Thirty-two million Americans have lost jobs because of permanent factory closings since 1970. Gregory Pappas here provides an intimate account of the economic, social, psychological, and medical consequences of one such closing. Once known as "the magic city" of economic opportunity, Barberton, Ohio, is an industrial working-class town of second- and third-generation factory workers. When the Seiberling tire plant in Barberton was closed in 1980, over 1200 jobs were eliminated. Drawing on extensive research, including surveys and interviews with workers laid off by the closing, Pappas offers an incisive analysis of their responses to unemployment. Pappas first details the ways in which the unemployed rubber workers have met their economic needs in the face of declining income. He next evaluates their success in reentering the labor market, as he examines the job-hunting process, the unemployment insurance system, and workers' initiatives toward retraining and relocation. Turning to the psychological effects of the shutdown on workers and their families, Pappas describes unemployed workers' responses to the loss of status, identity, participation in the community, and sense of time. He next considers central historical questions, offering an explanation of the contemporary rise in unemployment and analyzing the prior development of this community that must now bear the burden of change. Two detailed portraits document the adaptations of individuals to the shutdown and explore the complex relationship between social change and personality.

A simple black and white photograph taken during the 1964 Cassius Clay-Sonny Liston fight on Miami Beach may hold the key to a horrific, politically-motivated crime forty-two years earlier. After it mysteriously reappears, the photo is burned in an act of arson that sets off a modern-day killing spree reaching from the quiet neighborhoods of Miami to the back corridors of the White House. What the killer did not know is that a copy of the photograph still remains. When it falls into Thorn’s hands, he and everyone he close to him—including his beloved Alexandra—become the targets of madmen and trained hitmen, each of whom has a powerful motive to see the photograph destroyed…and will go to murderous lengths to make it disappear forever.

“A thug is someone who stands on his own. He lives by the decisions he makes and accepts the consequences. A thug is comfortable in his own skin. I wear mine like a glove.” Trick Daddy was born a thug—just a stone’s throw from downtown Miami, yet a world away from its dazzling beauty and sparkling wealth. Where grinding poverty, deadly crime, and devastating racial tension taught kids to live by the ’hood rules. Remarkably, Trick came from nothing and made it big just when his chances had run out. Magic City is the extraordinary tale of a boy whose father was a pimp, who learned to hustle to survive, and whose only role model was his brother, the drug dealer he watched plying his trade on the block. It’s the untold truth behind the cult movie Scarface, of the drug money that transformed the city into a shining mecca for the rich and famous while turf wars between smalltime pushers claimed countless lives. It’s also the incredible story of how that potent mixture of extremes—the electric pulse and glittering abundance of South Beach and the crime, corruption, and despair in its shadows—gave rise to the most dominant sound in hip-hop today. Magic City is an ode to Miami, a riveting tale of a paradise lost and a native son determined to infuse it with new life.