According to popular media and scholarship, Detroit, the once-vibrant city that crumbled with the departure of the auto industry, is where dreams can be reborn. It is a place that, like America itself, is gritty and determined. It has faced the worst kind of adversity, and supposedly now it’s back. But what does this narrative of “new Detroit” leave out? Beautiful Wasteland reveals that the contemporary story of Detroit’s rebirth is an upcycled version of the American Dream, which has long imagined access to work, home, and upward mobility as race-neutral projects. They’re not. As Rebecca J. Kinney shows, the narratives of Detroit’s rise, decline, and potential to rise again are deeply steeped in material and ideological investments in whiteness. By remapping the narratives of contemporary Detroit through an extension of America’s frontier mythology, Kinney analyzes a cross-section of twentieth and twenty-first century cultural locations—an Internet forum, ruin photography, advertising, documentary film, and print and online media. She illuminates how the stories we tell about Detroit as a frontier of possibility enable the erasure of white privilege and systemic racism. By situating Detroit as a “beautiful wasteland,” both desirable and distressed, this shows how the narrative of ruin and possibility form a mutually constituted relationship: the city is possible precisely because of its perceived ruin. Beautiful Wasteland tackles the key questions about the future of postindustrial America. As cities around the country reckon with their own postindustrial landscapes, Rebecca Kinney cautions that development that elides considerations of race and class will only continue to replicate uneven access to the city for the poor, working class, and people of color.

MAD GHOST COMICS presents a MONSTROUS 80 PAGES of all-new stories featuring GEIGER, as well as his allies and enemies! First, in an extra-sized lead story, GEOFF JOHNS & BRYAN HITCH introduce the mysterious man known as REDCOAT and reveal his bizarre ties to the American Revolution, the Unknown War, and Geiger himself. Then, discover the secrets of the Warlords of Las Vegas—Bonnie Borden! Goldbeard! Mr. Karloff! And more!—in a series of tales written and drawn by some of the greatest writers and artists today! Plus, the special origin tale of Geiger’s favorite two-headed dog, BARNEY, and a PREVIEW of GEOFF JOHNS & GARY FRANK’s new upcoming series: JUNKYARD JOE!

In an eloquent history of landscape and land use, Vittoria Di Palma takes on the “anti-picturesque”—how landscapes that elicit fear and disgust have shaped our conceptions of beauty and the sublime.

When you were a baby I sat very still to hold you. I could see the veins through your skin like a map to inside you. I stopped breathing so you wouldn't ... You were just a boy on a bed in a room, like a kaleidoscope is a tube full of bits of broken glass. But the way I saw you was pieces refracting the light, shifting into an infinite universe of flowers and rainbows and insects and planets, magical dividing cells, pictures no one else knew ... Your whole life you can be told something is wrong and so you believe it.

When Hurricane María unleashed its devastation onto Puerto Rico, thousands of lives were lost to the storm in what was the island's worst natural disaster on record. With so much of the recovery still underway and the scars still fresh, its citizens continue to contend with the reality that life on the island has fundamentally changed. In his first collection of poems written in English, La Torre Lagares journeys through his memory in an effort to recompose his shattered land. Together, these poems form a poignant, personal account of a man facing the tragic destinies of his family and his country in the aftermath of a natural disaster. For example, the deaths of the mother and the father are resignified as the death of the poet's personal relationship, which at the same time evokes the rupture between individuals and their sense of place. Drawing from both American and Latin American poetry, as well as global influences, to articulate a language of loss and devastation in search of a new identity, this collection illuminates a chaotic and confusing landscape that is not only physical but also cultural, social, and political. Taken together, this work serves as a stirring reminder of the dislocation and fractured attachment that speaks to many Americans, including transnationals and immigrants. Ultimately it speaks to coping with physical loss and emotional pain in the face of human adversity.

In The Promise of Beauty, Mimi Thi Nguyen explores the relationship between the concept of beauty and narratives of crisis and catastrophe. Nguyen conceptualizes beauty, which, she observes, we turn to in emergencies and times of destruction, as a tool to identify and bridge the discrepancy between the world as it is and what it ought to be. Drawing widely from aesthetic and critical theories, Nguyen outlines how beauty—or its lack—points to the conditions that must exist for it to flourish. She notes that an absence of beauty becomes both a political observation and a call to action to transform the conditions of the situation so as to replicate, preserve, or repair beauty. The promise of beauty can then engender a critique of social arrangements and political structures that would set the foundations for its possibility and presence. In this way, Nguyen highlights the role of beauty in inspiring action toward a more just world.

The remarkable story of the Tonawanda Senecas in the face of overwhelming odds is the centerpiece of this landmark community study. In the six decades prior to the Civil War, they wrestled with pressures from land companies; the local, state, and federal officials' policies to acquire tribal lands and remove the Indians; misguided Quakers who believed they knew what was best for the Indians; and divisions among Seneca communities about what strategies of resistance to employ. As deftly and convincingly revealed by Laurence M. Hauptman, the Tonawanda Senecas were able strategists who overcame disastrous treaties to regain 7,549 acres of their western New York territory, lands that they still possess today. The chiefs and clan mothers pursued a number of well thought-out strategies: petitioning officials and lobbying in Washington, challenging the legality of the treaties; preventing surveyors from entering onto tribal lands; disrupting land auctions; taking out advertisements; and networking with influential whites. They also hired a first-rate attorney who eventually won a landmark victory in the U.S. Supreme Court and who successfully negotiated the United States–Tonawanda Treaty of 1857, which provided a formula to repurchase a part of the reservation. In recounting this heroic story, Hauptman throws new light on Red Jacket and Ely S. Parker, women's roles within Tonawanda society, and the development of the Gaiwiio, the Longhouse religion.