The Chicago Blog

Today's New York Times is running a piece on author George E. Lewis's new book, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music—the authoritative historical account of one of America's most influential avant-garde jazz collectives. Founded in 1965, many icons of the avant garde, musicians like Anthony Braxton and Leo Wadada Smith, have joined its ranks. And many of them continue to play as members of the collective today. The NYT article includes information on several upcoming events in NYC including a special book release concert happening next Friday (May 9th) at the Community Church of New York. From the NYT:

The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, [is] an organization that has fostered some of the most vital American avant-garde music of the last 40 years.

Though noncommercial, often pointedly conceptual and unabashedly arcane, this music has had a profound influence over the years on several generations of experimental musicians worldwide.

The scene plays out vividly in A Power Stronger Than Itself: The A.A.C.M. and Experimental Music, an important book by the trombonist-composer-scholar George Lewis due out from the University of Chicago Press this month. Reconstructing that inaugural meeting from audio tapes, Mr. Lewis conveys not only Mr. Abrams's aim but also the vigorous debate begun by his notion of "original music." (Whose music? How original?) From the start, its clear, the association expressed its firm ideals partly through collective discourse.

Next Friday night another sort of discourse will unfold at the Community Church of New York in Murray Hill, when the association convenes a panel discussion with a handful of its current members, including Mr. Lewis, the multireedist Henry Threadgill and the pianist and vocalist Amina Claudine Myers. The conversation will precede a concert featuring Mr. Lewis and Mr. Abrams in an improvising trio with the trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith.

You can read the full article on the NYT website, or see an excerpt from the book. To find out more about the show navigate to the AACM's New York chapter website.

Archived in Black Studies | Books for the News | Chicago | History | Music
Posted by TXM at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

2008 marks the fortieth anniversary of a black mark on American history: the 1968 Democratic Convention and its notorious example of police brutality against demonstrators. The provocative Battleground Chicago offers a new perspective on this tragic event by revealing how-and why-the police attacked antiwar activists at the convention. Working from interviews with eighty former Chicago police officers who were on the scene, Frank Kusch uncovers the other side of the story of ’68, deepening our understanding of a turbulent decade.

Read the press release.

Also read an excerpt.

Archived in Chicago | History | Politics and Current Events | Press Releases
Posted by TXM at 12:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Chicago literature is rife with images of industry and unbridled urban growth. But the tallgrass prairie and dense oak forests that once comprised Chicago’s landscape also inspired local writers. In Of Prairie, Woods, and Water, naturalist Joel Greenberg gathers these voices from the land to present an unexpected portrait of Chicago. Often charming, sometimes heart-wrenching, this anthology of Chicago-area nature writing is scheduled for release on April 22nd—just in time for Earth Day.

Of Prairie, Woods, and Water tells the story of a land in transition, one with abundant, unique, and incredibly lush flora and fauna—a natural history that is quite elusive today. From the journal of a frustrated pioneer who staked a claim in Kankakee marsh to Theodore Drieser’s plea for conservation of the Tippecanoe River, the sources included are as diverse as the nature they describe. Together, they traverse a wide area of the Midwest, from the Illinois River to the Indiana Dunes.

This spring and summer, a series of performances called “Voices from the Land” will bring Of Prairie, Woods, and Water to life. The premiere performance takes place at the Garfield Farm Museum on April 27. For more on this event and others at the Chicago Botanic Garden and the Lincoln Park Zoo, please visit www.press.uchicago.edu/News/ontheroad.html.

Read the press release.

Archived in Biology | Chicago | Press Releases
Posted by TXM at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In 1965 a group of Chicago musicians dedicated to exploring the frontiers of American jazz banded together to create the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians—one of the most radical and influential musical collectives in the history of the genre. Now, author George E. Lewis has chronicled the definitive history of the movement in, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music, a book music critic Peter Margasak praises in today's Chicago Reader for "[going] deeper into the formation and development of the AACM than any previous history, and as a formal acknowledgment of the group's enormous importance and influence…."

Margasak's article continues:

In the early 60s the marketplace was indifferent or hostile to creative jazz, and the AACM was the first sustained musician-run group to support it, producing legendary artists like Anthony Braxton, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and Henry Threadgill. The organization remains active today, led by reedist Douglas Ewart and flutist Nicole Mitchell, and its members still display the fierce determination and brilliant creativity that made its name a seal of quality.

And on Tuesday, April 15, 4:15 pm you'll have a chance to see some of the AACM's brilliant creativity yourself if you head down to the Chicago Cultural Center's Cassidy Theater where the author along with some of AACM's current members will deliver a live performance and discussion of "the history of the AACM and strategies independent artists can use to form similar collectives."

The book is officially slated for release next month, but in the meantime, you can read the rest of the Reader article online, or see an excerpt from the book.

Time Out magazine also weighs in with an article published in their most recent issue. You can find it online here.

