A tribute to the enduring courage and spirit of children of Baltimore from the mid 1800s-early 1900s. In a city that has been, at once, blessed with a rich port and torn apart by war, filled with pristine parks and scarred by the ravages of industrial life, childhood has reflected the ever-changing times and culture in American life. From baseball games and trips to the zoo to schoolyard pals and amusement park rides, children explored the world around them. The nostalgia and innocence of well-born youth, however, mingled with the harsher realities that many boys and girls knew as their daily lives - laboring in the mills and factories, the haphazard destruction of fires and storms, the segregation of public places and the cold and hunger so keenly felt during the Great Depression.

Chronicling the period from the mid-nineteenth century to the early 1900s through striking vintage photographs, Growing Up in Baltimore pays tribute to the enduring courage and spirit of children. In a city that has been, at once, blessed with a rich port and torn apart by war, filled with pristine parks and scarred by the ravages of industrial life, childhood has reflected the ever-changing times and culture in American life. From baseball games and trips to the zoo to schoolyard pals and amusement park rides, children explored the world around them. But the nostalgia and innocence of well-born youth mingled with the harsher realities that many boys and girls knew as their daily lives-laboring in the mills and factories, the haphazard destruction of fires and storms, the segregation of public places, the cold and hunger so keenly felt during the Great Depression.

The Pulitzer Prize–winning memoir about coming of age in America between the world wars: “So warm, so likable and so disarmingly funny” (The New York Times). One of the New York Times’ “50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years” Ranging from the backwoods of Virginia to a New Jersey commuter town to the city of Baltimore, this remarkable memoir recounts Russell Baker’s experience of growing up in pre–World War II America, before he went on to a celebrated career in journalism. With poignant, humorous tales of powerful love, awkward sex, and courage in the face of adversity, Baker reveals how he helped his mother and family through the Great Depression by delivering papers and hustling subscriptions to the Saturday Evening Post—a job which introduced him to bullies, mentors, and heroes who endured this national disaster with hard work and good cheer. Called “a treasure” by Anne Tyler and “a blessing” by Time magazine, this autobiography is a modern-day classic—“a wondrous book [with scenes] as funny and touching as Mark Twain’s” (Los Angeles Times Book Review). “In lovely, haunting prose, he has told a story that is deeply in the American grain.” —The Washington Post Book World “A terrific book.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

This is the true life story of Dante Barksdale, nephew of Nathan Avon Barksdale, who inspired the character of Avon Barksdale in HBO's "The Wire." His tale spans roughly four decades, and thus provides a lens into the history of East Baltimore, from the "slum clearance" period of the 1950s to the serial demolition of the project high-rises to the spike in gun violence that continues today. It is as much the story of one man as it is the story of a community whose history has been swallowed by an HBO series.

A volume in the American Sociological Association's Rose Series in Sociology West Baltimore stands out in the popular imagination as the quintessential “inner city”—gritty, run-down, and marred by drugs and gang violence. Indeed, with the collapse of manufacturing jobs in the 1970s, the area experienced a rapid onset of poverty and high unemployment, with few public resources available to alleviate economic distress. But in stark contrast to the image of a perpetual “urban underclass” depicted in television by shows like The Wire, sociologists Karl Alexander, Doris Entwisle, and Linda Olson present a more nuanced portrait of Baltimore’s inner city residents that employs important new research on the significance of early-life opportunities available to low-income populations. The Long Shadow focuses on children who grew up in west Baltimore neighborhoods and others like them throughout the city, tracing how their early lives in the inner city have affected their long-term well-being. Although research for this book was conducted in Baltimore, that city’s struggles with deindustrialization, white flight, and concentrated poverty were characteristic of most East Coast and Midwest manufacturing cities. The experience of Baltimore’s children who came of age during this era is mirrored in the experiences of urban children across the nation. For 25 years, the authors of The Long Shadow tracked the life progress of a group of almost 800 predominantly low-income Baltimore school children through the Beginning School Study Youth Panel (BSSYP). The study monitored the children’s transitions to young adulthood with special attention to how opportunities available to them as early as first grade shaped their socioeconomic status as adults. The authors’ fine-grained analysis confirms that the children who lived in more cohesive neighborhoods, had stronger families, and attended better schools tended to maintain a higher economic status later in life. As young adults, they held higher-income jobs and had achieved more personal milestones (such as marriage) than their lower-status counterparts. Differences in race and gender further stratified life opportunities for the Baltimore children. As one of the first studies to closely examine the outcomes of inner-city whites in addition to African Americans, data from the BSSYP shows that by adulthood, white men of lower status family background, despite attaining less education on average, were more likely to be employed than any other group in part due to family connections and long-standing racial biases in Baltimore’s industrial economy. Gender imbalances were also evident: the women, who were more likely to be working in low-wage service and clerical jobs, earned less than men. African American women were doubly disadvantaged insofar as they were less likely to be in a stable relationship than white women, and therefore less likely to benefit from a second income. Combining original interviews with Baltimore families, teachers, and other community members with the empirical data gathered from the authors’ groundbreaking research, The Long Shadow unravels the complex connections between socioeconomic origins and socioeconomic destinations to reveal a startling and much-needed examination of who succeeds and why.

