The black ghetto is thought of as a place of urban decay and social disarray. Like the historical ghetto of Venice, it is perceived as a space of confinement, one imposed on black America by whites. It is the home of a marginalized underclass and a sign of the depth of American segregation. Yet while black urban neighborhoods have suffered from institutional racism and economic neglect, they have also been places of refuge and community. In A Haven and a Hell, Lance Freeman examines how the ghetto shaped black America and how black America shaped the ghetto. Freeman traces the evolving role of predominantly black neighborhoods in northern cities from the late nineteenth century through the present day. At times, the ghetto promised the freedom to build black social institutions and political power. At others, it suppressed and further stigmatized African Americans. Freeman reveals the forces that caused the ghetto’s role as haven or hell to wax and wane, spanning the Great Migration, mid-century opportunities, the eruptions of the sixties, the challenges of the seventies and eighties, and present-day issues of mass incarceration, the subprime crisis, and gentrification. Offering timely planning and policy recommendations based in this history, A Haven and a Hell provides a powerful new understanding of urban black communities at a time when the future of many inner-city neighborhoods appears uncertain.

***2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER*** ***THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER*** Winner of the 2021 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction, Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize Finalist, 2022 Chautauqua Prize Finalist, Willie Morris Award for Southern Writing Shortlist, 2021 Aspen Words Literary Prize Shortlist, 2022 Maya Angelou Book Award Shortlist, 2022 Carnegie Medal Longlist A Read With Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick! An Ebony Magazine Publishing Book Club Pick! One of Washington Post's 50 Notable Works of Fiction | One of Philadelphia Inquirer's Best Books of 2021 | One of Shelf Awareness's Top Ten Fiction Titles of the Year | One of TIME Magazine’s 100 Must-Read Books | One of NPR.org's "Books We Love" | EW’s "Guide to the Biggest and Buzziest Books of 2021" | One of the New York Public Library's Best Books for Adults | San Diego Union Tribune—My Favorite Things from 2021 | Writer's Bone's Best Books of 2021 | Atlanta Journal Constitution—Top 10 Southern Books of the Year | One of the Guardian's (UK) Best Ten 21st Century Comic Novels | One of Entertainment Weekly's 15 Books You Need to Read This June | On Entertainment Weekly's "Must List" | One of the New York Post's Best Summer Reading books | One of GMA's 27 Books for June | One of USA Today's 5 Books Not to Miss | One of Fortune's 21 Most Anticipated Books Coming Out in the Second Half of 2021 | One of The Root's PageTurners: It’s Getting Hot in Here | One of Real Simple's Best New Books to Read in 2021 An astounding work of fiction from New York Times bestselling author Jason Mott, always deeply honest, at times electrically funny, that goes to the heart of racism, police violence, and the hidden costs exacted upon Black Americans and America as a whole In Jason Mott’s Hell of a Book, a Black author sets out on a cross-country publicity tour to promote his bestselling novel. That storyline drives Hell of a Book and is the scaffolding of something much larger and more urgent: Mott’s novel also tells the story of Soot, a young Black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and The Kid, a possibly imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour. As these characters’ stories build and converge, they astonish. For while this heartbreaking and magical book entertains and is at once about family, love of parents and children, art and money, it’s also about the nation’s reckoning with a tragic police shooting playing over and over again on the news. And with what it can mean to be Black in America. Who has been killed? Who is The Kid? Will the author finish his book tour, and what kind of world will he leave behind? Unforgettably told, with characters who burn into your mind and an electrifying plot ideal for book club discussion, Hell of a Book is the novel Mott has been writing in his head for the last ten years. And in its final twists, it truly becomes its title.

"If you want to hear God laugh, just tell him your plan." Dr. Scot Hodkiewicz was happily living the American Dream, having followed his own Great Plan to the letter. But as he would discover, as he drove down the interstate one October day with his wife and three young children, God had an even greater plan for his life. Left with a mangled body and a broken spirit in the aftermath of a head-on collision with a drunk driver, Dr. Scot entered his own personal hell of pain, addiction, and potential tragedy. Initially filled with anger, hatred and self-pity, he would come to understand the power of forgiveness and that his struggles were ultimately the path to his salvation. God's plan for him was so much more than he could ever imagine. By going through his hell, he found angels to guide him everywhere, and he discovered that heaven is not something we find after death; it can be found right here on Earth. We only have to recognize it. Join Dr. Scot on this miraculous journey of Getting to Heaven by Going through Hell.