Archived in Black Studies | Chicago | History | Music | Reviews | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 08:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Based on Eric Klinenberg's Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, a new play by Steven Simoncic looks at the 1995 heat wave that hit the city of Chicago with 106 degree temperatures and caused the deaths of over seven hundred people—one of the deadliest disasters in Chicago's history. Reviewing the play for the Chicago Sun-Times theater critic Heidi Weiss writes:

Mayor Daley is known to be an avid theatergoer. But it's unlikely that he, or City Council members, or a slew of officials from major city agencies who were on the job during the summer of 1995, will be stopping in at Pegasus Players in the coming weeks to catch Heat Wave. If they do, they will be subjected to a most uncomfortable two hours.

As for everyone else, this world premiere (produced with Live Bait Theater) will serve as a vivid reminder of a moment when (a decade before Hurricane Katrina) both municipal government and that far more diffuse thing that might be termed "the human safety net" failed miserably.

More about the play is available at the Pegasus players website. More about the book is at our website and in our interview with Eric Klinenberg.

Archived in Books for the News | Chicago | Film and Media | Politics and Current Events | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 01:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Joseph M. Williams, Professor Emeritus of English and Linguistics at the University of Chicago, died Friday, February 22 at his home in South Haven, Michigan. Williams will be remembered as the founder of the University's writing program and for his contributions to the development of some of Chicago's most influential books on the teaching of writing. These include his Style: Toward Clarity and Grace, as well as the book he co-authored with the Gregory Colomb and the late Wayne Booth, The Craft of Research—the third edition of which is slated for publication this spring. Williams was also a contributor to Kate L. Turabian's A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations and was at work on the accompanying Students Guide at the time of his passing.

William's contributions to the University and its students, and to writers and scholars everywhere, will most certainly be missed, as will he himself.

Archived in Chicago | Commentary | Education
Posted by TXM at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Chicago 10, the innovative documentary that revisits the tumult of the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the Chicago 8/7 conspiracy trial of key antiwar activists a year later, opens Friday in select theaters. The film is directed by Brett Morgen and combines archival footage of the chaos of August 1968 with animated reenactments of scenes from the trial. Plus a soundtrack ranging from Black Sabbath and Steppenwolf to the Beastie Boys and Eminem.

Morgen has been quoted as saying that he "wanted to do the myth of Chicago rather than the history," and "if you want to know the history of what happened in Chicago so long ago, then read a book." Well, we think understanding history is pretty darn important and are happy to oblige.

Twenty years ago we published the most complete account of the events surrounding the 1968 DNC, David Farber's Chicago '68. That book is innovative itself, creating multiple perspectives reflecting both police and demonstrators. Farber shows the developing plans of the antiwar movement for protesting the war in Vietnam during the convention, as the shocks of 1968 shift the ground—the Tet offensive, President Lyndon Johnson's withdrawal from the re-election race, the assassination of Martin Luther King and subsequent riots in cities across the country, and the assassination of Robert Kennedy.

Next month we will release a paperback edition of Battleground Chicago: The Police and the 1968 Democratic National Convention by Frank Kusch. Battleground Chicago is essential for understanding what is completely absent in Chicago 10—any insight into the motivations, thoughts, and feelings of the individual policemen who were enforcing order on the streets of Chicago. (Or, as Mayor Richard J. Daley famously misstated it: "the policeman is there to preserve disorder.") Kusch interviewed eighty former Chicago police officers who were on the scene and uncovered the other side of the story of '68.

If you want to get a taste of 1968, go see Chicago 10. But if you want to understand 1968, read a book.

Update: We now have an excerpt from Battleground Chicago and an excerpt from Chicago '68.

Archived in Books for the News | Chicago | History
Posted by DB at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Mark Jacob and Richard Cahan's new book Chicago under Glass: Early Photographs from the Chicago Daily News seems to have caught the attention of the local papers recently. Already this month the book has received three separate reviews in the Chicago Sun-Times, Time Out Chicago, and the Chicago Suburban News. As Tom Cruze notes in the Sun-Times, in Chicago under Glass Jacob and Cahan have amassed a collection of the best photographs from the archives from the now defunct Chicago Daily News to document one of the most tumultuous and fascinating periods in Chicago history:

Chicago history circa 1901-30, with its triumphs, disasters and celebrities, comes alive through the lenses of Daily News photographers in this expansive treatment by former Sun-Timesmen Mark Jacob and Richard Cahan. The images, some 250 culled from more than 57000 recently put online (the original glass negatives reside at the Chicago History Museum), are bundled into themes easily explored by browsing history buffs. Probably the most fascinating photos here show familiar areas of Chicago that have changed throughout the years. Construction shots of Buckingham fountain and the Field Museum make the familiar seem fascinatingly strange.

And from the Chicago Suburban News.

The 250 photographs they chose for their resulting volume depict a gritty burg evolving through cultural upheavals and technological advances. Some of the buildings and vistas look vaguely familiar today, but the fashions and hairstyles surely don't. "We haven't been exposed to that many pictures from this era," Cahan said. "This is kind of an unknown period—I know that sounds funny—but also really the beginning of the modern age because of the car.

