While recovering from watching an Academy Awards broadcast helmed by a blasé multiplatform performance artist or two, we got to thinking about Chicago's own cinematic rex. Or rather, he got us thinking, with a simple Tweet stating the obvious: "Is James Franco the first PhD candidate to host the Oscars?"

Of course, we thought! This is probably the only time the Oscars have featured a host who may or may not be a regular at the Beineke Library. But in the middle of trying to read James Franco as a cipher for contemporary subjectivity—whose Method is this? Schneeman, not Strasberg, right?—we had forsaken simplicity. As ebertchicago had so aptly advanced in 140 characters or less:

Whoa. The Academy met the academy.

But Roget Ebert has long delivered pithy bites of criticism unflinchingly avoidant of the kind of postmodern meta-analysis James Franco probably delivers in his seminar papers. Ebert the man, like Ebert the Twitter feed, requires no introduction. In spite of this, a recent playbill for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Friday Night at the Movies tribute admirably attempted one:

Through his decades of Pulitzer Prize-winning film criticism, groundbreaking television work with Gene Siskel, acclaimed yearly film festival, and now his popular blog and Twitter feed, Ebert has assumed a place in American culture that has made him, as Forbes magazine declared, "the most powerful pundit in America."

Indeed, Ebert's observations—whether advanced in several print collections (including The Great Movies III), advocated via a series of television programs (At the Movies, just launched nationally on PBS), opined on his popular blog, or cast in rapid fire captions on Twitter—continue to wow us with a lean directness that yields much meatier insights.

And in the world of Web 3.0, ebertchicago is no exception. If Franco's weirdly hallucinogenic Jim Stark-as-Troy-in-Reality Bites performance weren't entertaining enough in a night that jumped the generational shark, Ebert's live-tweeting of it sure was:

I hope James Franco does better on the oral exam for his PhD.

They should go back to using writers for the opening remarks.

Be honest now. Did the show open[ing] remind you of a Chamber of Commerce youth achievement banquet?

If James Franco were announcing the arrival of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, he would add, "Whatever."

Add Our Lonely Academic's Critical Flameout to the Ebert oeuvre: one that ranges from The Third Man's zither music and the Corleone family's lost Americana to the reasons why Deuce Bigelow probably isn't our European Gigolo par excellence. Or as the man himself said it best:

Urgent to producers: You're not running long. You're running slow.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Chicago | Film and Media
Posted by KAM at 02:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you watch movies and read blogs about watching movies, or blog with movie-like aplomb and thus spend your days (sort of like I do) plaintively "watching" the Internet, then Jonathan Rosenbaum is a man who needs no introduction. He certainly deserves a better one, no? Preeminent critic, global film connoisseur, former bandmate of Chevy Chase, opiner of Dead Man and op-ed penner upon the death of Ingmar Begman, Rosenbaum has been one of the most important figures in American film journalism for more than a quarter of a century. His most recent book Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia: Film Culture in Transition collects fifty pieces of his astute criticism from the past four decades, each of which showcases his passion for the way we view movies, as well as how we write about them.

The book and its author have been receiving quite a bit of attention lately from outlets as varied as the films Rosenbaum engages, like the Onion's A.V. Club:

Ceaselessly prolific, frighteningly well-informed on seemingly every detail of film history, and well ahead of the technological curve, Jonathan Rosenbaum has championed and contextualized many films in his 40 years as a critic. When print film criticism flourished, he could write 1,800 words on Cliffhanger and make them all matter.

Recently, the Nation cited Rosenbaum and his work in a panel discussion (presented here in streaming audio format) entitled "The Future of Film Criticism," featuring the Nation's film critic Stuart Klawans, David Sterrit from the National Society of Film Critics, Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly, and Cinema Journal's Heather Hendershot.

And lest not we forget, the Criterion Collection's "Book Notes" blog reviewed Rosenbaum's "invaluable" collection at length, while linking to a recent Rosenbaum feature on the affinities between Carl Theodor Dryer's Gertrude and William Faulkner's Light in August.

How about GreenCine Daily? They're off and running with commentary on Rosenbaum's "Rediscovering Charlie Chaplin," one of the essays included in Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia, noting:

Rosenbaum finds the need for education urgent: in a world where it's easy to scorn the Tramp as sentimental and outmoded, he insists 'one can't even begin to grasp Chaplin's importance without processing sizable chunks of the twentieth century.' He then does his best to lay out some of that historical space briefly, and by the end even a hardened Chaplin skeptic may well be convinced they're the ones at fault.

But perhaps the Globe and Mail says it best: "Rosenbaum . . . is one of the bellwether critics in film reviewing, reminding others of the tradition of serious cinema and keeping abreast of new movements."

We couldn't agree more. To fine-tune your own critical approach, check out this excerpt from the book and be sure to follow-up with a visit to Jonathan's ever-updated blog.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Books for the News | Chicago | Commentary
Posted by KAM at 05:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dad, a.k.a. Mike Royko, would have turned 78 yesterday, Sunday, September 19, and if he were still around, I would not greet him with a “Happy Birthday.”

Many people, men and women alike, especially after a “certain age,” prefer to ignore their birthdays and wish the world would too. But the rest of us prefer to ignore their wishes and gleefully rub the day in the birthday boys' and girls' faces. Hey, we all get older, so get over it, right?

Dad, though, was different. On September 19, 1979, Carol—Mom—died. He'd loved her since they were kids, married her when they were very young adults, and lost her on his 47th birthday. They had been coming up on their 25th wedding anniversary. She was 44.

And that was it for birthdays.

I might've tried a quiet, mumbled “happy birthday” one year, but the reaction, the grunt and turning-away, taught me not to try it again. So year after year, I'd try to find some excuse to stop by, either his home or down at the paper, and casually drop something off, like a book or CD, and never with any mention of why. He'd accept it with a quick “Oh, thanks,” and move on to something else. Dad probably would've preferred I'd not even done that, but the gift and lack-of-acknowledgment was my way of letting him know I hadn't forgotten what day it was, on both counts.

Those who got to know Dad in his later years often would attribute his birthday abhorrence to the usual reasons middle-aged and older guys hate them. Dad had a better reason, and the irony was that being a celebrity meant his birthday would always be noted somewhere in the media.

“Celebrating his birthday today is Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, Mike Royko.”

They always got it wrong. He wasn't celebrating.

But that doesn't mean we can't, and now, it won't bug him. So Happy Birthday Dad, and as I have thought for the past 14 years, I'd be much happier ignoring it with you than saying it without you.

Love,

David

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Chicago | Literature
Posted by TXM at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the day since Mayor Daley's surprise announcement that he won't be seeking another term, speculation has run rampant and the rumor mill has been pulling twenty-four-hour shifts. So we thought we should be clear: unlike seemingly every other resident of our fair city, the Chicago Blog will not be running for mayor.

