Henry Darger (1892–1973) was a hospital janitor and an immensely productive artist and writer. In the first decades of adulthood, he wrote a 15,145-page fictional epic, In the Realms of the Unreal. He spent much of the rest of his long life illustrating it in astonishing drawings and watercolors. In Darger's unfolding saga, pastoral utopias are repeatedly savaged by extreme violence directed at children, particularly girls. Given his disturbing subject matter and the extreme solit...

The world is grown strange.Gloriana, the six-brained Queen of England, squats in her throne room at the center of Buckingham Labyrinth. In Paris, the glowing Seine may, or may not, conceal the disassembled remnants of the Eiffel Tower. A dragon haunts the high passes of the Germanic states, swallowing travelers whole for purposes impossible to understand. All these signs and portents together mean but one thing to the forgettable-faced Aubrey Darger and his humanoid canine partner ...

Business retention and expansion (BRE) is regarded as the most practical and accessible method for economic development at the city, town, or neighborhood scale. This comprehensive volume centers on the belief that BRE is the top responsibility for a community economic development official. BRE is an asset-based approach designed to systematically strengthen the connection between businesses and the community while encouraging each business to continue operations and expand in the communit...