You can check out the rest of the Chicago Suburban News article online but you'll have to pick up a copy of the Sun-Times or the latest Time-Out magazine for the others. Also be sure to check out the Chicago History Museum's online archive of images from the Chicago Daily News.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Chicago | History | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This week's Chicago Reader is running a front page story on Mark Jacob and Richard Cahan's new book Chicago under Glass: Early Photographs from the Chicago Daily News. The book is the result of years spent digging through the Chicago History Museum's archives to collect over 250 images from the Chicago Daily News—one of the major newspapers circulating in the Chicago area in the first three decades of the twentieth century, and one of the first newspapers to feature black and white photography. As Michael Miner notes in his Chicago Reader review, their time and effort has resulted in a fascinating photo journey into the city's history:

The Daily News went under in 1978, long before it could have created its own online archive. So the writing in this famously literary paper is largely lost, but the photography survives, and now an anonymous photographer's strange, wonderful picture of a group of blind children stroking a circus elephant deservedly finds a spotlight as the cover of Chicago Under Glass. It's a fitting introduction to the book, expressing the idea of reaching out to touch something most alive in the imagination.

The Reader article also points to the Chicago History Museum's online archive of thousands more photographs from the early days of the Chicago Daily News. Click on the link to check them out.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Books for the News | Chicago | History
Posted by TXM at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Caitlin Zaloom's Out of the Pits: Traders and Technology from Chicago to London was recently given an interesting review in the November 1 London Review of Books. Writing for the LRB, Donald Mackenzie begins with a description of his own experiences on the trading floor of the Chicago Board of Trade in 2000—while they were still bustling with traders, runners, and clerks vying for bids:

At the Board of Trade, orders were still carried to the pits on pieces of paper by runners and clerks, and then shouted out by traders or 'flashed' to others in the pit using the hand signal language known as 'arb'—an abbreviation for arbitrage, the exploitation of discrepancies in prices.…

But as Mackenzie's article notes, at the turn of the millennium the digital age was already poised to radically transform the way that modern traders conduct business.

Chicago's open-outcry trading, a way of life stretching back to the grain futures pits of the 19th century, was on the brink of disappearing when I visited the Board of Trade in 1999 and 2000. There were already signs that technology was encroaching: headsets were increasingly used instead of runners to communicate between the pits and the booths where customer orders arrived, and a few traders carried hand-held computers. Since 2000, Chicago's pits have emptied, and those who still stand in them focus less on the people around them than they do on their computers, which are no longer an adjunct to trading but essential to it. Chicago remains central to the world's financial markets—its recent merger with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange has made the Board of Trade part of the world's largest exchange—but as the hub of electronic networks, not as a set of huge rooms crowded with bodies.

Despite the role it has played in shaping today's world, there are few observational studies of financial trading to compliment the thousands of econometric studies of price fluctuations. Zaloom's superb book is a double-site ethnography. She first worked as a runner on the Chicago Board of Trade, like any good anthropologist learning the local language — she's proficient in 'arb.' Then she moved to London, where open out-cry trading has now vanished, … and where she was trained in and then practiced the very different skills of an electronic trader.

A first-hand account of the changing face of the contemporary marketplace, Out of the Pits delivers an unprecedented exploration of how the digital age has transformed economic cultures and the craft of speculation.

Read an excerpt.

Archived in Anthropology | Chicago | Economics | Reviews | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 02:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So long, Chicago,“ read the headline when the Daily News ran its last edition on March 4, 1978. Winner of thirteen Pulitzers, the Chicago Daily News launched the careers of Carl Sandburg, Ben Hecht, and Mike Royko, just to name a few. It was also one of the first dailies to incorporate eye-catching illustrations, and soon thereafter, black-and-white photography.

Chicago under Glass: Early Photographs from the Chicago Daily News is the breathtaking collection of photographs from those early years, 1901 to 1930. During those three decades, Chicago and America witnessed the invention of the airplane, the repeal of prohibition, and the Great War. Photographers at the Daily News covered these scenes, and then went beyond, capturing news as it broke in front of them.

Read the press release.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Chicago | History | Press Releases
Posted by TXM at 09:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Now available in paperback— Arguably the most influential document in the history of American urban planning, Daniel Burnham's 1909 Plan of Chicago, coauthored by Edward Bennett and produced in collaboration with the Commercial Club of Chicago, proposed many of the city's most distinctive features. Carl Smith's fascinating history reveals the Plan's central role in shaping the ways people envision the cityscape and urban life itself and points out ways the Plan continues to influence debates, even a century after its publication, about how to create a vibrant and habitable urban environment.

Read the press release.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Cartography and Geography | Chicago | History | Press Releases
Posted by TXM at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Over the last few decades Chicago has become progressively greener with parks, landscaping, and rooftop gardens becoming ubiquitous features of the cityscape. But as columnist Edward Keegan notes in a review for last Saturday's Chicago Tribune, these are features which have been ignored by those writing on Chicago's urban habitat, until now. Keegan cites Sally A. Kit Chappell's new book, Chicago's Urban Nature: A Guide to the City's Architecture + Landscape, as an "antidote to the overemphasis on bricks and mortar that have long dominated similar books on Chicago's built environment." Keegan's review continues, "This book should take its place with the ample assortment of guides most Chicago architecture aficionados have on their shelves. As the city becomes greener in the years to come, Chappell's guide will become ever more necessary to understand Chicago's development in its entirety."

