Lively . . . excoriating, eloquent . . . We are all Faustians now. -- James Wood, The New Yorker

A devilishly fascinating tour of the Faustian bargain through the ages, from brimstone to blues and beyond . . .

From ancient times to the modern world, the idea of the Faustian bargain--the exchange of one's soul in return for untold riches and power--has exerted a magnetic pull upon our collective imaginations.

Scholar Ed Simon takes us on a historical tour of the Faustian bargain, from the Bible to blues, and illustrates how the impulse fto sacrifice our principles in exchange for power is present in all kinds of social ills, from colonialism to nuclear warfare, from social media to climate change to AI, and beyond. In doing so, Simon conveys just how much the Faustian bargain shows us about power and evil . . . and ourselves.

A spectacular visual encyclopedia exploring the art of hell and its minions.

Ed Simon's Pandemonium: The Illustrated History of Demonology presents--for the first time--Satan's family tree, providing a history and analysis of his fellow fallen angels from Asmodeus to Ziminiar.

Throughout the book, there are short entries on individual demons, but Pandemonium is more than just a visual compendium. It also focuses on the influence of figures like Beelzebub, Azazel, Lilith, and Moloch on Western religion, literature, and art.

Ranging from the earliest scriptural references to demons through the contemporary era, when the devils took on a subtler form, Pandemonium functions as a compendium of Lucifer's subjects, from Dante's The Divine Comedy to John Milton's Paradise Lost, and all the points in between.

Containing rarely seen illustrations of very old treatises on demonology, as well as more well-known works by the great masters of Western painting, this book celebrates the art of hell like never before.

Packed with over 400 amazing color illustrations.

Ed Simon tells the story of Pittsburgh through this exploration of its hidden histories--the LA Review of Books calls it an epic, atomic history of the Steel City.

The land surrounding the confluence of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio rivers has supported communities of humans for millennia. Over the past four centuries, however, it has been transformed countless times by the many people who call it home. In this brief, lyrical, and idiosyncratic collection, Ed Simon, a staff writer at The Millions, follows the story of America's furnace through a series of interconnected segments, covering all manner of Pittsburgh-beloved people, places, and things, including:

- Paleolithic Pittsburgh

- The Whiskey Rebellion

- The attempted assassination of Henry Frick

- The Harmonists

- The Mystery, Pittsburgh's radical, Black nationalist newspaper

- The myth of Joe Magarac

- Billy Strayhorn, Duke Ellington, Andy Warhol, and much, much more.

Accessible and funny, An Alternative History of Pittsburgh is a must-read for anyone curious about this storied city, and for Pittsburghers who think they know it all too well already.

A captivating artistic and philosophic exploration of humankind's complex moral codes

A companion piece to Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology and Elysium: A Visual History of Angelology, Seven Sins and Seven Virtues will complete this moral trilogy and finally consider God's most enigmatic of creations: None of the conundrums of metaphysics are as baroque as the motivations of the human soul. Unlike the devils condemned to perdition and the angels compelled to paradise, humans are divine creatures that house within them warring impulses.

Seven Sins and Seven Virtues will examine the literary, philosophical, theological, and most of all artistic expressions of the seven deadly sins and their respective seven cardinal virtues, drawing upon millennia of history to gather a compendium of humanity at its best and its worst. As a volume, the book will explore the Manichean nature of the human animal in all of its grandeur and canker, motivated by the faith that tales of damnation and salvation are the only stories that are ultimately worth telling.

Europe stretches to the Alleghenies, America lies beyond. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

They are my people and this is my town and it does my heart good just to be here. - Art Rooney Sr.

Pittsburgh contains multitudes. The city bestows a character of contradiction, love of place and strength of community on anyone lucky to be born and raised there. A town whose rivers were once lined with belching steel mills but also hosted the world's first major modern art exhibition is not easily defined. From the decline of the steel industry and the exodus of a vast diaspora of Pittsburghers to its reinvention as a trendy mid-sized metropolis, the ethos of the Steel City remains ever-changing. Across thirteen interconnected essays, author Ed Simon examines the city's identity in all of its minutia--U.S. Steel and the U.S. Steelworkers; dive bars and churches; the black and gold and the Black and white; hills, bridges and inclines; and geography as destiny.

Elysium: A Visual History of Angelology is a gloriously illustrated overview of angels across art, religion, and literature from scholar Ed Simon, writer for The Millions.

Ineffable, invisible, inscrutable--angels are enduring creatures across Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and human experiences of the divine as mediated by spiritual emissaries are an aspect of almost every religious tradition. In popular culture, angels are often reduced to the most gauzy, sentimental, and saccharine of images: fat babies with wings and guardians with robes, halos, and harps. By contrast, in scripture whenever one of the heavenly choirs appears before a prophet or patriarch, they first declare, Fear not! for terror would be the most appropriate initial reaction to these otherworldly beings. Angels are often not what we'd expect, but it's precisely in that transcendent encounter that something of the strangeness of existence can be conveyed.

