Belt revivals

In the wake of World War I, Alice Adams finds herself being pursued by a gentleman of higher social class. She and her family try various schemes to keep their inferior status a secret.

Claude Wheeler, the sensitive, aspiring protagonist of this beautifully written Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, resembles the youngest son of a peculiarly American fairy tale. His fortune is ready-made for him, but he refuses to settle for it. Alienated from his parents, all but rejected by his wife, and dissatisfied with farming, Claude is an idealist without an ideal to cling to. It's only when America enters the First World War that Claude finds...

A coming-of-age story of two sisters living in their grandmother's boarding house in a small Ohio town just before the first world war and the characters who filter in an out of the house and their lives. For teenager Linda Shirley, her residence in a family boarding house is a fact to be hidden, ignored, and, eventually, escaped. She aims for a better life and tries desperately to win the approval of the town's elite, particularly the popular Courtenay...

A collection of classic and previously unpublished stories from an influential female voice in science fiction Science fiction has historically been seen as a masculine domain, but from the very beginning women have made their mark. To the ranks of Mary Shelley and C.L. Moore, we should add Clare Winger Harris, whose pulp stories in the early twentieth century influenced the boom of modern writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin and Margaret Atwood. In...

The true story of Marshall ‚ÄúMajor‚Ä Taylor, who overcame racial prejudice to become one of the most dominant cyclists in history. Part of Belt‚Äs Revival series and with an introduction by Zito Madu. The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World, which Taylor self-published in 1928, gives a riveting first-person account of his rise to the highest echelons of professional cycling. Born in Indianapolis, he eventually became the first African American...

Journalist Ida Tarbell wrote serialized stories from 1902 to 1904 exposing the Standard Oil Company monopoly and the role of owner John D. Rockefeller in creating commercialized American ideals and materialistic values. Tarbell describes Rockefeller's business practices, personal characteristics, and physical appearance. This "muckraking" form of journalism led to regulation of Standard Oil.

"On November 10, 1898, a mob of 400 rampaged through the streets of Wilmington, North Carolina, killing as many as 60 citizens, burning down the newspaper office, overthrowing the newly elected African American leaders, and installing a new white supremacist government. The marrow of tradition is a fictionalized account of this important, under-studied event. Charles W. Chesnutt narrates the story of 'Wellington,' North Carolina, through William Miller,...