To find out more, view this video portrait of the numerous new green spaces that have enlivened and rejuvenated our hometown, narrated by the Sally Chappell herself.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Chicago | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mike Royko would have been 75 today.

Royko was born in Chicago and never left it. He wrote for the Chicago Daily News, then the Sun-Times, and finally for the Tribune. His career should be measured in column inches. He wrote 7,500 columns. You do the math.

The Chicago Outfit is going to jail and the Cubs are in a pennant race. Wonders never cease. Hell freezes over. It would be great to get Royko's take on such bizarre phenomena.

Hoist an extra beer for Royko today. Something domestic. Read and re-read.

Archived in Chicago | Commentary | Film and Media
Posted by DB at 09:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

“Unlike most guides to the city, Chicago's Urban Nature: A Guide to the City's Architecture + Landscape does not include the alley where John Dillinger was shot. Instead, this delightful little book breaks new ground by presenting what author Sally A. Kitt Chappell terms 'urban nature,' defined as 'the place where architecture and landscape [are] not only both present but where each [has] been conceived in response to the other … fusing into a dynamic relationship.' Her personal response to Chicago's built environment, and her enthusiasm for the city, informed by her years of highly regarded scholarly research, is infectious, making this a book you can't put down.

“Chappell writes for four different audiences: tourists, Chicagoans, armchair travelers, and architecture landscape and planning professionals. Amazingly this works.… Chicago's Urban Nature is a beautifully designed book, a tactile and visual pleasure that is small and flexible enough to carry in purse or backpack, or, as Chappell hopes, in the glove compartment for quick reference.”—Barbara Geiger, Landscape Architecture

View a video portrait of the numerous new green spaces that have enlivened and rejuvenated our hometown, narrated by the author.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Chicago | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Chicago Tribune published an article in Sunday's edition praising the return of a Chicago classic, Bessie Louise Pierce's A History of Chicago. Though long out of print, all three volumes of Pierce's landmark story of the birth and evolution of one of America's greatest cities are now available from the Press in paperback. Staff reporter Patrick T. Reardon writes for the Tribune:

Bessie Louise Pierce, born in 1888, lived life her own way. And Chicago is better for that.

Never married, she devoted herself to scholarship, first in the field of education as an Iowa high school teacher and professor at the University of Iowa. Then, in midlife, she moved to the University of Chicago where she wrote A History of Chicago, the definitive account of the city's first years.

That magisterial, three-volume history, begun in 1929 and completed in 1957, has been a touchstone ever since for anyone writing about early Chicago. It was also a pioneering work in academia, the first scholarly study of a large American city.…

"It's wonderful these books are back in print," says Carl Smith, a professor of English and American Studies at Northwestern University and author of three books on Chicago, including The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City. "I refer to [the set] constantly, repeatedly. It's as good a source as there is of the evolution of the political texture of Chicago."

Reardon's article also cites the praise of Ann Durkin Keating, co-editor of The Encyclopedia of Chicago saying: "Pierce's books 'were used extensively for fact-checking [in the decade-long preparation of the encyclopedia]. I can't think of an instance of anything she provided us being inaccurate.'"

In addition to the article Sunday's edition of the Tribune also offers several excerpts from Pierce's work.

You can find out more about all three volumes on our website:
A History of Chicago, Volume I: The Beginning of a City 1673-1848
A History of Chicago, Volume II: From Town to City 1848-1871
A History of Chicago, Volume III: The Rise of a Modern City, 1871-1893

Archived in Chicago | History | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In a recent article for the Chicago Tribune staff reporter Ron Grossman delivers a fascinating account of the long legacy of sociological study that has used Chicago's South Side as its laboratory. Grossman begins his article by mentioning one of the latest additions to this legacy, Mary Pattillo's Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City. Her book, like those of the many other sociologists who have chosen to study the South Side's unique black urban communities, focuses on the sharp divides in race, class, and culture that can be found in the area's neighborhoods. But it also explores a growing phenomena in Chicago's South Side communities, the black urban middle class. Examining the social impact of the gentrification of neighborhoods that have for years been home to some of the city's poorest residents, Pattillo's book continues to break new ground in one of the most often studied urban neighborhoods in America.

You can read Grossman's article online at the Tribune website, or navigate to the press's site to find out more about Pattillo's fascinating new book, as well as read an excerpt.

Archived in Anthropology | Black Studies | Chicago | History | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 09:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mary Pattillo, author of the recently published Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City, penned a fascinating op-ed piece for Sunday's Chicago Tribune on the rapidly changing face of Chicago's black urban communities. Pattillo's article begins:

"No more blacks." That was the forecast of a resident of the Oakland community when asked about the future of her South Side neighborhood.

"No more blacks?" I responded, worried in no small part because my research is about black gentrification.

"[A] couple of blacks" would be left, the woman then allowed. "They got money.

This simple prediction is rich with meaning. For one thing, it helps establish the players in the widespread upscaling of Chicago: The little man. The middleman. And then, The Man.

