Introduction to the Detroit Neighborhood Guidebook
No matter how many books are done about Detroit, it’s still impossible to capture this city’s ethos into a finite number of pages. But damn if we don’t come close sometimes.
Introduction: Beyond The Belt
Chicago is built on a foundation of meat and railroads and steel, on opportunity and exploitation. But while its identity long ago expanded beyond manufacturing ...
Making Music in Buffalo
Our story begins with a chance meeting in Buffalo at Nietzsche’s. It was a winter Sunday afternoon in 1988 and both of our groups were scheduled to play together.
The Whiskey Rebellion and the Rebirth of Rye: A Pittsburgh Story
Coming in November 2017 from Belt Publishing, Meredith Meyer Grelli's The Whiskey Rebellion and the Rebirth of Rye: A Pittsburgh Story is [...]
Forthcoming in 2018: The New Old Town: Early Gentrification in Chicago
The story was the same in Detroit, St. Louis, Cleveland, Chicago: once-booming cities had started to shrink. Historic neighborhoods [...]
Coming in 2018: Folktales and Legends of the Middle West
Joe Magarac, the Pittsburgh steelworker who was born inside an ore mountain and squeezed out rails between his fingers. Hiawatha, the man-god who conquered the King of Fish and founded the Iroquois Nation. Coyote, the trickster of the Great Plains.
Check Out the Cover For The Chicago Anthology
We’re unveiling the cover for Belt Publishing’s forthcoming Rust Belt Chicago: An Anthology, and we couldn’t be more excited. The cover was designed by legendary Chicago artist Tony Fitzpatrick, known for his style of vibrant collages.
Announcing In the Watershed: A Journey Down the Maumee River
For several years, Ryan Schnurr watched media coverage of Lake Erie algae blooms with a growing sense of unease. [...]
‘The New Midwest’ Hailed by Critics as the Book we Need in the Trump Era
Mark Athitakis’s book, The New Midwest: A Guide to Contemporary Fiction of the Great Lakes, Great Plains, and Rust Belt, is [...]
A Big, Useless Bathtub, Or The Inland Sea
It’s easy to mistake the Great Lakes for the ocean, at first. I’ve brought a few people to see Lake Michigan for the first time, and that’s what they all say: “It looks like the ocean!”
‘Are yinz goin’ to read this?’ A Guide to Pittsburghese
By Edward McClelland No Midwestern city is more conscious than Pittsburgh of the way it speaks—or, more accurately, the way [...]
The Great Lakes are sicker than we think
By Matt Stansberry In The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, journalist Dan Egan makes the case that the [...]