Sure, we've got more than a century of accumulated knowledge about the City That Works (and how it works). And no candidate can come close to matching our backlist. But the rough and tumble of politics just isn't for us. We're more contemplative. Bookish, you might say.

That doesn't mean we don't have some recommendations for those who are throwing their hats in the ring. First up are some good starting points for assessing Daley's legacy—if you want to replace the king, you ought to take a close look at the crown first. Larry Bennett's brand-new The Third City paints a picture of the innovative, revitalized, postindustrial city that Chicago has become on Daley's watch.

Timothy J. Gilfoyle's Millennium Park is simultaneously a celebration of the park that will surely be one of Daley's longest-lasting legacies and an insider's account of the deal-making and politicking that went into its creation.

And while Blair Kamin's new book of writing on architecture, Terror and Wonder: Architecture in a Tumultuous Age, casts its eye on much more than just Chicago, its heart remains here among the ever-threatened architectural jewels of the city Kamin calls home. Kamin weighed in on Daley's legacy today on his Cityscapes blog, but for a more extensive picture of the ongoing battle between development and preservation that marked Daley's tenure, this book and his earlier Why Architecture Matters: Lessons from Chicago are indispensable.

It also would behoove any candidate for mayor to quickly grab a copy of our landmark Encyclopedia of Chicago. If you're running for mayor you may be too busy shaking hands (and, let’s be honest, wallets) to read it cover-to-cover, but you could at least give a copy to an aide, who can quiz you—and maybe save you from some gaffes on the campaign trail, like mixing up Billy Sunday and Billy Corgan.

Oh, and one last suggestion. Though the next few months may be filled with uncertainty, as we try to figure out whether we're still living in Daley's Chicago or someone else's Chicago, the Second City or the Third City, the death throes of an old machine or the birth of a new, one thing's for sure: Nelson Algren and Mike Royko stand ready to be your guides. Grab a copy of Algren's Chicago: City on the Make and any one of our many Royko books and you'll be ready for anything—there's never been a dirty trick those two couldn't see coming.

Archived in Chicago
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More television coverage of Royko in Love: Mike's Letters to Carol. Last night David Royko sat down with WLS-TV news reporter Janet Davies:

Archived in Biography | Chicago
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As promised yesterday, here is David Royko's appearance last night on FOX Chicago News talking about Royko in Love: Mike's Letters to Carol:

Archived in Biography | Chicago
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The reviews are in, and they're all raves! One day after the official publication date of The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition, the Chicago Tribune weighed in with a feature-length story about the new edition and the readers who love it. Steve Johnson, the Tribune's pop culture critic, writes:

Bound, famously, in orange and thicker with each new edition, the 104-year-old reference classic has kept watch over the publication of hundreds of great books and thousands of not-so-great ones, an arbiter and aide-de-camp for editors trying to decide how to handle items in a list, punctuation within quotes or, these days, the proper hexadecimal code for the German double low-9 quotation mark (201E, as you probably suspected).

The Tribune article also quotes Wendy McClure, an author and editor at Albert Whitman & Company: "I love that big, crazy, orange book.… It's what I've turned to when I'm unsure about something when I'm proofreading. But also, when you have your first publishing job and are trying to figure out how this all works, you've got this whole big book you can plunge into."

The New York Times Paper Cuts blog chimed in with a "usage geek's" take on what's new in the sixteenth edition:

The new edition's press materials come with a 19-point bulleted list of what's fresh, including an electronic-editing checklist, all sorts of guidelines for e-publishing (XML workflow, anyone?), and—here's where they had me—a whole new section on parallel structure! (Swoon.) The book contains an "expanded section on bias-free language," which in this cultural moment I might have titled the "wishful thinking" section. And it promises "firmer rules and clearer recommendations," which was striking, considering the seemingly inexorable trend away from firmness in matters of grammar and usage, especially online. What exactly does "firmer" mean? (Visions of subversive copy editors wielding chains and bullwhips dance in my head.)

Finally, the Glendale News-Press (of Glendale, CA) highlights their favorite changes from the Manual's newest iteration.

The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition, is available in print and online.

Archived in Chicago | Commentary | Reference and Writing
Posted by TXM at 02:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Royko in Love: Mike's Letters to Carol, the newest edition to the Press's collection of works by the award winning journalist, offers a rare look into the personal life of one of Chicago's most beloved public icons. Through his writing Royko made a reputation for himself as the prototypical hard-nosed Chicago journalist—tough, funny, acerbic, yet eloquent enough to win a Pulitzer Prize. But in Royko in Love we see another side, both sensitive and vulnerable and passionately consumed with wooing his childhood sweetheart, Carol Duckman.

Royko in Love was collected and edited by Royko's son, David Royko and over the next few days he will be making several TV appearances speak about the book and offer further insights into his father's life and career. Tonight you can catch David Royko on Fox Chicago News at 9:00 pm, tomorrow on ABC 7 Chicago News at 4:00 pm, and next week on the Tuesday edition of WTTW's Chicago Tonight and Thursday September 29 on WGN's Midday News. We'll also post the video online as it becomes available.

See also, photos of Mike and Carol Royko, with commentary by David Royko.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Chicago | Literature
Posted by TXM at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Most pets in the US either bark or meow—Americans own more than seventy-seven million dogs and ninety-three million cats. But how many chimpanzees are kept at home as pets? It's a question that, until now, had no easy answer. But thanks to the pioneering work of Lincoln Park Zoo scientist Steve Ross, we now have a figure: about 113. And, if Ross, has his way, that number will dwindle to zero.

Today's Chicago Tribune reports on Ross's mission to change the way people view these primates and their (un)suitability as pets. His organization, Project ChimpCARE, hopes "to locate every chimpanzee in North America and assess its level of care."

For Ross, the ChimpCARE project is about protecting chimps and people from a dangerous public misperception that chimps are safe, people-friendly animals, which makes him opposed in particular to using chimps as actors. Chimps seen on screen are babies or prepubescent youngsters, never adults, Ross said. When they reach puberty, they become dangerously unpredictable and aggressive, a tendency that resulted in tragedy last year when one retired chimp attacked and severely injured a woman in Connecticut.

And Ross should know a thing of two about chimpanzees. After all, he coedited our new volume, The Mind of the Chimpanzee: Ecological and Experimental Perspectives, which brings together scores of prominent scientists from around the world to share the most recent research into what goes on inside the mind of our closest living relative.

Read more about former entertainment industry chimpanzees he's placed in facilities better suited to their needs and nature. And check out how you can help find chimpanzees better homes.