The prediction also lays out what's at stake, not just in Oakland and North Kenwood on the South Side, but in various Chicago neighborhoods. In the process of "building, breaking, rebuilding" the City of the Big Shoulders, as Chicago's poet Carl Sandburg so eloquently put it, who is going to keep the little man from being left behind? Are Chicago's shoulders big enough to serve, include and celebrate everyone?

Pattillo's article seems to leave this question open ended, but makes a point that it is the rising black middle class who must ultimately shoulder the responsibility of brokering between the lower and upper classes if the future of some of the more underprivileged members of Chicago's black urban communities is to look any brighter.

Also, social historian Arnold Hirsch (Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago 1940-1960) reviewed Pattillo's new book in the July 14 edition of the Tribune. The online version is still up on their website.

Read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Anthropology | Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Black Studies | Chicago | History
Posted by TXM at 12:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Caitlin Zaloom, author of Out of the Pits: Traders and Technology from Chicago to London, was featured yesterday on Chicago Public Radio's Eight Forty-Eight to discuss the merger of the Chicago Board of Trade with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange—a deal that many think is likely to secure Chicago's place as one of the world's most important centers for global derivatives trading. In her interview Zaloom goes beyond the numbers to discuss how the merger, and the revolution in the culture of trading it promises, will affect the world's financial markets and shape everyday life in the new global economy.

Listen to the archived audio on the Eight Forty-Eight website.

Read an excerpt from Zaloom's book.

Archived in Anthropology | Books for the News | Chicago | Economics | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 04:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Photographs by Paul D'Amato are currently on exhibit at the Stephen Daiter Gallery. The show includes some of the work that we published in Barrio: Photographs from Chicago's Pilsen and Little Village, as well as photographs from a more recent project on Lake Street.

In Barrio, D'Amato made the narratives of daily life in Pilsen and Little Village manifest in photographs of children at play, teenagers out in the night, graffiti, families in their homes, gangs in the alleys, weddings, and more. His photos are beautifully composed and startling—visual narratives that are surreal and dreamlike, haunting and mythic.

The Stephen Daiter Gallery is at 311 West Superior Street in Chicago. The showing continues through July 28. Also, visit Paul D'Amato's website.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Author Events | Chicago
Posted by DB at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Chicago Reader recently ran an insightful analysis of Mary Pattillo's new book, Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City. Reviewer Harold Henderson reflects on how Pattillo's participant-observer study of Chicago's North Kenwood—Oakland neighborhood reveals a tangled network of competing interests, even within the community itself, that if left unresolved make any predictions as to the future of the neighborhood and its inhabitants uncertain at best. Henderson writes:

Mayor Daley's brave new Chicago doesn't work for everyone. Eric Klinenberg tried to make this point five years ago with Heat Wave, his examination of who suffered and how during a 1995 natural disaster. Now Northwestern University sociologist Mary Pattillo nails it with Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City …

She traces North Kenwood—Oakland's fortunes from late-19th-century prosperity to 1970s poverty and back to relative prosperity, then focuses on the uneasy position of the growing population of middle-class black professionals, who often find themselves acting as brokers between "the Man" downtown and the "littlemen" back in the hood.…

After two decades of gentrification the neighborhood has three new schools, less public housing, less crime, and a booming real-estate market. But most of its low-income kids still attend the old, underachieving schools. Former residents of the demolished public-housing high-rises have seen their promised right of return demolished as well. And the new black bourgeoisie is as enthusiastic about stopping the old timers' sociable practice of boulevard barbecuing as it is about fighting crime. Through the lens of this neighborhood Pattillo depicts a city where liberty and justice for all is being transformed—ever so slowly, ever so reasonably—into order and tranquility for some.

Henderson concludes: “A century from now, when today's sociologists and journalists are dust and their books are too, those who want to understand what the hell happened to Chicago will be finding the answer in this one.”

Read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Black Studies | Chicago | Reviews | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Author Mary Pattillo was featured Tuesday on Chicago Public Radio's daily news-radio talk show Eight Forty-Eight. Pattillo speaks with host Richard Steele about her new book Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City and the revitalization of Chicago's North Kenwood-Oakland neighborhood. Their conversation explores the problems facing this rapidly gentrifying black community to touch on broader issues of race and class in contemporary urban America. You can find archived audio of the show on the Chicago Public Radio website.

Pattillo will also be at 57th Street Books today at 7pm to read from her book. In the meantime, you can check out an excerpt on our website.

Archived in Anthropology | Author Events | Black Studies | Chicago | Politics and Current Events | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 01:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The March 31 Boston Globe featured an article reviewing several new books about urban gentrification and its complex impact on the politics of race and class in contemporary urban America. These works together create, in the words of reviewer Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, "a more nuanced picture of gentrification."

Venkatesh praises Mary Pattillo, author of Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City, for her detailed examination of this issue through her first-hand account of conflict, cooperation, and community building in Chicago's North Kenwood-Oakland (NKO) neighborhood—a rapidly changing African American community on Chicago's South Side. From the review:

Pattillo eschews most norms of social scientific objectivity by taking up residence in NKO. She is a homeowner and secretary of a local neighborhood association with great influence over local development—not to mention a Northwestern University professor. …

Pattillo acknowledges her complicated role, as both interested party and analyst. But through her experience we see how complicated life can be for the black middle class.

