a world filled with uncertainty–and when has it ever been otherwise?–there is one thing of which you can be sure: You can never have enough books. So one Saturday afternoon soon after I moved to Austin I went trolling for answers in the history and travel sections of a second-hand bookstore, where I found myself staring at two stacks of books slumped against a bin. They were worn, discarded copies of Out of …showed first 75 words of 543 total…

…showed last 75 words of 543 total…reading lists in universities throughout the country; a professor of urban geography at the University of Liverpool not only teaches the book, twice he has brought his students to walk through deserted industrial landscapes and stand at the grave of a man named Mike Belejcak, the father of Thomas Bell and the model for the fictional Mike Dobrejcak. And that’s where things start to get interesting–at least as far as I’m concerned.