. In a polarized country, where 100 million citizens don't vote, and those who do are otherwise rarely politically engaged, he makes an impassioned case for the possibility of a truly representative democracy, one built on the ideals of the House of Representatives, the true chamber of the people, and inspired by the poet who gives the book its name.

At once an engaging memoir and a call to arms, The History of Democracy Is Yet to Be Written will inspire and invigorate political veterans and young activists alike.

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.

Poignant but animated by a stubborn hope.--Christianity Today

For years, Ryan Schnurr, editor at Belt Magazine, watched media coverage of Lake Erie algae blooms with a growing sense of unease. An Indiana native, he wanted to learn more about the role the Maumee River--Lake Erie's largest tributary and the center of the region's largest watershed--played in the lake's environmental woes. So in the summer of 2016, he walked and canoed the length of the river from its headwaters in Fort Wayne, Indiana, to its mouth in Toledo, Ohio. As he traverses the waters and banks like a modern-day Thoreau, Schnurr walks us through:

- The history of the river, including its formation by glaciers

- Its function in Native American and American history

- How industrialization changed it

- How current economic and environmental forces are still shaping it today.

Part cultural history, part nature writing, and part personal narrative, In the Watershed is a lyrical work of nonfiction in the vein of John McPhee, Edward Abbey, and Ian Frazier with a timely and important warning at the core. What is happening in Lake Erie, Schnurr tells us, is a disaster by nearly any measure―ecologically, economically, socially, culturally.

A slim but pressing travelogue for readers who are interested in nature writing at its most local level.

A succinct and impassioned call to reimagine the small liberal arts college, by two veteran educators.

Private liberal arts colleges have struggled for decades; now, as the COVID-19 pandemic widens cracks latent in many American institutions, they are facing a possibly mortal crisis. In The Post-Pandemic Liberal Arts College: A Manifesto for Reinvention, Steven Volk and Beth Benedix call for small colleges to seize this moment and reinvent themselves. With the rise of rankings that set peer institutions against each other, tuition that outpaces income, creeping pre-professionalism, and a race to build student “customers” the splashiest new amenities, many private liberal arts colleges have strayed from their founders’ missions. If they could shed the mantle of exclusivity, reduce costs, facilitate true social mobility, and collaborate with each other, the authors argue, they might both survive and again become just, equitable, accessible institutions able to offer the transformative and visionary education that is their hallmark.

Educators, students, parents, and anyone invested in the future of higher ed should read this book.