Dirty Old Boston

When Jim Botticelli launched the Dirty Old Boston Facebook page as a salute to the gritty city of his past, he unwittingly galvanized thousands of people who were also nostalgic for and curious about this crucial time in the city's development. Now captured in a rich and compelling collection, Dirty Old Boston chronicles the people, streets, and buildings from the postwar years to 1987, when a new wave of transformation began. Along with the ball games and dive bars, the four decades covered in this book document some of the city's most dramatic changes and tumultuous events--wholesale razing of neighborhoods, Boston's busing crisis, and the continual fight for affordable housing.Photographs are drawn from family albums, student photography projects, institutional archives, and professional collections, revealing a view of Boston shot from the street. What emerges is a narrative of a city tearing down and rebuilding, protesting and celebrating, fading and thriving. Illuminating Boston's singular tenacity and spirit, Dirty Old Boston presents her proud moments and doesn't shy away from her growing pains. Dirty Old Boston recalls the city as it used to be, the challenges it faced, the maddening traffic and outlandish politics, the simple pleasures of block parties and parades, and those neighborhood haunts where people found camaraderie amidst it all. Raw and beautiful, this book is a tribute to a city and its people.

"Herein, we bring you to sites that have been central to the lives of 'the people' of Greater Boston over four centuries. You'll visit sites associated with the area's indigenous inhabitants and with the individuals and movements who sought to abolish slavery, to end war, challenge militarism, and bring about a more peaceful world, to achieve racial equity, gender justice, and sexual liberation, and to secure the rights of workers. We take you to some well-known sites, but more often to ones far off the well-beaten path of the Freedom Trail, to places in Boston's outlying neighborhoods. We also visit sites in numerous other municipalities that make up the Greater Boston region-from places such as Lawrence, Lowell and Lynn to Concord and Plymouth. The sites to which we do 'travel' include homes given that people's struggles, activism, and organizing sometimes unfold, or are even birthed in many cases in living rooms and kitchens. Trying to capture a place as diverse and dynamic as Boston is highly challenging. (One could say that about any 'big' place.) We thus want to make clear that our goal is not to be comprehensive, or to 'do justice' to the region. Given the constraints of space and time as well as the limitations of knowledge--both our own and what is available in published form--there are many important sites, cities, and towns that we have not included. Thus, in exploring scores of sites across Boston and numerous municipalities, our modest goal is to paint a suggestive portrait of the greater urban area that highlights its long-contested nature. In many ways, we merely scratch the region's surface--or many surfaces--given the multiple layers that any one place embodies. In writing about Greater Boston as a place, we run the risk of suggesting that the city writ-large has some sort of essence. Indeed, the very notion of a particular place assumes intrinsic characteristics and an associated delimited space. After all, how can one distinguish one place from another if it has no uniqueness and is not geographically differentiated? Nonetheless, geographer Doreen Massey insists that we conceive of places as progressive, as flowing over the boundaries of any particular space, time, or society; in other words, we should see places as processual or ever-changing, as unbounded in that they shape and are shaped by other places and forces from without, and as having multiple identities. In exploring Greater Boston from many venues over 400 years, we embrace this approach. That said, we have to reconcile this with the need to delimit Greater Boston--for among other reasons, simply to be in a position to name it and thus distinguish it from elsewhere"--

In the early 1960s, a bloody civil war broke out between the two powerful Irish Mob families in the Somerville Massachusetts neighborhood known as Winter Hill. More than 60 men were murdered. The events offer a true picture of an era in Boston's pre-Whitey Bulger history when the streets were protected by a close-knit group of Irish-Italian "businessmen."

A collection of short stories examining the lives of suburbanites seeking solace and gratification in food, sex, work, and love.

Boston has always been known for its stiff character. So how did this great New England city become home to one of the largest and most notorious adult entertainment districts in the nation? In this expertly crafted history, veteran reporter Stephanie Schorow teases out the issues that created this controversial neighborhood, giving voice to the players who sought to tame or profit from the sleaze snaking its way through Boston. At turns comic and tragic, Schorow introduces us to the politicians, exotic dancers, and wise guys, and residents brought together by the adult entertainment district—a five-acre neighborhood the city engineered to contain the very porno plague it wanted to eliminate. (Meet the nun-turned-attorney who advocated for the First Amendment rights of adult bookstores, a dancer called “the thinking man's stripper,” and Boston's unofficial city censor.) For these people and thousands of others, the Combat Zone is more than a memory—it was a life-altering adventure.

A treasured read. I learned, laughed, and cried. I will pass on this remarkable resource. - Dawn Eger Rizzo, Thyroid Cancer Survivor Unflappable, witty, honest, and inspirational describe Lorna's exploration of her journey. As a survivor of kidney cancer, I was awed, captivated, and encouraged by the positive nature of Lorna's personal philosophy. - Marsha E. Bergquist, Cancer Survivor Having suffered much loss from this disease, Lorna's narrative about dealing with thyroid cancer is not only filled with useful and practical information, but was cathartic for my own repressed emotions. I laughed, I cried, and I healed. - Ellie Osborne Lorna has the innate gift of bringing light, laughter, and hope while sharing her journey with readers. I was pulled in by her honesty and even laughed out loud at times. - Linda Joy, Publisher Main Entry: dirty bomb-shell Function: noun Date: 2005: a former bombshell beauty fighting thyroid cancer in the Nuclear Medicine Department of a hospital about to ingest a purple radioactive radiation pill that will make her a contagious toxic human dirty bomb. Dirty Bombshell is the poignant and brave story of a 33 year old girl who is fighting her way back to wellness. Her triumphant story sheds light on a cancer most Americans are in the dark about. This story of faith, forgiveness, strength, hope, courage, tolerance, and self-discovery will change the way you tackle hardship, leaving you with the power to survive and thrive. Dirty Bombshell will help you find your way back to FABULOUS! As an actor, singer, writer, producer, and teacher, Lorna J. Brunelle has always had a passion for the arts. A tireless volunteer, with an indelible commitment to bring positive change, she is dedicated to a range of causes.

In keeping with the tradition of the Noir series, Boston Noir 2 is made up of the works of several celebrated authors whose work is tied together by a common setting. After the massive success of the first Boston Noir, bestselling author Dennis Lehane is back as curator for another anthology of crime stories set in Boston. The Boston Noir 2 collection features reprints of the classic chilling short stories and novel excerpts that brought the world of noir to its knees. Contributors include Pulitzer winners Joyce Carol Oates and John Updike.

A veteran art critic helps us make sense of modern and contemporary art The landscape of contemporary art has changed dramatically during the last hundred years: from Malevich's 1915 painting of a single black square and Duchamp's 1917 signed porcelain urinal to Jackson Pollock's midcentury "drip" paintings; Chris Burden's "Shoot" (1971), in which the artist was voluntarily shot in the arm with a rifle; Urs Fischer's "You" (2007), a giant hole dug in the floor of a New York gallery; and the conceptual and performance art of today's Ai Weiwei and Marina Abramovic. The shifts have left the art-viewing public (understandably) perplexed. In The Art of Looking, renowned art critic Lance Esplund demonstrates that works of modern and contemporary art are not as indecipherable as they might seem. With patience, insight, and wit, Esplund guides us through the last century of art and empowers us to approach and appreciate it with new eyes. Eager to democratize genres that can feel inaccessible, Esplund encourages viewers to trust their own taste, guts, and common sense. The Art of Looking will open the eyes of viewers who think that recent art is obtuse, nonsensical, and irrelevant, as well as the eyes of those who believe that the art of the past has nothing to say to our present.