Archived in Anthropology | Biology | Books for the News | Chicago
Posted by at 01:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A recent review of Martin Preib's The Wagon and Other Stories from the City for barnesandnoblereview.com begins by citing the some of the recent media coverage involving the Chicago Police Department—from the conviction of former commander Jon Burge "for lying about having tortured scores of suspects over a twenty-year period in the 1970s and '80s," to the recent death of officer Thomas Wortham IV, shot as a gang of thugs tried to steal his motorcycle, and, of course, the re-escalation of homicides in the city. The review continues:

Martin Preib's The Wagon and Other Stories from the City is a welcome, albeit at times maddening, effort to fashion a narrative that reflects the reality of this messy, yet vital American city. Preib has been a Chicago cop for eight years, but he's not defined by his police work. He greatly admires Walt Whitman and William Kennedy, writers who despite having seen the worst in mankind were (in the case of Kennedy, still is) capable of maintaining a faith—admittedly quivering at times—in the human spirit. Before his police work, Preib worked as a doorman at a downtown hotel, and there witnessed the grueling and often humiliating labor of those in the service industry. He soon became involved in an effort to take back the union from the corrupt old guard. Preib's been around. He knows writing—and he knows the city's darkest corners.

Preib is at his best when he's telling stories. He opens with a trenchant and at times hilarious recounting of his first job in the police department, driving a wagon that transported dead bodies. His observations are keen and fresh…

Continue reading the B&N review or read "Body Bags," a story from the book, and listen to a podcast.

Archived in Biography | Chicago | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Tuesday, news broke that the Obama administration had written a letter in April to the Illinois Pollution Control Board calling for efforts to make the Chicago River safe for swimming. Mayor Daley responded, with his characteristic verbal finesse, advising the feds to "go swim in the Potomac." By Thursday, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, the official body who oversees the river, chimed in, claiming, according to the Chicago Tribune, that "making the Chicago River safe enough for swimming would waste taxpayer money and put children at risk of drowning." The MWRD also said "the river has been altered so dramatically that new efforts to improve water quality would not be worth the costs."

In addition to being dyed green every year to celebrate St. Patrick's Day (an effect achieved using orange dye), the Chicago River is most famous for having had its flow reversed in the nineteenth century (the river now runs away from the lake). But has the waterway been changed too much to make it healthy for swimming? The debate seems to have stopped at da Mare's door, but if you are curious to read more about the river, we recommend paging through David M. Solzman's The Chicago River: An Illustrated History and Guide to the River and Its Waterways, Second Edition.

With The Chicago River, Solzman has succeeded in writing an encyclopedic work—at once guidebook and history—that explores the river's physical character and natural history. Examining the river's past, contemplating its present, and forecasting its future, Solzman draws on his unparalleled knowledge to point out places of scientific and historic interest—involving everything from infamous murder cases to invasive zebra mussels. The book's 200 photographs and maps perfectly complement Solzman's vivid prose, leading readers on a visual journey as sinuous as the river it celebrates—a journey interspersed with plenty of river lore, facts, and literary quotations.

Solzman, a veteran Chicago River tour guide, has also compiled a diverse collection of easy and enjoyable tours for anyone who wants to experience the river by foot, boat, canoe, or car. And he provides an appendix that lists river-related organizations, museums, tours, and riverfront restaurants and clubs.

Whether or not you're keen to do the breaststroke under the Michigan Avenue Bridge or are happy simply to watch the boats and barges glide by from above, the Chicago River—both its history and its future—impacts all who call the city home. David Solzman's book can help us better appreciate this suddenly contentious natural landmark.

Archived in Books for the News | Chicago
Posted by at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A new review of Martin Prieb's The Wagon and Other Stories from the City that ran in yesterday's Wall Street Journal begins:

Police thrillers are so widely read and police dramas so commonplace on television that many people think they have a good understanding of what a cop's world is like. But in truth that world is seldom revealed with anything approaching verisimilitude. We get it with "The Wagon."

Commenting on the first story in the collection the review continues:

As with police work itself, the book is only sporadically about gunfights, car chases and collaring criminals. Any television show that depicted the tedium of a police officer's typical day wouldn't draw much of an audience. In truth, most cops go through their entire careers without firing their weapon except on the practice range, but almost all of them are sooner or later called to deal with a dead body. Every cop, no matter how many he has encountered since, remembers his first one.

But few cops are able to describe that rite of passage as convincingly as Mr. Preib does in "Body Bags."

And if won't take the WSJ's word for it you can see for yourself by navigating to the Press website where you can find the full text of "Body Bags" online or listen to a podcast featuring a reading and interview with the author.

Continue reading the WSJ review.

Archived in Books for the News | Chicago | Literature
Posted by TXM at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Martin Preib is an officer in the Chicago Police Department—a beat cop whose first assignment as a rookie policeman was working on the wagon that picks up the dead. Over the course of countless hours driving the wagon through the city streets, claiming corpses and taking them to the morgue, arresting drunks and criminals and hauling them to jail, Preib took pen to paper to record his experiences. Inspired by Preib’s daily life as a policeman, The Wagon and Other Stories from the City chronicles the outer and inner lives of both a Chicago cop and the city itself.

The book follows Preib as he transports body bags, forges a connection with his female partner, trains a younger officer, and finds himself among people long forgotten—or rendered invisible—by the rest of society. Preib recounts how he navigates the tenuous labyrinths of race and class in the urban metropolis, including a domestic disturbance call involving a gang member and his abused girlfriend and a run-in with a group of drunk yuppies. Preib’s accounts, all told in his breathtaking prose, range from noir-like reports of police work to streetwise meditations on life and darkly humorous accounts of other jobs in the city’s service industry. Here, Preib’s universe of police officers, criminals, and victims—and everyone in between—comes alive in ways that readers will long remember.

Read the press release.

Also, read a story: "Body Bags" and listen to a podcast.

Archived in Chicago | Literature | Press Releases
Posted by TXM at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Few people writing today could successfully combine an intimate knowledge of Chicago with a poet’s eye, and capture what it’s really like to live in this remarkable city. Embracing a striking variety of human experience—a chance encounter with a veteran on Belmont Avenue, the grimy majesty of the downtown L tracks, domestic violence in a North Side brownstone, the wide-eyed wonder of new arrivals at O’Hare, and much more—these new and selected poems and stories by Reginald Gibbons celebrate the heady mix of elation and despair that is city life. With Slow Trains Overhead, he has rendered a living portrait of Chicago as luminously detailed and powerful as those of Nelson Algren and Carl Sandburg.

Gibbons takes the reader from museums and neighborhood life to tense proceedings in Juvenile Court, from comically noir-tinged scenes at a store on Clark Street to midnight immigrants at a gas station on Western Avenue, and from a child’s piggybank to nature in urban spaces. For Gibbons, the city’s people, places, and historical reverberations are a compelling human array of the everyday and the extraordinary, of poverty and beauty, of the experience of being one among many. Penned by one of its most prominent writers, Slow Trains Overhead evokes and commemorates human life in a great city.