Stories navigating the commplicated terrain of race in America, from acclaimed writers like Toni Morrison, E.L. Doctorow, Sandra Cisneros, Sherman Alexie, and Amy Tan The editors who brought us Unsettling America and Identity Lessons have compiled a short-story anthology that focuses on themes of racial and ethnic assimilation. With humor, passion, and grace, the contributors lay bare poignant attempts at conformity and the alienation sometimes experienced by ethnic Americans. But they also tell of the strength gained through the preservation of their communities, and the realization that it was often their difference from the norm that helped them to succeed. In pieces suggesting that American identity is far from settled, these writers illustrate the diversity that is the source of both the nation's great discord and infinite promise. "These beautiful stories radiate with the poignant, ingenious ways young people come to terms with their ethnic identities, negotiating their families, school, friends and their futures . . . This exemplary collection fulfills the editors' aims: to open dialogue and encourage the telling of difficult, adaptive or affirming life experiences." -Publisher's Weekly

Baltimores rich diversity is represented by its many neighborhoods95 at last count. Some neighborhoods meander for several city blocks while others claim only a few. This volume of vintage postcards provides unique glimpses into the past of many of Baltimores neighborhoods. Included are the elegant homes of Roland Park, Guildford, and Sherwood Gardens; the workingmans Highlandtown, South Baltimore, and Locust Point; the streetcar suburbs of Mount Washington, Overlea, Ten Hills, and Hunting Ridge; and the city parkanchored communities of Patterson Park, Federal Hill, and Gwynns Falls. Readers will find no two communities alike.

Recent research on inequality and poverty has shown that those born into low-income families, especially African Americans, still have difficulty entering the middle class, in part because of the disadvantages they experience living in more dangerous neighborhoods, going to inferior public schools, and persistent racial inequality. Coming of Age in the Other America shows that despite overwhelming odds, some disadvantaged urban youth do achieve upward mobility. Drawing from ten years of fieldwork with parents and children who resided in Baltimore public housing, sociologists Stefanie DeLuca, Susan Clampet-Lundquist, and Kathryn Edin highlight the remarkable resiliency of some of the youth who hailed from the nation’s poorest neighborhoods and show how the right public policies might help break the cycle of disadvantage. Coming of Age in the Other America illuminates the profound effects of neighborhoods on impoverished families. The authors conducted in-depth interviews and fieldwork with 150 young adults, and found that those who had been able to move to better neighborhoods—either as part of the Moving to Opportunity program or by other means—achieved much higher rates of high school completion and college enrollment than their parents. About half the youth surveyed reported being motivated by an “identity project”—or a strong passion such as music, art, or a dream job—to finish school and build a career. Yet the authors also found troubling evidence that some of the most promising young adults often fell short of their goals and remained mired in poverty. Factors such as neighborhood violence and family trauma put these youth on expedited paths to adulthood, forcing them to shorten or end their schooling and find jobs much earlier than their middle-class counterparts. Weak labor markets and subpar postsecondary educational institutions, including exploitative for-profit trade schools and under-funded community colleges, saddle some young adults with debt and trap them in low-wage jobs. A third of the youth surveyed—particularly those who had not developed identity projects—were neither employed nor in school. To address these barriers to success, the authors recommend initiatives that help transform poor neighborhoods and provide institutional support for the identity projects that motivate youth to stay in school. They propose increased regulation of for-profit schools and increased college resources for low-income high school students. Coming of Age in the Other America presents a sensitive, nuanced account of how a generation of ambitious but underprivileged young Baltimoreans has struggled to succeed. It both challenges long-held myths about inner-city youth and shows how the process of “social reproduction”—where children end up stuck in the same place as their parents—is far from inevitable.

"From iconic NBA All-Star Carmelo Anthony comes a raw and inspirational memoir about growing up in the housing projects of Red Hook and Baltimore-a brutal world Where Tomorrows Aren't Promised"--

Baltimore mobster Charlie Wilhelm reveals in his own words the details of hiswild life in crime and his desperate struggle for redemption.of shocking photos. Original.