Over half of Americans believe in a literal heaven, in a literal hell. Most people who hold these beliefs are Christian and assume they are the age-old teachings of the Bible. Ehrman shows that eternal rewards and punishments are found nowhere in the Old Testament, and are not what Jesus or his disciples taught. He recounts the long history of the afterlife, ranging from The Epic of Gilgamesh up to the writings of Augustine, focusing especially on the teachings of Jesus and his early followers. Ehrman shows that competing views were intimately connected with the social, cultural, and historical worlds out of which they emerged. -- adapted from jacket

A New York Times best-selling scholar's illuminating exploration of the earliest Christian narrated journeys to heaven and hell “[An] illuminating deep dive . . . An edifying origin story for contemporary Christian conceptions of the afterlife.”—Publishers Weekly From classics such as the Odyssey and the Aeneid to fifth-century Christian apocrypha, narratives that described guided tours of the afterlife played a major role in shaping ancient notions of morality and ethics. In this new account, acclaimed author Bart Ehrman contextualizes early Christian narratives of heaven and hell within the broader intellectual and cultural worlds from which they emerged. He examines how fundamental social experiences of the early Christian communities molded the conceptions of the afterlife that eventuated into the accepted doctrines of heaven, hell, and purgatory. Drawing on Greek and Roman epic poetry, early Jewish writings such as the Book of Watchers, and apocryphal Christian stories including the Acts of Thomas, the Gospel of Nicodemus, and the Apocalypse of Peter, Ehrman demonstrates that ancient tours of the afterlife promoted reflection on matters of ethics, faith, ambition, and life’s meaning, the fruit of which has been codified into Christian belief today.

Are Heaven and Hell real places or states of consciousness? Or both? Are angels and demons real? Are they extraterrestrials we have mistaken as spiritual Beings? Or is it the other way around and they are demons posing as extraterrestrials? Is the Earth Hollow and are there subterranean civilizations? Is Paradise within or outside of our Universe? Was there one original language shared by all humanity? Why are Maya and Aztec languages nearly identical to ancient German? And why has this fact been covered up? What is the Direct Experience of God? These questions and many more are explored within this epic, groundbreaking and fascinating book by consciousness researcher Frederick Dodson.

After making a bad decision when she was very young, Kia Clementine finds herself in hell. Then, suddenly, within the time it takes for a shotgun to blast, her hell changes. Out of the blue she sees Sampson Cooper, her celebrity crush. A man the whole world knows is decent, loyal, good. All of these very unlike her now dead husband. He’s sitting at a table right next to hers. And she catches his eye. Terrified of the interest Sam shows in her, Kia still finds the courage to go out with him. Not long after, she shares her dark secrets, and Sam shares that he’ll stop at nothing to gain her trust. As Sam leads Kia to heaven, Kia realizes Sam is living his own hell. But although he gives her beauty, and she gives him everything, he withholds his trust. Even with the beauty, Kia wants it all. But Sam forces Kia to make a heartbreaking decision, and only she can decide. Is it all? Or nothing?

On earth, life for Dawn Chitoe had been cruel. Although she was strong in her faith, her future looked grim. She found her blessings to be painfully short and too few in between. Until one day, a beautiful baby boy, Josiah, miraculously came into her world. Just when Dawn felt her troubles had vanished, she found herself the victim of a brutal murder. With Josiah cradled in her arms, she embarked on an adventure through the realm between Heaven and Hell. Along the way she finds friends, love, and the truth about religion and faith.

"One of the most inventive and prolific cartoonists working today."—Vulture In the past ten years, Michael DeForge has released eleven books. While his style and approach have evolved, he has never wavered from taut character studies and incisive social commentary with a focus on humor. He has deeply probed subjects like identity, gentrification, fame, and sexual desire. In “No Hell,” an angel’s tour of the five tiers of heaven reveals her obsession with a haunting infidelity. In “Raising,” a couple uses an app to see what their unborn child would look like. Of course, what begins as a simple face-melding experiment becomes a nightmare of too-much-information where the young couple is forced to confront their terrible choices. “Recommended for You” is an anxious retelling of our narrator’s favorite TV show—a Purge-like societal collapse drama—as a reflection of our desire for meaning in pop culture. Each of these stories shows the inner turmoil of an ordinary person coming to grips with a world vastly different than their initial perception of it. The humor is searing and the emotional weight lingers long after the story ends. Heaven No Hell collects DeForge’s best work yet. His ability to dig into a subject and break it down with beautiful drawings and sharp writing makes him one of the finest short story writers of the past decade, in comics or beyond. Heaven No Hell is always funny, sometimes sad, and continuously innovative in its deconstruction of society.

A Woman With a Mission When headstrong Shadow Bedonie set out to uncover the mystery of the artifacts missing from her land, she never expected a confrontation with Mac Tshongely—or the sizzling attraction she felt. Yet despite her suspicions about this brooding wanderer, she found herself offering him a haven from the loneliness reflected in his eyes…. Mac knew the only things in life that endured were the ruins he'd unearthed. Where women were concerned, forever was not in Mac's vocabulary. But he found himself inexplicably drawn to Shadow and the promise of tomorrow she offered. And soon he began wondering if home could be where the heart is….