Elysium: A Visual History of Angelology is a follow-up volume to Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology, offering an account of the angelic hierarchies as they've been understood across centuries and cultures, and of the individual personages, such as the archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Uriel, who have marked the mythology of the West.

Includes Color Illustrations

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

Every culture, every religion, every era has enshrined otherwise regular objects with a significance which stretches beyond their literal importance. Whether the bone of a Catholic martyr, the tooth of a Buddhist lama, or the cloak of a Sufi saint, relics are material conduits to the immaterial world. Yet relics aren't just a feature of religion. The exact same sense of the transcendent animates objects of political, historical, and cultural significance.

From Abraham Lincoln's death mask to Vladimir Lenin's embalmed corpse, Emily Dickinson's envelopes to Jimi Hendrix's guitar pick, relics are the objects which the faithful understand as being more than just objects. Material things of sacred importance, relics are indicative of a culture's deepest values.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

A poet who crafted the
greatest character in literary history with his engaging anti-hero of Satan, John Milton connected personal experience with the breadth of cosmic epic. His Paradise Lost is a touchstone of English literature.

In the latest entry in Ig's celebrated Bookmarked series, author Ed Simon considers Paradise Lost within the scope of his own alcoholism and recovery, the collapse of higher education, the imbecility of
the canon wars, the piquant joys of labyrinthine sentences, and the exquisite
attractions of Lucifer. Milton is easy to respect and easier to fear, but with
the guidance of Simon, Milton becomes easiest of all to love. Paradise Lost may
have generated thousands of works of criticism over the centuries, but none of
them are like this.

MOSCOW IN THE MAKING By Snt E. D. SIMON. M.A. PREFACE By SIR E. D. SIMON MY wife and I had long felt that the best way to attempt to understand something of the great Russian experiment would be to study a single aspect of Russian life which would bring us into effective contact with Russians dealing with a kind of work which we understood. We decided, therefore, to investigate the city government of Moscow, my wife dealing with educational administration, while I tackled housing and town planning. We were fortunate in securing the collaboration of Professor Jewkes and Dr. Robson to deal with the wider aspects of the work of the Mossoviet in finance and administration respectively which we thought would be necessary to a proper understanding of education and housing. We regret that it was not possible to deal with other important aspects of the work of the Mossoviet, particularly public health. We found it exceedingly difficult to get printed information in spite of efforts continued for many months, we got almost nothing in advance of our visit, and even while in Moscow we got comparatively little. But we were received in the most friendly manner by leading members and officials of the Mossoviet, who gave us, in some cases individually, in some cases jointly, interviews lasting from two to four hours, during which they explained the work on which they were engaged and answered our questions not only patiently, but, so far as we could judge, quite frankly as regards all matters dealing with the affairs of the Mossoviet. We spent four weeks in Moscow, and so far as it was practicable each of us interviewed those officials of the Mossoviet and of the national government who were concerned vith our own specialities. Some of us also paid short visits to Leningrad and Kharkov. We met each day to talk matters over, and found the mutual discussion and criticism helpful. But we did not always reach full agreement: for example, Professor Jewkes and Dr, Robson both dissociate themselves from some of the statements and views of the other, and indeed we are perhaps none of us fully agreed as to the exact extent of the responsibilities and powers of the Mossoviet in relation to the central government. Many other differences of emphasis and interpretation can no doubt be found in the various chapters. It should be made clear that each member takes responsibility only for his own chapter or chapters. In many ways our investigation was carried out under great difficulties: we none of us spoke Russian, nor had we visited Moscow before. We apologize for any inconsistencies and inaccuracies that the book may prove to contain. We owe our sincerest thanks to Mr. Maisky, the Russian Ambassador in London, to the Foreign Office in Moscow, who did much to help us, and to the numerous members and officials of the Mossoviet, who freely gave us much of their valuable time. Intourist looked after our travel arrangements admirably and provided us with excellent interpreters, who were in every way helpful and efficient. Voks were kind enough to provide us with an admirable Interpreter for our more important interviews. We are most grateful to Dr. S. P. Turin, who was very helpful in finding Russian sources of information and summarizing or trans lating them for us. We owe to Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb not only our thanks for encouragement and suggestions in our preliminary discussions our whole investigation was due to the stimulus of their book Soviet Communism: A New Civilization?, which provided us with an invaluable background for understanding the work of the Mossoviet.

In the tradition of Roland Barthes' Mythologies and Walter Benjamin's aphoristic Theses on the Philosophy of History, Ed Simon's Furnace of this World is a fragmentary, digressive, impressionistic account of what the radical implications of goodness could possibly be in late capitalism. Furnace of this World interrogates the concept of goodness, while arguing that it's always more interesting and radical than its opposite. With neither hubris nor reductionism, Furnace of this World speaks of what it means to pursue justice in a fallen world.