Read the press release.

Archived in Chicago | Poetry | Press Releases
Posted by TXM at 01:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last Saturday's edition of the Chicago Tribune ran a review of Martin Preib's The Wagon and Other Stories from the City. With most of its content gleaned from a recent interview with Preib, the review offers some interesting background on the experiences that have inspired his writing, including his work with the Chicago Police Department and in various other capacities within Chicago's service industry.

You can read it read it online at the Printers Row blog (Preib is also scheduled to appear at the Printers Row Lit Fest June 12 and 13).

Also, read a story from the book: "Body Bags" and listen to Preib discussing his work on the Chicago Audio Works podcast.

Archived in Books for the News | Chicago | Literature
Posted by TXM at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the latest episode of our podcast, Chicago Audio Works, Chicago Police officer, author, one-time doorman, union organizer, and bouncer Martin Prieb reads from his new book The Wagon and Other Stories from the City and answers a few questions about his work and writing.

Inspired by Preib's daily life as a policeman—as well as his many other experiences working in the Windy City's service sector—The Wagon offers a view of city life from the vantage point of one of it's newest most trenchant, and authentic chroniclers. With material that ranges from noir-like reports of police work to streetwise meditations on life and darkly humorous accounts of his other occupations, The Wagon brings the city of Chicago to life in ways that readers will long remember.

For more read this review in this week's issue of the Chicago Reader (scroll down to the bottom of the page), or read a story from the book: "Body Bags."

Hear more readings, interviews, and other features from our authors on Chicago Audio Works.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Biography | Chicago | Literature
Posted by TXM at 12:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Illinois is perhaps unique for having fostered the careers of both some of the most upstanding, and of course, most corrupt political figures the nation has ever known.

This morning various papers are reporting that a member of the former camp, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, has announced his retirement. His long career in the nation's highest court has spanned nearly four decades and seven presidencies, and though an appointee of the Ford administration, he is notable for having maintained a non-partisan and adaptable stance towards many issues from the right to choose to affirmative action. You can navigate to just about any news source for more on the final chapter in Justice Stevens' Supreme Court career, but perhaps the more engrossing read is the story of its beginnings, embroiled the kind of dramatic struggle between darkness and light that only a city like Chicago can deliver.

Kenneth A. Manaster's Illinois Justice: The Scandal of 1969 and the Rise of John Paul Stevens takes readers behind the scenes of one of the most spectacular Illinois political scandals (and there have been many) to tell the tale of the beginning of Stevens ascension to the high court.

In 1969, while Stevens was still a relatively unknown Chicago lawyer, citizen gadfly Sherman Skolnick accused the Illinois Chief Justice and another Illinois Supreme Court justice of accepting valuable bank stock from an influential Chicago lawyer in exchange for deciding an important case in the lawyer's favor. The feverish media coverage that resulted—a scandalous story in its own right, as Manaster reveals—prompted the state supreme court to appoint a special commission to investigate. Within six weeks and on a shoestring budget, the commission gathered a small volunteer staff and revealed the true facts. Stevens, then a relatively unknown Chicago lawyer, served as chief counsel. His work on this investigation would launch him into the public spotlight and onto the bench.

Manaster, who served on the commission, tells the full story of the investigation, detailing the dead ends, tactics, and triumphs. At the heart of the book is the tense courtroom drama that unfolded in July 1969. Manaster expertly traces Stevens's masterful courtroom strategies, and vividly portrays the high-profile personalities involved (almost every member of the Illinois Supreme Court took the stand), as well as the subtleties of judicial corruption. With a reflective foreword by Justice Stevens himself, Manaster's book is both a fascinating chapter of political history and a revealing portrait of the early career of a Supreme Court justice.

See transcriptions of original source documents referenced in the book.

Archived in Books for the News | Chicago
Posted by TXM at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In a recent essay in the journal Places (part of the Design Observer group), Nancy Levinson argues against the recent trend of globe-trotting architecture criticism and proposes instead a return to local expertise. Of the current criticism, she writes:

"You've got the editorial charge to be national and international, like the rest of the paper, and you've got the budget to roam. So you rack up the datelines: Los Angeles, Miami, Boston, Moscow, Stuttgart, Basel, etc. etc. But the view from the tower is broad not sharp, panoramic but not particular. The inevitable result is that you are writing at the thin edge of scant knowledge: you are critiquing places you know only as a tourist, and buildings you know only from brief and usually tightly programmed visits, often in the company of the watchful designer. This is no way to gain meaningful experience or serious knowledge of a building or landscape or how it fits within its local setting and larger environs.

But of the future of criticism, she singles out several critics (including Michael Sorkin, whose Twenty Minutes in Manhattan we distribute for Reaktion Books) who are "[making the commitment to] somehow… deglamorize the global, to make it a measure of critical strength to commit to the local." And she reserves great praise, especially on this count, for the Chicago Tribune's Blair Kamin and his Why Architecture Matters: Lessons from Chicago.

In the book, Kamin's subjects range from high-rises to highways, parks to public housing, Frank Lloyd Wright to Frank Gehry. First published in 2001, Why Architecture Matters collects the best of Kamin's acclaimed columns, offering both a look at America's foremost architectural city and a taste of Kamin's penetrating, witty style of critique.

This fall, Kamin will publish another book with the Press. Due in October, Terror and Wonder tells the story of a tumultuous decade in American architectural history. The more than fifty pieces included in the book cover the period stretching from the terrorist attacks of 9/11 through the onset of the Great Recession, the inauguration of would-be architect Barack Obama, and the completion of the last major projects of the decade-long building boom. In all, Kamin's book captures an era marked, paradoxically, by abiding fear, giddy excess, and growing concern for the environment, all of which were reflected in the buildings and public spaces designed and constructed during these years.

Check back here for more information on the forthcoming Terror and Wonder.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Books for the News | Chicago
Posted by at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

John Kass's column in yesterday's Chicago Tribune discussed Chicago police officer Martin Prieb's forthcoming book The Wagon and Other Stories from the City—an authentic chronicle of life behind the badge on the gritty streets of Chicago. As Tribune columnist John Kass writes:

[Preib's book is] about the real Chicago, the city of tribes, the city many of you know, not that fictional metropolis sometimes offered in magazines and TV shows.… There are no blonds in red dresses. No detectives with cleft chins.… And if there's a hero, the hero is an intelligent man trying to figure things out.

And from his first assignment driving the police wagon that hauls away the dead, to his run-ins with gangbangers and drunk yuppies while patrolling his beat on Chicago's North Side, the perceptively crafted stories in Preib's new book offer a uniquely insightful account of both the life of a Chicago cop and the city itself.

For more read Kass's article on the Chicago Tribune website.

