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A wry, no-holds-barred memoir of Nelson’s time controlling some of Chicago's most beautiful spots while facing some of its ugliest traditions.

In 1987, the city of Chicago hired a former radical college chaplain to clean up rampant corruption on the waterfront. R. J. Nelson thought he was used to the darker side of the law—he had been followed by federal agents and wiretapped due to his antiwar stances in the sixties—but nothing could prepare him for the wretched bog that constituted the world of a Harbor Boss. Dirty Waters is the wry, no-holds-barred memoir of Nelson’s time controlling some of the city’s most beautiful spots while facing some of its ugliest traditions. Nelson takes us through Chicago's beloved “blue spaces” and deep into the city’s political morass, revealing the different moralities underlining three mayoral administrations and navigating the gritty mechanisms of the city’s political machine. Ultimately, Dirty Waters is a tale of morality, of what it takes to be a force for good in the world and what struggles come from trying to stay ethically afloat in a sea of corruption. 
 

Container shipping is a vital part of the global economy. Goods from all around the world, from vegetables to automobiles, are placed in large metal containers which are transported across the ocean in ships, then loaded onto tractor-trailers and railroad flatbeds. But when and where did this world-changing invention get started?
 
This fascinating study traces the birth of containerization to Port Newark, New Jersey, in 1956 when trucker Malcom McLean thought of a brilliant new way to transport cargo. It tells the story of how Port Newark grew rapidly as McLean’s idea was backed by both New York banks and the US military, who used containerization to ship supplies to troops in Vietnam. Angus Gillespie takes us behind the scenes of today’s active container shipping operations in Port Newark, talking to the pilots who guide the ships into port, the Coast Guard personnel who help manage the massive shipping traffic, the crews who unload the containers, and even the chaplains who counsel and support the mariners. Port Newark shines a spotlight on the unsung men and women who help this complex global shipping operation run smoothly.


Since McLean's innovation, Port Newark has expanded with the addition of the nearby Elizabeth Marine Terminal. This New Jersey complex now makes up the busiest seaport on the East Coast of the United States.  Some have even called it “America’s Front Door.”  The book tells the story of the rapid growth of worldwide containerization, and how Port Newark has adapted to bigger ships with deeper channels and a raised bridge. In the end, there is speculation of the future of this port with ever-increasing automation, artificial intelligence, and automation.

An underwater look at Sydney that surfaces new and unfamiliar histories of people, objects, spaces, and environmental and social change.

The Underharbor places the ocean at the center of a cultural history of Sydney, Australia, a place built on and around seawater, where the community is linked historically, emotionally, and psychologically to the water. Drawing on a series of vignettes that focus on Sydney’s underwater dimensions—including the harbor’s relationship to technological modernity, Indigenous ideas and practices, artistic experimentation, and scientific inquiry—Ann Elias creates a unique portrait of a city and its past. By shifting the terrestrial perspective to the subaquatic, Elias uncovers an area filled with political meaning, poetic significance, and ideological struggles.

Few harbors are as researched as Sydney’s, where fishing, exploration, colonialism, warfare, science, and industry all shaped cultural ideas about underwater space. Between 1850 to 1950, only a few groups of people had access to the remote underharbor: Indigenous divers and First Nations peoples, who were dispossessed by colonizers; divers working primarily to further the maritime industrialization of the growing city and to salvage objects from the harbor floor; researchers in the emerging field of marine science who dove for first-hand observation; and beachcombers, naturalists, and dredgers who got to know the underharbor by bringing it to the surface. Through press stories, models, illustrations, maps, and photographic and cinematic representations, The Underharbor reveals how these watery visions of Sydney shifted over the course of a century.