Printed in Utopia examines the bloody era of the Renaissance in all of its contradictions and moments of utopian possibility. From the dissenting religious anarchists of the 17th century, to the feminist verse of Amelia Lanyer and Richard Barnfield's poetics of gay rights. From an analysis of the rhetoric of feces in Martin Luther, to the spiritual liberation of Anna Trapnell. What is presented is the radical Renaissance too often hidden away, an age which birthed our modern world in all of its ugliness, but which still holds the latent seeds for a new and better future world.

For more than a decade, Belt Magazine has published reporting and essays that are of the Rust Belt, by the Rust Belt, and for the Rust Belt. In 2024, the site covered the repurposing of old churches and steel mill art festivals, labor struggles and baseball comebacks, Trent Reznor and the queer witches of Appalachia, and as always testimonials from those living on the outskirts of society. A year of both triumphs and tragedies, but Belt has been there and will continue to be there, offering the perspective from Cleveland and Detroit, Pittsburgh and Buffalo, Chicago and Minneapolis.

Binding the Ghost is both manifesto and example of a new variety of reading that centers a theological perspective in considering what literature actually does. Neither dogmatic nor apologetic, sectarian or denominational, this mode of reading acknowledges the inherently charged strangeness of writing and fiction, whereby authors have the ability to seemingly create entire universes from words alone.

Ed Simon considers the theological depth, resonance, and mystery of the acts of reading and writing. His lyrical, incisive essays cover subjects such as the incarnational poetics of reading a physical book as opposed to reading online, the historical relationship between monotheism and the development of the alphabet, how the novel and Protestantism developed interiority within people, the occult significance of punctuation, and the functional similarities between poetry and prayer. Binding the Ghost presents a humane sacralization of reading and writing that takes into account the wonder, enchantment, and mystery of the very idea of poetry and fiction.

Why should there only be literary scholarship about authors who actually lived, and texts which exist? Where are the articles on Enoch Campion, Linus Withold, Redondo Panza, Darshan Singh, or Heidi B. Morton? That none of these are real authors should be no impediment to interpreting their invented writings. In the first collection of its kind, The Anthology of Babel publishes academic articles by scholars on authors, books, and movements that are completely invented. Blurring the lines between scholarship and creative writing, The Anthology of Babel inaugurates a completely new literary genre perfectly attuned to the era we live in, a project evocative of Jorge Luis Borges, Umberto Eco, and Italo Calvino.

No Western religious concept has been as socially, culturally, economically, and politically significant as that of the apocalypse. Neither heaven and hell, nor sin and salvation, nor even God and the devil have merited the attention of billions of people in the manner that belief in the end of the world has. Apocalyptic thinking is riven by a fruitful--and at times dangerous--binary between the hopes for a coming millennium when all shall be perfected or of a fiery deluge when the earth shall be destroyed.

The Dove and the Dragon is the first comprehensive history of Western apocalypticism. Ed Simon introduces a new system for classifying movements concerned with the end of history, between hopeful, millennial doves and violent, apocalyptic dragons. This framing connects a seemingly disparate phenomenon, from medieval millennialism to modern Marxism, Reformation apocalypticism to contemporary techno-utopianism. Expected groups are considered, but unexpected phenomena are interpreted through the lens of apocalypticism as well to argue that those that have often been classified as secular still take part in this ancient theological category.

This new way of interpreting history gives sense to the full scope of apocalypticism as a series of movements and as a genre, including not just religion and theology, but politics, philosophy, and pop culture as well. The Dove and the Dragon promises to be the standard introduction for years to come.

Lively . . . excoriating, eloquent . . . We are all Faustians now. -- James Wood, The New Yorker

A devilishly fascinating tour of the Faustian bargain through the ages, from brimstone to blues and beyond, now in paperback . . .

From ancient times to the modern world, the idea of the Faustian bargain--the exchange of one's soul in return for untold riches and power--has exerted a magnetic pull upon our collective imaginations.

Scholar Ed Simon takes us on a historical tour of the Faustian bargain, from the Bible to blues, and illustrates how the impulse fto sacrifice our principles in exchange for power is present in all kinds of social ills, from colonialism to nuclear warfare, from social media to climate change to AI, and beyond. In doing so, Simon conveys just how much the Faustian bargain shows us about power and evil . . . and ourselves.

What Your Mentor Forgot to Tell You is a collection of hints, terms and definitions that will help you in your beekeeping endeavor. This list is from various sources collected over twenty years of beekeeping. For the beginning beekeeper it will provide a reference to the huge number of terms that are tossed around by the more experienced beekeepers.

At a moment of cultural and political crisis, with forces of reaction seemingly ascendant throughout the West, it's fair to ask what use does anyone have for America, God, or any other similar fictions? What use does theological language have for the radical facing the apocalypse? Among the subjects considered: the need for an Augustinian left, legacies of American violence, speaking in tongues, the humanities facing climate change, the maturity of realizing that you will die, how to sail towards Utopia, and witches.