The Wagon and Other Stories from the City will publish May 2010.

Archived in Books for the News | Chicago
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Yesterday was the birthday of Ben Hecht. Though best known for his second career as a Hollywood screenwriter (he won an Oscar for 1927's Underworld and wrote or contributed to some of the most beloved films of all time), Hecht cut his teeth as a Chicago journalist before he headed west. Writing for the Chicago Daily News, he penned an enormously popular column called A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago, which was assembled into a book in 1922 that bought Hecht his first dose of fame. A timeless caricature of urban American life in the jazz age, Hecht's book captured 1920s Chicago in all its furor, intensity, and absurdism. From the glittering opulence of Michigan Avenue to the darkest ruminations of an escaped convict, from captains of industry to immigrant day laborers, he embodied many voices and many lives. As the New York Times wrote, "Mr. Hecht is attempting to do for Chicago something of what Dickens did for London; he stands appalled before the spectacle of the streets with their tumultuous, mysterious throngs."

The Press reissued A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago last year. Featuring sixty-four columns illustrated with striking pen drawings by Herman Rosse, our new edition is supplemented with an introduction by William Savage, a scholar of Chicago's early-twentieth century literary history, who sets the book in its historical, biographical, and literary context. As he writes, "A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago still speaks to anyone interested in urban history, in urban aesthetics, or in good story-telling."

Last year, Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune cultural critic agreed, writing in a review:

The columns in A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago are scruffy time capsules of an earlier Chicago, an era that is long gone but still recognizable to readers' imaginations. Michigan Avenue, Lake Michigan, street names such as Dearborn and Adams and LaSalle and Wabansia, places such as the Art Institute of Chicago—they're all here, sprinkled amid Hecht's nervous little haikus of urban life. He calls Chicago 'a razzle-dazzle of dreams, tragedies, fantasies,' and his tales capture gorgeous scraps of it, vivid vignettes starring businessmen and hobos and cops and socialites and janitors.… Thanks to Hecht, the Chicago of 1922 and the Chicago of 2009 bump into each other, shake hands, exchange greetings. Then, this being Chicago, they go for a drink and talk about old times. New ones too.

So, as a birthday gift to the late Hecht, take a closer look at his Chicago. It will be a gift to you, as well.

Archived in Books for the News | Chicago
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With the Supreme Court due to hear arguments tomorrow in a suit challenging Chicago's ban on handguns in the city, Chicago Public Radio's Eight Forty-Eight aired the second of a two part special on the history of Chicago's ban this morning. On the program contributor Robert Loerzel walks through some of the major events—including the tragic assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the ensuing riots on Chicago's South Side, the assassination of J.F.K., and even the attempted murder of Pope John Paul II—that helped to gain public support for Chicago's handgun ordinance.

But despite the mountains of negative publicity that guns have received, especially in the nation's urban centers, the question of whether allowing people to own or carry guns deters violent crime still remains.

Back in 2000 the University of Chicago Press published one of the most influential and controversial books on the issue, John R. Lott, Jr.'s More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws. Slated for an updated third edition later this month, Lott's book employs some of the most rigorously comprehensive data analysis ever conducted on crime statistics and right-to-carry laws to directly challenge common perceptions about the relationship between guns, crime, and violence. For the third edition, Lott draws on an additional ten years of data—including provocative analysis of the effects of gun bans in Chicago and Washington, D.C.—to bring the book fully up to date and further bolster its central contention that, in fact, more guns mean less crime.

Tune your radio to 91.5 tomorrow to catch more analysis on the challenge to Chicago's gun control ordinance, or navigate to the Chicago Public Radio website to listen to the archived audio from this morning's program.

Also navigate to the press website to read an interview with John R. Lott Jr. or to find out more about the updated third edition.

Archived in Books for the News | Chicago | Law | Politics and Current Events
Posted by TXM at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In an article that appeared in yesterday's Chicago Journal, reporter Megan Cottrell offers a nice summary of the results of a study conducted by researchers from the Consortium on Chicago School Research and recently published in Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago. The study, conducted over a seven-year period, aimed to track the effects of the 1988 decentralization of the Chicago Public School system—a move that granted parents and communities significant resources and authority to reform schools. But, as Cottrell notes, the researchers found that the results of these reforms varied greatly from school to school, some dramatically improving the academic performance of their students, while others floundered.

In their book, Anthony S. Bryk, Penny Bender Sebring, Elaine Allensworth, Stuart Luppescu, and John Q. Easton have sifted through mountains of data to identify the key ingredients required to, as Cottrell's article puts it, 'bake up a good school." Cotrell writes:

A good school, it turns out, is a lot like a cake. Put in sugar, eggs and oil, but forget the flour, and all you end up with is a sweet, sloppy mess. Without all the right ingredients, success will continually evade you.

It all starts with the chef. Without a good principal, says the research, most improvement efforts are wasted. But the principal has to have good material to work with—quality teachers—and an eye for academic and professional improvement. The teachers and leadership should be connected to the parents and to the wider community. All three groups must focus on making the school a safe, academically rigorous environment for the children they serve.

Remove any of these five "essential supports," the authors' research shows, and the likelihood that a school will improve plummets.

Continue reading the complete article on the Chicago Journal website and read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Books for the News | Chicago | Education
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The New Republic has just debuted its new online book reviews site, and in the midst of clicking around we were pleased to note that The Book as it's called, is featuring one of our titles amongst its inaugural reviews. In an article posted to the site last Wednesday, Harvard economist Edward L. Gleaser reviews Dominic A. Pacyga's Chicago: A Biography—a thoroughly detailed and uncommonly intimate portrait of the city and its inhabitants written by a native Chicagoan. In his piece Glaeser inventories a few of the main topics in the book including Chicago's rapid industrial growth in the early 20th century, the city's role in the invention of the skyscraper, and Pacyga's unique focus on the stories of the city's working class.

Navigate to TNR's The Book to read the full review and see a gallery of photographs from the book.

Archived in Chicago | History | Politics and Current Events | Reviews | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 03:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Elaine Allensworth, co-author of a new study recently released by the Consortium on Chicago School Research, Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago, was invited on Chicago Public Radio's Eight Forty-Eight yesterday to discuss the book's findings. The book tracks the effects over a twenty year period of the radical program of reform put in place by the Illinois General Assembly in 1988—a program which has utilized some controversial tactics to accomplish its goals from the consolidation of students, to staff replacements, to wholesale school closures. Listen in as Allensworth and others deliver an insightful analysis of the project to reform Chicago's public school system on the Chicago Public Radio website, then read an excerpt from Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Chicago | Education
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The Tribune's Julia Keller recently penned an article about a man who knows the city "like the back of his hand,"—and is one of its most prominent writers—Reginald Gibbons, whose evocative collection of writing about our fair city in Slow Trains Overhead: Chicago Poems and Stories comes out April 2010.

