The American author Nelson Algren (1909-1981) wrote novels and short stories about underworld characters, often set in the slums of Chicago. Nelson Algren has been called the poet of the under-world. His characters are the pimps and pushers, clowns and c...

Nelson Algren can be categorized, first of all, as a journalist. For forty-eight years he recorded life in the back alleys of America's cities and the problems of isolated people with no skills who are victims of hostile environments with which they are...

Nelson Algren can be categorized, first of all, as a journalist. For forty-eight years, he recorded life in the back alleys of America's cities and the problems of isolated people with no skills who are victims of hostile environments with which they are...

Len Davidson is a collector with a rather outsize passion: restoring once-bright-and-blinking neon signs advertising everything from hot dogs to hats, auto parts to cheese steaks. He started collecting 30 years ago while a University of Florida sociology professor. In 1979, he returned...

WE TURNED onto Purgatory Road, some 50 miles outside of Austin, Tex. It was a narrow stretch, marked by potholes and strewn with gravel. You didn't have to be a comedian to think of the joke: "If this is Purgatory, what's Hell like?" ...