Winner of the 2021 Rachel Carson Environmental Book Award Winner of the 2021 Maine Literary Award for Nonfiction Finalist for the 2020 National Book Critics John Leonard Prize for Best First Book Finalist for the 2021 New England Society Book Award Finalist for the 2021 New England Independent Booksellers Association Award A New York Times Editors’ Choice and Chicago Tribune top book for 2020 “Mill Town is the book of a lifetime; a deep-drilling, quick-moving, heartbreaking story. Scathing and tender, it lifts often into poetry, but comes down hard when it must. Through it all runs the river: sluggish, ancient, dangerous, freighted with America’s sins.” —Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland Kerri Arsenault grew up in the small, rural town of Mexico, Maine, where for over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that provided jobs for nearly everyone in town, including three generations of her family. Kerri had a happy childhood, but years after she moved away, she realized the price she paid for that childhood. The price everyone paid. The mill, while providing the social and economic cohesion for the community, also contributed to its demise. Mill Town is a book of narrative nonfiction, investigative memoir, and cultural criticism that illuminates the rise and collapse of the working-class, the hazards of loving and leaving home, and the ambiguous nature of toxics and disease with the central question; Who or what are we willing to sacrifice for our own survival?

A social history of Everett, Washington, from its earliest beginnings to the tragic and infamous event on November 5, 1916, which came to be known as the Everett Massacre.

The Milltown Boys at Sixty is a story like no other, giving both an insider and an outsider view of the ‘Milltown Boys’, exploring the nature of an ethnographic relationship based on research about their experiences of the criminal justice system. A group classically labelled as delinquents, drug-takers and drop-outs, the Boys were also, in many different ways, fathers, friends and family men, differentially immersed in the labour market, in very different family relationships and now very differently connected to criminal activity. Williamson has written books capturing their experiences over the fifty years of his continued association with them: about their teenage years; and twenty years later, in middle-age. This book is about them as they pass the age of 60, providing a personal account of the relationship between Williamson and the Boys, and the distinctive – perhaps even controversial – research methodology that enabled the mapping of their lives. It provides a unique and detailed insight into the ways in which the lives of the Milltown Boys that started with such shared beginnings have unfolded in so many diverse and fascinating ways. These accounts will be of interest to the lay reader curious about the way others have managed (or failed to manage) their lives, the professional who works with those living, often struggling, on the wrong side of the tracks, and the academic researching and teaching about social exclusion, substance misuse, criminal justice transitions and the life course.

This illustrated look at nineteenth-century New England architecture was named a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year. This book, from the award-winning author of The Way Things Work, takes readers of all ages on a journey through a fictional mill town called Wicksbridge. With words and pictures, David Macaulay reveals fascinating details about the planning, construction, and operation of the mills—and gives us a powerful sense of the day-to-day lives of Americans in this era. “His imaginary mills in an imaginary town in Rhode Island, and the generations of people who built and ran them, come to life.” —The New York Times

As the American economy seeks to restructure itself, Roots of Steel is a powerful, candid, and eye-opening reminder of the people who have been left behind. When Deborah Rudacille was a child in the working-class town of Dundalk, Maryland, a worker at the local Sparrows Point steel mill made more than enough to comfortably support a family. But the decline of American manufacturing in the decades since has put tens of thousands out of work and left the people of Dundalk pondering the broken promise of the American dream. In Roots of Steel, Rudacille combines personal narrative, interviews with workers, and extensive research to capture the character and history of this once-prosperous community.

An overview of life in a nineteenth-century town in which most people worked in the textile mill, including their housing, food, clothing, schools, and everyday activities.