Though a native of Houston, Gibbons' new collection reveals that his muse is clearly the city of Chicago, where he has lived and taught for many years as a professor of English at Northwestern University. As Keller writes:

It was coming to Chicago—a place in which, to Gibbons' eye, the past and present commingle in rackety yet luminous profusion—that truly set fire to his imagination, he says. "I got such a powerful feeling in Chicago, a feeling I've never gotten in New York—the historical echo of the spaces downtown, the feeling that everyone who has ever worked here is still here. There's a profoundly good feeling of being connected with the generations."

And in Slow Trains Overhead Gibbons combines this connection to the city of Chicago with his inimitable command of language to capture what it's really like to live in this remarkable city. Embracing a striking variety of human experience—a chance encounter with a veteran on Belmont Avenue, the grimy majesty of the downtown El tracks, domestic violence in a North Side brownstone, the wide-eyed wonder of new arrivals at O'Hare, and much more—these new and selected poems and stories by Reginald Gibbons celebrate the heady mix of elation and despair that is city life. With Slow Trains Overhead, he has rendered a living portrait of Chicago as luminously detailed and powerful as those of Nelson Algren and Carl Sandburg.

Read more about Reginald Gibbons on the Tribune website.

Archived in Chicago | Poetry | Reviews
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The perfect remedy for those mid-winter blues, Tim Reid and Tom Dreesen's fascinating (not to mention funny) tale of their careers as the first interracial comedy team in the history of show business in Tim and Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White, is now available for download free from the Press website.

About the book:

As the heady promise of the 1960s sagged under the weight of widespread violence, rioting, and racial unrest, two young men—one black and one white—took to stages across the nation to help Americans confront their racial divide: by laughing at it.

Tim and Tom tells the story of that pioneering duo, the first interracial comedy team in the history of show business—and the last. Tim Reid and Tom Dreesen polished their act in the nightclubs of Chicago, then took it on the road, not only in the North, but in the still-simmering South as well, developing routines that even today remain surprisingly frank—and remarkably funny—about race. Most nights, the shock of seeing an integrated comedy team quickly dissipated in uproarious laughter, but on some occasions the audience's confusion and discomfort led to racist heckling, threats, and even violence. Though Tim and Tom perpetually seemed on the verge of making it big throughout their five years together, they grudgingly came to realize that they were ahead of their time: America was not yet ready to laugh at its own failed promise.

Eventually, the grind of the road took its toll, as bitter arguments led to an acrimonious breakup. But the underlying bond of friendship Reid and Dreesen had forged with each groundbreaking joke has endured for decades, while their solo careers delivered the success that had eluded them as a team. By turns revealing, shocking, and riotously funny, Tim and Tom unearths a largely forgotten chapter in the history of comedy.

Check back each month for more free e-books from the University of Chicago Press or for all our currently available e-books, see our complete list of e-books by subject.

E-books from the University of Chicago Press are offered in Adobe Digital Editions format for Mac, PC, and a number of mobile devices such as the Sony Reader, IREX, BeBook, and more. Check out these links to find out more about Adobe Digital Editions or more about e-books from the University of Chicago Press.

Archived in Biography | Chicago | Commentary
Posted by TXM at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jazz.com's Ted Panken recently posted an in-depth two-part interview with George E. Lewis, author of A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music. In the interview Panken and Lewis engage in a detailed dialogue on the history, theory, as well as practice of one of the most influential jazz collectives of the 20th century—The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians.

From Panken's preface to the interview:

A Power Stronger Than Itself is a landmark work. The bedrock of the text is an exhaustively researched linear narrative history, constructed on over 90 interviews from which Lewis traces keen portraits of numerous members; AACM archival records; encyclopedic citations from contemporaneous literature, both from American and European sources; and vividly recounted personal experience.

Furthermore, Lewis contextualizes the musical production of AACM members—a short list of "first-wavers" includes such late 20th-century innovators as Muhal Richard Abrams, who stamped his character on the principles by which the AACM would operate; the founding members of the Art Ensemble of Chicago (Roscoe Mitchell, Joseph Jarman, Lester Bowie, Malachi Favors, and Don Moye); Anthony Braxton, Leo Smith, Leroy Jenkins, Henry Threadgil, Amina Claudine Myers, and John Stubblefield—within both the broader spectrum of experimental activity and the critical theory that surrounded it, expressing complex concepts with rigorous clarity and elegant prose.

Read both parts of the interview on the Jazz.com website, or for more about the book read this excerpt.

Archived in Black Studies | Chicago | History | Music | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Hecht was a reporter, a newspaper man in America's hottest crime city during American journalism's golden age." So begins Richard Rayner's review of the University of Chicago Press's republication of Ben Hecht's writing for the Chicago Daily News in A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago.

Though he is perhaps best known for his work in Hollywood as a screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, and novelist, Ben Hecht began his career on the gritty streets of Chicago, chronicling the city as a reporter with a knack for penetrating through the city's layers of dust and ice to capture a rarely seen vision of the life it contained, as Rayner writes:

"I have lived in other cities but been inside only one," Hecht said, and 1,001 Afternoons in Chicago, originally published in 1922 and recently re-issued in a gorgeous paperback facsimile of the first edition, records that intimacy.

"I ran everywhere in the city like a fly buzzing in the works of a clock," Hecht notes. He haunted "streets, studios, whore houses, police stations, courtrooms, theater stages, jails, saloons, slums, mad houses, fires, murders, banquets, and bookshops." He earned his early glamour as a brash poet of Chicago's underbelly.

And indeed from the story of a judge "trying to winkle out the story of a young prostitute on the stand," to the dark ruminations of an escaped convict, to the captains of industry, to immigrant day laborers, in 1,001 Afternoons in Chicago Hecht captures 1920s Chicago in all its furor, intensity, and absurdity.

Read Rayner's full review on the LA Times website.

Archived in Chicago | Literature | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As nearly everybody knows, or should know, the Second City is responsible for producing some of the best comedic talent of the last fifty years—Martin Short, Jim Belushi, Tina Fey—the list is quite long. But the story of how the Second City became the number one source for great comedy, (and the University of Chicago's not so small role in its rise to fame), is perhaps less well known.

As this excerpt from Stephen E. Kercher's Revel with a Cause: Liberal Satire in Postwar America relates, it was in the mid-50's that, David Shepherd, Paul Sills, and Eugene Troobnic formed the Compass Players—an improvisational comedy troupe consisting of "alumni, dropouts and hangers-on from the University of Chicago," several of whose members would go on to form the venerable Second City in 1959.

