Over their first four decades in the American League, the Cleveland Indians were known more for great players than consistently great play. Its rosters filled with all-time greats like Cy Young, Nap Lajoie, Elmer Flick, Tris Speaker, and the ill-fated Addie Joss and Ray Chapman, Cleveland often found itself in the thick of the race but, with 1920 the lone exception, seemed always to finish a game or two back in the final standings. In the 10 years that followed the end of World War II, however, the franchise turned the corner. Led by owner (and world-class showman) Bill Veeck, the boy-manager Lou Boudreau, ace Bob Feller, and the barrier-busting Larry Doby, Cleveland charged up the standings, finishing in the first division every season but one and winning it all in 1948. This meticulously researched history covers the Indians' first six decades, from their minor league origins at the end of the 19th century to the dismantling of the 1954 World Series club. It is a story of unforgettable players, frustrated hopes, and two glorious victories that fed a city's unwavering devotion to its team.

The Upper Midwest and Great Lakes region became the “arsenal of democracy”-the greatest manufacturing center in the world-in the years during and after World War II thanks to natural advantages and a welcoming culture. Decades of unprecedented prosperity followed, memorably punctuated by riots, strikes, burning rivers, and oil embargoes. A vibrant, quintessentially American character bloomed in the region's cities, suburbs, and backwaters. But the innovation and industry that defined the Rust Belt also helped to hasten its demise. An air conditioner invented in Upstate New York transformed the South from a sweaty backwoods to a nonunionized industrial competitor. Japan and Germany recovered from their defeat to build fuel-efficient cars in the stagnant 1970s. The tentpole factories that paid workers so well also filled the air with soot, and poisoned waters and soil. The jobs drifted elsewhere, and many of the people soon followed suit. Nothin' but Blue Skies tells the story of how the country's industrial heartland grew, boomed, bottomed, and hopes to be reborn. Through a propulsive blend of storytelling and reportage, celebrated writer Edward McClelland delivers the rise, fall, and revival of the Rust Belt and its people.

In 1948 Cleveland was America's sixth largest city; by 1969 it was the twelfth. For Easterners, Cleveland is where the Midwest begins; for Westerners, it is where the East begins. In the summer of 1948, fourteen-year-old David Zielinsky can look forward to a job at the docks. Anne O'Connor, at twelve, is the apple of her political boss father's eye. David and Anne will meet-and fall in love-four years later, and for the next twenty years this pair will be reluctant star-crossed lovers in a troubled and turbulent country. A natural-born storyteller, Mark Winegardner spins an epic tale of those twenty years, artfully weaving such real-life Clevelanders as Eliot Ness, Alan Freed, and Carl Stokes into the tapestry. His narrative gifts may bring the fiction of E. L. Doctorow to some readers' minds, but Winegardner is very much his own man, and his observations of Cleveland are laced with a loving skepticism. His masterful saga of this conflicted city is a novel that speaks a memorable truth.