Books
Arnie Jarmak's photographs and Joshua Resnek's writing return to the Chelsea they witnessed firsthand—its families, streets, politics, faith, and hard-won resilience.
Local history
Arnie Jarmak and Joshua Resnek's Chelsea Series brings together photographs, reporting, and firsthand memories of Chelsea, Massachusetts. The books follow the city's neighborhoods, families, faith, politics, and social change through the experiences of people who lived and worked there.
Read the books alongside Jarmak's Chelsea Record newspaper archive and the Arnold Jarmak Collection at Digital Commonwealth. The McMullen Museum exhibition and catalogue provide further context for the photographs and Chelsea's changing communities.
Resnek + Jarmak
Visit Chelsea: Triumph and Tragedy, the official home of Joshua Resnek and Arnie Jarmak's books about Chelsea, Massachusetts.
Visit Chelsea: Triumph and Tragedy ↗
October 8, 2025
Kindle edition · 322 pages
A portrait of Chelsea's Little Jerusalem told through family memory, social history, and Arnie's black-and-white photographs. The book moves from a 1957 Passover table into the streets of a changing city, tracing faith, identity, resilience, and community.
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October 11, 2023
Kindle edition · Volume II
The second volume follows Chelsea through a first-person account of its hard history, its people, and its leaders. Arnie's photographs run through Joshua Resnek's narrative of the hardscrabble city they encountered and came to love as young men.
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March 9, 2020
The History Press · Kindle edition · 147 pages
A documentary account of Chelsea from the late 1970s into the early 1990s, when immigration, economic decline, political conflict, and corruption reshaped the city. Jarmak and Resnek write from the Chelsea they photographed, reported on, and lived in early in their careers.
View on Amazon ↗The Last Four Mayors, the next volume in the series, is forthcoming. Publication details will be added when they are announced.