But even though stardom didn't strike until the Second City, it was the Compass Players who established the improvisational style, and foundational principles upon which the fame of its successor relied. Expanding on the chapters of Kercher's book touching on the Players, Janet Coleman's The Compass: The Improvisational Theatre that Revolutionized American Comedy provides the definitive account of this phenomena and how the rag-tag comedy troupe from the U of C gave birth to a new form of improvisational comedy, and a radically new kind of comedian.

It's always nice to hear about all the home grown talent we've got here in the Windy City, let alone Hyde Park, so after you've made your way down to the Second City this weekend to catch some of the star-studded shows they've got lined up for their 50th anniversary celebration, grab a copy of The Compass to find out how it all began.

Archived in Chicago | Commentary | Film and Media | History
Posted by TXM at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Good news from the world of publishing isn't easy to come by, so a new outlet for Midwestern writers of literary fiction is a welcome development. Thus we tip our collective hats to our good friends at Northern Illinois University Press and their new imprint Switchgrass Books, which debuts with Season of Water and Ice by Michigan writer Donald Lystra and Beautiful Piece by Joseph G. Peterson, who we are pleased to count a colleague here at the Press.

Set somewhere in Chicago during the 1995 Chicago heat wave, Peterson's noirish novel is the gritty, hallucinatory story of a risky relationship and its inevitable, chilling climax. Meanwhile, Lystra's book tracks the life of young Danny DeWitt and his father as they struggle with issues of love and family in rural northern Michigan in the 1950's. Set side by side Switchgrass's inaugural releases represent the rich diversity of the Midwestern literary landscape and the hidden talent lurking there.

To find out more about Switchgrass books navigate to their website or listen to this recent interview with NIU press director Alex Schwartz talking about the new imprint and it's first two releases on Chicago Public Radio's Eight Forty-Eight.

Our warm congratulations.

Archived in Chicago | Commentary | Fiction | Literature
Posted by TXM at 03:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Chicago: A Biography—Dominic Pacyga's engaging new history of the Second City—was featured recently in both the Reader and the Chicago Tribune's Printers Row blog.

The Reader has an interview with Pacyga that ranges from his childhood experiences in the Back of the Yards neighborhood to the persistence of twentieth century paranoia about anarchism. From the interview:

A biography? You're treating Chicago like a person?

This book is an attempt to give an overview of the city's life. So I tried to do what I think a biographer does: he looks at various ups and downs in a person's life, talks about the turning points, and tries to shed light on the person's character.

So it's anecdotal?

It's a history that tells the story of race and ethnicity, technology, economic development, and politics, through various high and low points. If that's anecdotal then I guess so.

Were there any surprises?

Even after teaching the history of Chicago for 30 years, I wasn't aware of the paranoia about anarchism that has been in the city, from the Haymarket on, till about 1968. That struck me. Lucy Parsons, the wife of Albert Parsons, who was hung after the Haymarket affair [in 1886], was still getting blamed for things in the 1920s. She lived till 1941, and every time there was some sort of labor agitation, they looked for Lucy Parsons.

Read the full interview.

The Printers Row blog posted about Pacyga's book with a list of interesting facts from the book.

Did you know: "the section of 26th Street in Chicago's Little Village is the busiest shopping strip in the city outside of North Michigan Avenue. Identified by the gate which stands at the former site of Pilsen Park bearing the words 'Bienvenidos a Little Village' ('Welcome to Little Village'), the district is filled with a variety of independently-owned shops and restaurants."

For more, navigate to the Printer's Row blog.

Also we have gallery of historical photographs from the book.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Chicago
Posted by TXM at 01:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Granta magazine's latest issue is all about our fair city of Chicago, featuring fiction, poetry, literary non-fiction and photography by a number of renown contributors, including Press authors like Nelson Algren, Stuart Dybek, Anne Winters, and Roger Ebert (for the online edition only). Demonstrating the city's role beyond its reputation as "the hog butcher of the world" or the playground of famous gangsters like Al Capone and John Dillinger, Granta's Chicago edition focuses on the city, in acting editor John Freeman's words, "as a microcosm for America" and "a nexus for world culture."

To celebrate the launch of the issue Granta has canvassed some of the best local bookstores and asked them to provide a list of their five favorite books about Chicago. Currently the Granta website is showcasing the selections from 57th Street books. 57th Street's five selections: The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon, Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago by Mike Royko, Division Street: America by Studs Terkel, as well as two recently published by the Press: Neil Harris's The Chicagoan: A Lost Magazine of the Jazz Age, and D. Bradford Hunt's newly released Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing.

With The Chicagoan historian Neil Harris brings the Jazz Age magazine of its title back to life in the pages of his new book which features lavish full-color reproductions of the bi-weekly's art-deco inspired covers and illustrations, as well as reprints of the fascinating editorials and reviews that ran in its pages almost a century ago. And in Blueprint for Disaster Hunt offers a unique perspective on the infamous failure of high rise government housing projects like Cabrini Green and the Robert Taylor Homes that challenges explanations attributing their decline to racial discrimination and real estate interests, arguing instead that Chicago's public housing crisis was a failure of public planning.

See 57th Street Books' list of five "Great Books about Chicago" and find out more about Granta's Chicago issue on the Granta website.

Also on the Press website:

Read an interview with the Neil harris, see a gallery of covers and illustrations from the magazine and sample pages in PDF (7.0Mb) from the book.

Archived in Books for the News | Chicago
Posted by TXM at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Several new reviews of Dominic Pacyga's Chicago: A Biography have popped up on the radar recently, one in the Chicago Sun-Times and another on Drexel University's online magazine The Smart Set. Both focus their attention on Pacyga's book for reversing the usual top-down approach to the telling of Chicago history, letting the stories of ordinary people narrate this "biographical" account of city life. Thomas Frisbie quotes Pacyga in his review for the Sun-Times:

"I try to look at everyday people as much as I can, at people in neighborhoods, how they build their community, how they survive, how they prosper or don't prosper," said Pacyga, who grew up in the Back of the Yards, attended De La Salle Institute and worked at the Union Stockyards when he was in college.

There are sections, for example, on "Ted Swigon’s Back of the Yards" and "Angeline Jackson's neighborhood." Swigon was an altar boy at St. John of God's Church and attended Quigley Preparatory Seminary before transferring to De La Salle. Jackson came from Mississippi to Chicago, eventually moving to Englewood.

"[Jackson's story] tells a lot about how that neighborhood went through racial change and how it went through physical change," Pacyga said. "She soon found herself living over an off-ramp of the Dan Ryan Expy. The Dan Ryan plowed right in front of her house."

