Detroit may be today's poster child for Rust Belt decay, but according to David Giffels, Akron, Ohio, began rolling downhill long before Detroit fell on hard times. Once home to all of the country's major tire companies and proudly wearing the tag "Rubber Capital of the World," Akron's population has dropped 30% from its peak in the 1960s and '70s, its factories reduced to totem smoke stacks. The Hard Way on Purpose collects a potpourri of Giffels's musings on the things that make old Midwest cities like Akron special. As he asks its emigrants, "Hamburgers and ice cream and bowling and rock music and soap-box racers and Chuck Taylors and football.... Why are you leaving here?"
In these linked essays, Giffels (All the Way Home) riffs on the loss of Akron-born LeBron James and rock star Chrissie Hynde, the fickle, often harsh weather, the dearth of pro sports championship titles in nearby Cleveland, professional bowling, the "four-chord rock riff" of the "Akron sound," real estate gentrification and the city's ubiquitous thrift stores. In one of the best pieces, he wanders the local Goodwill in his Gold Circle sneakers ("unabashed knockoffs of the Adidas Country") looking for a vintage bowling shirt. To Giffels, thrift stores define the Rust Belt. In the aisles of Goodwill, he finds the history of his home town--"the high-school-band sweatshirts and hospital-sponsored 5K freebie T-shirts and Myrtle Beach souvenirs." --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.