In her neighborhood, Pattillo and other newly-arriving homeowners, many of whom find themselves sandwiched between empty lots and dilapidated, low-income housing projects, are caught between two motivations: the wish to live in an area with decent stores, well-maintained parks, and adequate city services; and the ethical pull of advocating on behalf of those poorer blacks who might be displaced if the neighborhood continues to gentrify.

Ultimately, Black on the Block argues that while these fissures have come to define the black community, the reality is that many African Americans choose participation over abdication and involvement over withdrawal—even when disagreements become bitter and acrimonious.

Read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Black Studies | Chicago | Reviews | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 08:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the March 23rd issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, author Caitlin Zaloom has penned an interesting piece about the late Clifford Geertz, one of the world's leading cultural anthropologists, and a man she calls her intellectual "grandfather." In her article, Zaloom cites Geertz's groundbreaking studies in books such as Peddlers and Princes and Agricultural Involution as the foundation for her own new book, Out of the Pits: Traders and Technology from Chicago to London.

Out of the Pits is a fascinating exploration of how the recent trend of online trading is effecting the culture of the marketplace. Zaloom's article states, "even though their publication preceded today's global economy by decades, Clifford Geertz's works on culture and economy can still help us understand the cultural import of the online evolution in the world's marketplace."

Here's a few links to the UCP website where you can find out more about the works of both of these groundbreaking figures in the field of anthropology:

Clifford Geertz by His Colleagues
Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia
The Religion of Java
Kinship in Bali
Peddlers and Princes

We also have an excerpt from Out of the Pits.

Archived in Anthropology | Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Chicago | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 09:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Author Caitlin Zaloom was recently featured on BBC Radio 4's Thinking Allowed discussing her new book Out of the Pits: Traders and Technology from Chicago to London. Host Laurie Taylor talks with Zaloom about the stock market's gradual transition from face-to-face exchanges made on the trading room floor to internet based trading and how this move into the digital realm effects the culture and business of global trade markets. You can listen to archived audio of the discussion on the BBC's Thinking Allowed website.

We also have an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Anthropology | Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Chicago | Economics | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 03:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Don't miss a chance to see some of the greatest minds of the century engage in fierce debate over one of the most enduring questions in human history: latke or hamantash? The 60th annual Latke-Hamantash Debate will be held tonight at 7:30 p.m. in Mandel Hall, 5706 S. University Ave. on the University of Chicago campus. The debate is free and open to the public. Tickets to the reception, where latkes and hamantashen will be served following the event, will be sold at the door for $5 each.

The intellectual and cultural extravaganza that is the Latke-Hamantash debate has been a University of Chicago tradition for over sixty years. What began as an informal gathering is now an institution that has been replicated on campuses nationwide. Highly absurd yet deeply serious, the annual debate is an opportunity for both ethnic celebration and academic farce. Chronicling the delicious, not to mention humorous history of this debate, Ruth Fredman Cernea's The Great Latke-Hamantash Debate collects the best of these performances, from Martha Nussbaum's paean to both foods—in the style of Hecuba's Lament—to Nobel laureate Leon Lederman's proclamation on the union of the celebrated dyad. Both the latke aficionado and the hamantash devotee will find this humorous collection of essays indispensable.

We also have an online feature for the book that includes Ted Cohen's metaphysical lecture of 1976, "Consolations of the Latke"—both as text and in an audio file—as well as two great recipes for, you guessed it, latkes and hamantashen.

Archived in Books for the News | Chicago
Posted by TXM at 08:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A recent review in the Chicago Sun-Times calls Paul D'Amato's Barrio: Photographs from Chicago's Pilsen and Little Village "a beautiful and troubling warts-and-all portrait of the city's largest Mexican-American neighborhoods." Chronicling the 14 years he has spent photographing Chicago's "Latino strongholds," Mr. D'Amato's work is a profoundly empathetic vision of the human struggles of a community that might otherwise remain hidden behind cultural and economic barriers. Kevin Nance, reviewing D'Amato's book for the Sun-Times seems to agree when he writes:

Certainly few of the images here are likely to make their way into tourist brochures; Pilsen, the book's ground zero, is shown as a gritty landscape of littered streets, dilapidated buildings, gang violence and spray-paint artists. At its best, however, the book transcends politics, offering images of the human condition—especially those having to do with relationships between the sexes—that penetrate the surfaces of ethnicity, class and geography.

