Sign-In
Cart
Working Titles: Memoir of an American Hustler
Paperback
Business BiographiesBiographies General
Publisher Price: $15.95
Publisher: J&s Press
Published: Nov 1 2025
Pages: 178
Weight: 0.47
Height: 0.41 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
Working Titles: Memoir of an American Hustler is the true story of one man's life told through sixty-six different jobs, stitched together across six decades of labor, hustles, and survival. From mowing lawns in Baltimore as a twelve-year-old to serving cocktails in tuxedo tails at the Belvedere Hotel, from scraping fish guts at Lexington Market to owning a café, from slinging beers as a bartender to hauling gasoline in a fuel tanker, Peter Belz has done it all. Some jobs lasted years, others only a few days, but every one left a mark.
This is not a neat career path, and it is not a book about climbing a ladder. It is about falling off scaffolds, patching together bridges from scraps, reinventing yourself over and over just to make rent, and discovering what it really means to survive by any means necessary. Belz's story is raw, unfiltered, sometimes darkly funny, sometimes heartbreaking, and always honest. It is less a résumé than a demolition site-chaotic, messy, and full of grit.
Along the way, readers meet the unforgettable cast of characters who populated those jobs: eccentric coworkers, shady bosses, drunk regulars, hard-edged truckers, even a decorated British war veteran who once handed Belz a handwritten poem over cocktails. The memoir doesn't shy away from darker chapters either-addiction, recovery, and the moments when everything seemed ready to collapse. Through it all, humor, stubbornness, and sheer motion kept him moving forward.
Working Titles is for anyone who has ever wondered what it looks like to piece together a life shift by shift, paycheck by paycheck, when one job is never enough and one path never exists. It is a book for readers of Studs Terkel's Working, Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, or anyone who has lived through the hustle of blue-collar survival. It is a testament to grit, humor, resilience, and the strange mosaic of American work.
This memoir is not a celebration of jobs, but a witness statement to the reality of hustling through them. With sixty-six roles spanning everything from janitor to insurance agent, deli counter man to liquor rep, musician to truck driver, Belz reveals how a lifetime of labor can add up to something more than survival-it can add up to a story worth telling.
1 different editions
Also available
Also in
Biographies General
Bluesland: Portraits of Thirteen Major American Blues Masters
Pete Welding (ED.)
Toby Byron (ED.)
Hardcover
Karl Popper - The Formative Years, 1902 1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna
Hacohen, Malachi Haim
Hardcover
The Children of Athena: Greek Intellectuals in the Age of Rome: 150 Bc0-400 AD
Freeman, Charles
Hardcover
Make It a Double: From Wretched to Wondrous: Tales of One Woman's Lifelong Discovery of Whisky
Sackier, Shelley
Hardcover
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
Isaacson, Walter
Hardcover
An Enemy Such as This: Larry Casuse and the Fight for Native Liberation in One Family on Two Continents Over Three Centuries
Correia, David
Hardcover
Agents of Chaos: Thomas King Forçade, High Times, and the Paranoid End of the 1970s
Howe, Sean
Hardcover
Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World
Cooper, Christian
Hardcover
The Secret Life of the Savoy: Glamour and Intrigue at the World's Most Famous Hotel
Williams, Olivia
Paperback
The Badger: The Life of Bernard Hinault and the Legacy of French Cycling
Fotheringham, William
Paperback
The Devil's Diary: Alfred Rosenberg and the Stolen Secrets of the Third Reich
Wittman, Robert K.
Kinney, David
Paperback
Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Womens Political Culture, 1830-1900
Sklar, Kathryn Kish
Paperback
A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II
Purnell, Sonia
Hardcover
Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything
Ehrenreich, Barbara
Paperback
Seafaring Women: Adventures of Pirate Queens, Female Stowaways, and Sailors' Wives
Cordingly, David
Paperback
The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy: A Family Memoir of Scandal and Greed in the Meat Industry
Cherington, Gretchen
Paperback
Gift of Power: The Life and Teachings of a Lakota Medicine Man
Erdoes, Richard
Lame Deer, Chief Archie Fire
Paperback
My Own Devices: True Stories from the Road on Music, Science, and Senseless Love
Dessa Wander
Hardcover
Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice
Giuffre, Virginia Roberts
Hardcover
How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay: Tips and Tricks That Kept Me Alive, Happy, and Creative in Spite of Myself
Lawson, Jenny
Hardcover
Family of Spies: A World War II Story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, and the Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor
Kuehn, Christine
Hardcover
Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground
Dohrn, Zayd Ayers
Hardcover
Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast
Colloff, Pamela
Hardcover
A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon
Fedarko, Kevin
Paperback