In this latest volume, Tom Batiuk continues to explore the roots of comic books and newspaper comic strips and provides unique insight into the evolution of his own creative process. Beginning five years after the strip’s most recent time-jump, the Funky gang are now in their late forties and raising teenagers of their own. Batiuk continues the Starbuck Jones storyline from the previous volume, as Holly searches for the final five issues of the comic book to send to Cory in Afghanistan. Elsewhere, there is a memorable class reunion, the character of Mason Jarr is introduced, and the cast decamps to Hollywood as Lisa’s Story is about to be adapted into a movie.

While Pittsburgh is sometimes held up as a successful example of urban reinvention in the era after heavy industry (think “eds and meds”), its transition away from steel has in fact been uneven and contested. Christopher P. Briem grew up in the city’s Bloomfield and South Side neighborhoods watching that process. Now a regional economist at the University of Pittsburgh, he has spent many years working in multiple registers to document economic change-through his academic research, as a public authority consulted nationally when Pittsburgh is in the news, and as a spirited participant in popular debates about what is still called the Steel City.

Long before the fashion industry formally addressed questions of sustainability and advocated for “slow fashion,” William and Elizabeth Phelps, a husband-and-wife design duo, were already working to create handcrafted leathergoods and functional women’s sportswear that could be worn for decades. Active from the 1940s to the late 1960s, Phelps Associates quickly won acclaim and found commercial success, attracting a broad clientele and becoming known for quality, utility, and craftsmanship.

In Peace and Security in Kenya: The USAID Approach, Galeeb Kachra examines the involvement of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in Kenya following the post-election violence in late 2007 and early 2008 that left the country on the brink of civil war. Through USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives, Kachra oversaw the Kenya Transition Initiative, which helped Kenyans establish a renewed judiciary, implement a new constitution, and grapple with longstanding land issues. As a country central to American foreign policy in Africa, Kachra argues, efforts to foster peace, reconciliation, and democratic political reform there had real benefits to US security objectives.

The Deep Blue of Neptune is a striking, meditative collection of poems by Terry Belew, which reminds readers of the necessity of empathy in the midst of uncertain and unsettling times. Set against a rural backdrop, Belew’s poems reside in the everyday—driving on gravel backroads, roaming the aisles of Walmart, and doomscrolling on a smart phone—to highlight the contradictory qualities of existence.