With a foreword by author Stuart Dybek that places D'Amato's work in the context of the Pilsen and Little Village neighborhoods that Dybek has elsewhere captured so memorably, Barrio offers a penetrating, evocative, and overall streetwise portrait of two iconic and enduring Hispanic neighborhoods.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Chicago | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 03:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last Sunday's Chicago Tribune featured a prominent review of Carl Smith's new book The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City. Writing for the Tribune, Lois Wille—a journalist and historian of Chicago—praises Smith's account of Daniel Burnham's sweeping plans to remake the city of Chicago. Wille writes:

The story of Burnham's plan has been told many times before but never in a more appealing or succinct style than in Carl Smith's modest little book.… What sets this book apart from other Burnham histories is Smith's attention to the filthy, miserable, 19th century city that repelled and motivated Burnham, and the extraordinary promotional effort led by the Commercial Club of Chicago, that sold his plan to the public.

Delivering a comprehensive examination of the most influential document in the history of urban planning, Smith's insightful book is an indispensable addition to our understanding of Chicago, Daniel Burnham, and the emergence of the modern city.

Lois Wille is the author of Forever Open, Clear, and Free: The Struggle for Chicago's Lakefront.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Chicago | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mark your calendar and set your Tivo accordingly … Carl Smith will be discussing his latest book, The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City tomorrow, October 18, at 7 PM on WTTW's Chicago Tonight. A busy week for Smith: he will also be discussing his new book this Sunday, October 22, at the Chicago History Museum, starting at 3 PM. Light refreshments will be served and the program is free with admission to the newly renovated museum.

After the infamous fire of 1873 that burned the city of Chicago to the ground, city planners were faced with the daunting task of rebuilding from scratch one of the developing nation's most important cities. The man who imagined a better and more beautiful city was Daniel Burnham. Chronicling Burnham's efforts to remake the city of Chicago, Carl Smith's new book sheds light on the Plan of Chicago and artfully shows how the Plan has continued to influence generations of city planners.

Archived in Author Events | Chicago | History
Posted by TXM at 04:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City is the first book to fully explore Burnham's Plan, the defining document of American urban planning. As Smith relates, Burnham and his coauthor, Edward Bennett, were careful to leave no part of the city untouched. The Plan of Chicago called for an extensive greenbelt around Lake Michigan, recreational parks throughout the city's limits, a streamlined transportation system, and cultural amenities like the Field Museum of Natural History. Streets were widened, bridges constructed, and even the Chicago River itself was straightened. Smith takes a closer look at Burnham as well as his contemporaries at the Commercial Club of Chicago, showing how their influence shaped the city itself. The Plan, Smith reveals, embodied their belief in the humanizing—or dehumanizing—effects of one's environment. And at a time when everything essentially "American" was changing, The Plan suggested that human will could, in fact, change history.

Read the press release.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Chicago | Press Releases | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 02:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Roger Ebert's forthcoming book Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert; Forty years of Reviews, Essays, and Interviews, details almost a half century's worth of cinematic expertise from a man the Library Journal calls one of American cinema's "most respected and influential movie critics." More from the LJ review:

The book clearly summarizes Ebert's pantheon of best films, or at least movies that have meant the most to him. Also included are appreciations and interviews with notable actors and filmmakers. Always alert to trends and defending film as an art form, Ebert never fails to connect with his readers.

With Awake in the Dark, both fans and film buffs can finally bask in the best of Ebert’s work. No critic alive has reviewed more movies than Roger Ebert, and yet his essential writings have never been collected in a single volume—until now. The reviews, interviews, and essays collected here present a picture of this indispensable critic’s numerous contributions to the cinema and cinephilia.

Archived in Chicago | Film and Media | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 04:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A recent article by John C. Hudson in the Chicago Sun-Times discusses how race and class "skewed the city's grand symmetrical plans by, in essence, confining the growth of black residential neighborhoods to a single swath that expanded southward, east of State Street—commonly known as the black belt. … That growing imbalance between the North and South sides of Chicago was replicated in the city's suburbs. … Since World War II, the expansion of Chicago's suburbs and industry began to tilt northward, with growth reduced in any place likely to be in the expansion path of the black population."

Today "the residential patterns of African-American households, at least for those in the upper-income bracket, finally are beginning to look more like those of other racial and ethnic groups." However the northwest skew of Chicagoland "is bound to affect life in Chicago for decades to come."

Hudson is the author of Chicago: A Geography of the City and Its Region, the first geography of the Windy City in more than fifty years.

Archived in Cartography and Geography | Chicago
Posted by DB at 09:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday's Chicago Tribune carried a review by Lois Wille of Timothy J. Gilfoyle's Millennium Park: Creating a Chicago Landmark. Wille pronounces the book "fascinating and gorgeous," but also makes clear that the book is more than just pretty pictures. Wille, who has made significant contributions of her own to the history of Chicago's lakefront, pays particular attention to Gilfoyle's account of the political and philanthropic machinations necessary to create Millennium Park. Gilfoyle, says Wille, "has wise things to say about Millennium Park's lessons for the economic health of Chicago and other postindustrial cities with global aspirations."

We have a Millennium Park trivia quiz.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Chicago | Reviews
Posted by DB at 07:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the extraordinary spirit of vision and ambition that characterized the Columbian Exposition of 1893, where new and exciting innovations in art, architecture, and urban design were so dramatically unveiled on a world stage, Millennium Park opened in downtown Chicago two years ago. Featuring now iconic works by Frank Gehry, Anish Kapoor, Jaume Plensa, and Kathryn Gustafson, the park was promptly hailed in newspapers and magazines across the country as an incomparable global tourist destination and a crowning achievement for the city of Chicago. With more than 500 images (and most in color), this beautifully illustrated book tells the story of how Millennium Park came to be.

