J.J. Anselmi’s Out Here on Our Own tells the story of Rock Springs, Wyoming, a mining boomtown with a history of brutal racial violence, widespread addiction, prostitution, and a staggeringly high per-capita suicide rate—yet a place that has proved remarkably resilient. Anselmi stitches together an array of original interviews with people who’ve seen those things firsthand, tracing the boom-bust trajectory of a town known for its corruption, vice, and violence. Amid such horrors as the massacre of Chinese miners in 1885 and the ongoing methamphetamine and opioid epidemics, the town has fought hard to keep its identity of rugged individualism intact. In 2022 Rock Springs is slipping into yet another bust. Anselmi’s narrative offers searing personal accounts of a community in crisis, whose problems are fanned by severely limited mental health resources, dying industries, and Wyoming’s still-pervasive idea that people should deal with their troubles alone. In a community’s own words, Out Here on Our Own depicts a place that’s as tough and weathered as the sagebrush and sandstone surrounding it.

In twenty heavy chapters, this book chronicles Anselmi's experiences growing up as a straight edge, BMX-riding metalhead in Rock Springs, Wyoming, a place with one of the highest per capita suicide rates in the United States. His grandpa was a well-known businessman and politician in the area, and was featured in a 1977 60 Minutes episode for his alleged connections to organized crime. This is only the beginning of Anselmi's heavy saga, and it interweaves all of the social and personal history one might expect from a story like this--including Black Sabbath, Pantera, and Metallica logo tattoos, explorations in LSD, metal, and BMX culture, self-loathing and sobriety, and--finally--a very unique perspective on what it means to live in a heavy fucking world.

Publishes for the first time the World War I letters of Nora Saltonstall, a young woman from a prominent New England family who left her comfortable circumstances to volunteer for service on the Western Front.

Doomed to Fail explores the heaviest music the world has ever heard, tracing doom, sludge, and post-metal as their own distinct (and incredibly loud) traditions. Anselmi covers the bands and musicians that have impacted those styles most--Black Sabbath, Candlemass, Melvins, Eyehategod, Godflesh, Neurosis, Saint Vitus, and many others--while diving into the cultural doom that has spawned such music, from the bombing of Birmingham and hurricane devastation of New Orleans to glaring economic inequality, industrial alienation, climate change, and widespread addiction. Along the way, Anselmi interweaves the musical experiences that have led him to proudly identify as one of the doomed.

First published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.