Read the press release. You may also take our trivia quiz.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Chicago | Press Releases
Posted by DB at 06:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The weather forecast for the Chicago area for this weekend is hot and humid, with the Sunday afternoon heat index expected to approach 110°. The National Weather Service has issued a heat advisory for Sunday afternoon through Tuesday evening, noting that the heat may extend into Wednesday and Thursday.

All of which reminds us of this same period eleven years ago—July 13-20, 1995—when over seven hundred people died in Chicago over a week of intense temperatures—with an inadequate public response contributing to the high fatality rates. Eric Klinenberg wrote the definitive book on the event and its causes, Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. When the book was published we did an interview with Klinenberg, which still makes instructive reading.

Keep cool this weekend. Go to the library. Go to the beach. See a movie.

Archived in Chicago | Sociology
Posted by DB at 05:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

“In a strong sense, the river is Chicago,” David M. Solzman writes: running through the heart of downtown, it is a vehicle both for pleasure and for the industry that keeps Chicago humming. And with a brand new museum just opened in its honor, the river is enjoying a renaissance of sorts. The time is ripe, then, for this significantly expanded and thoroughly updated new edition of Solzman’s The Chicago River: An Illustrated History and Guide to the River and Its Waterways—a guidebook and historical narrative which explores both the river’s physical character and natural history.

Read the press release.

Archived in Chicago | Press Releases
Posted by DB at 07:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Louise W. Knight, author of Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy, recently discussed her new book with Matt Rothschild, host of Progressive Radio and editor of The Progressive. The interview is available as an audio file on The Progressive Web site.

Jane Addams was the first American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Now Citizen, Louise W. Knight's masterful biography, reveals Addams's early development as a political activist and social philosopher. In this book we observe a powerful mind grappling with the radical ideas of her age, most notably the ever-changing meanings of democracy.

Read an excerpt.

Archived in Biography | Chicago | History
Posted by at 04:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tonight at 6:00 p.m., Gilfoyle will discuss and sign Millennium Park at the Harold Washington Library. Items from the official archives of Millennium Park will be on view during the event. The event is free and open to the public.

Timothy J. Gilfoyle's reading was chosen by the Chicago Reader as its Critic's Choice of the week. Harold Henderson wrote, "The story of Millennium Park, as told by Loyola historian Timothy J. Gilfoyle in Millennium Park: Creating a Chicago Landmark, is three uplifting tales in one: the site, up from the lake and the post-Fire rubble; the politics, up from a landfill's worth of failed plans; and the culture, up from a conservative vision of merely filling out the north end of Grant Park to a tightly packed series of walkways, sculptures, and theatrical spaces.… This impressively organized and lavishly illustrated book itself wouldn't exist without financial support from the Minow Family Foundation. Those uncomfortable with the project's delays, cost overruns, privatized process, or jangly outcome get their say, but the mayor has the last word."

Archived in Art and Architecture | Author Events | Cartography and Geography | Chicago | History | Reviews
Posted by at 08:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tonight, Timothy J. Gilfoyle, author of Millennium Park: Creating a Chicago Landmark, will appear on WTTW's "Chicago Tonight" television program. The show airs at 7:00 p.m. (CST).

Tomorrow morning, Gilfoyle will be interviewed by Gretchen Helfrich on WBEZ 91.5 FM radio's "Eight Forty-Eight" program (9:00-10:00 a.m.). In addition to regular broadcast, the show will be accessible via an online audio stream on the WBEZ Web site.

Next Wednesday, June 21 at 6:00 p.m., Gilfoyle will speak at the Harold Washington Library's Cindy Pritzker Auditorium (400 South State Street). Gilfoyle will discuss and sign Millennium Park: Creating a Chicago Landmark. Items from the official archives of Millennium Park will be on view during the event.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Author Events | Cartography and Geography | Chicago | History
Posted by at 03:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Sunday, June 18 at 1:15 pm (CST), C-SPAN2's Book TV will feature a program from the 2006 Printers Row Book Fair, which features Louise W. Knight, author of Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy and Katherine Joslin discussing Jane Addams.

Jane Addams was the first American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Now Citizen, Louise W. Knight's masterful biography, reveals Addams's early development as a political activist and social philosopher. In this book we observe a powerful mind grappling with the radical ideas of her age, most notably the ever-changing meanings of democracy.

Read an excerpt.

Archived in Author Events | Biography | Chicago | History
Posted by at 09:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sunday's edition of the Chicago Sun-Times featured a nice review of Timothy J. Gilfoyle's Millennium Park: Creating a Chicago Landmark. Kevin Nance wrote, "The creation of the $475 million park, which opened in July 2004 four years late and at more than twice its originally projected cost, was fraught with tension among its high-powered participants.… This high-stakes game of push-and-pull forms the dramatic core of historian Timothy J. Gilfoyle