And Jessa Crispin writes for The Smart Set:

When professor and Chicago historian Dominic A. Pacyga sat down to start his new history of the city, there was an overwhelming amount of material to work with. He decided not to write a chronological history of the city, something that could take up multiple volumes, but to treat Chicago as if it were a person—hence the title Chicago: A Biography. He focused on what he believes to be Chicago's defining characteristics, rather than its more flashier aspects. Some of the more sensational characters—the sociopaths like Leopold and Loeb, the gangsters like John Dillinger, the bisexual eccentrics like Frank Lloyd Wright—get either a cursory mention or none at all. His attention is taken up by what really does define the city: a fight for fairness for laborers, for the poor, and for children; capitalism and corruption run amok; the work produced and the people who do it.

The full text of both reviews can be found online. Also see a gallery of photographs from the book.

Archived in Chicago | History | Politics and Current Events | Reviews | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For two consecutive nights WTTW's Chicago Tonight has featured interviews with University of Chicago Press authors from our regional list. On Wednesday evening Dominic A. Pacyga was invited on the show to discuss his fascinating new chronicle of our fair city in Chicago: A Biography. A south side native who spent his college years working at the Union Stock Yards, in his new book Pacyga offers a comprehensive catalog of the city's great industrialists, reformers, and politicians, while giving voice to the city's steelyard workers and kill floor operators as well.

And on Thursday, Liam T. A. Ford made an appearance to talk about his account of one of the most prominent of Chicago's landmarks in Soldier Field: A Stadium and Its City. As Ford tells it, the tale of Soldier Field truly is the story of Chicago, filled with political intrigue and civic pride. More than just the home of 'da Bears, Ford's book traces the stadium's multiple roles as both one of the city's most important a cultural centers—drawing crowds of thousands for everything from rodeos and NASCAR races, to Catholic masses, and political rallies—to a bargaining chip for city politicians from the infamous Mayor "Big Bill" Thompson, to Mayor Daley himself, as the stadium played a central (albeit short-lived) role in the city's bid for the 2016 Olympic games.

Check out the videos below or navigate to the Chicago Tonight website to watch.

Also see this gallery of photographs from Pacyga's book.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Chicago | History
Posted by TXM at 02:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As fall beckons with changing leaves and shortening days, one thing is certain: NFL football is back, and Chicagoans everywhere are packing their coolers and grills for a trip to Soldier Field. For decades, the stadium’s signature columns provided an iconic backdrop for the Chicago Bears, but few realize that it has been much more than that. Soldier Field: A Stadium and Its City explores how this amphitheater evolved from a public war memorial into a majestic arena that helped define Chicago.

Chicago Tribune staff writer Liam T. A. Ford led the reporting on the stadium’s 2003 renovation—and simultaneously found himself unearthing a dramatic history. As he tells it, the tale of Soldier Field truly is the story of Chicago, filled with political intrigue and civic pride. Designed by Holabird and Roche, Soldier Field arose through a serendipitous combination of local tax dollars, City Beautiful boosterism, and the machinations of Mayor “Big Bill” Thompson. The result was a stadium that stood at the center of Chicago’s political, cultural, and sporting life for nearly sixty years, long before the arrival of Walter Payton and William “the Refrigerator” Perry.

Ford describes it all in the voice of a seasoned reporter: the high school football games, track and field contests, rodeos, and even NASCAR races. Photographs, including many from the Chicago Park District’s extensive collections, capture remarkable scenes of the swelling crowds at ethnic festivals, Catholic masses, and political rallies. This book will remind readers that Soldier Field hosted such luminaries as Billy Graham and Martin Luther King Jr., Judy Garland and Johnny Cash—as well as the Grateful Dead’s final show.

Now part of the city’s bid for the 2016 Olympic Games, Chicago’s stadium on the lake continues to make dramatic history. Soldier Field captures this history in the making and will captivate armchair historians and sports fans alike.

Read the press release.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Chicago | History | Politics and Current Events | Press Releases
Posted by TXM at 02:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

President Barack Obama announced this morning that he is heading to Copenhagen later this week to put in the good word to the International Olympic Committee for his hometown of Chicago, which is competing with Rio, Madrid, and Tokyo to host the 2016 summer games. Meanwhile, Chicago is counting down to the announcement on Friday, which is expected at around 11:30 local time.

It's an exciting week in the Windy City, as the Chicago 2016 bid committee wraps up years of campaigning (which included, as of late, appealing to morning commuters on CTA buses). But no matter what happens Friday, Chicago is undoubtedly a world-class city that deserves the attention and affection of the global community. So, in a last minute appeal to the IOC (who we are sure are loyal readers of The Chicago Blog), the Press presents a reading list that extols Chicago's many virtues. Let friendship shine!

Chicago's motto is "Urbus en Horto," or "City in a Garden." And indeed, modern Chicago more than lives up to its name with an extensive park and beach system (covering more than 7,300 acres). To begin, any city naturalist would do well to check out Sally A. Kitt Chappell's Chicago's Urban Nature:A Guide to the City's Architecture + Landscape. Packed with maps and recommended tours, and bursting with splendid photos, this is an essential guidebook for day-trippers, lifelong Chicago residents, and professionals in landscape architecture, urbanism, and design.

From there, we recommend taking a tour with naturalist Joel Greenberg. His A Natural History of the Chicago Region integrates historical anecdotes and episodes straight from the words of early settlers and naturalists with current scientific information, placing the natural history of the region in a human context, showing how it affects our everyday existence in even the most urbanized landscape of Chicago. (For a more irreverent take on urban nature, check out Jerry Sullivan's Hunting for Frogs on Elston, and Other Tales from Field & Street. And for a more geographical perspective, we recommend John C Hudson's Chicago: A Geography of the City and Its Region.)

If it wins the games, Chicago will be constructing many new stadiums. But in the Chicago River, the city has a built-in venue for rowing and other water sports. David M. Solzman's The Chicago River: An Illustrated History and Guide to the River and Its Waterways, Second Edition is an encyclopedic work—at once guidebook and history—that explores the river's physical character and natural history.

The Windy City is home to some of the country's—and world's—most iconic structures. A site of pilgrimage for many a football fan, Soldier Field is actually much more than a venue for gridiron grudge matches. Liam T. A. Ford explores the landmark's origins and other uses in Soldier Field: A Stadium and Its City, recounting how this amphitheater evolved from a public war memorial into a majestic arena that helped define Chicago.

The Chicago Tribune is one of the city's two dailies, but its headquarters on North Michigan Avenue stands tallest as one of the most unusual buildings in town. The story of how it came to be is recounted in Katherine Solomonson's The Chicago Tribune Tower Competition: Skyscraper Design and Cultural Change in the 1920s. In 1922, the Chicago Tribune sponsored an international competition to design its new corporate headquarters. Both a serious design contest and a brilliant publicity stunt, the competition received worldwide attention for the hundreds of submissions—from the sublime to the ridiculous—it garnered. In this lavishly illustrated book, Solomonson tells the fascinating story of the competition, the diverse architectural designs it attracted, and its lasting impact.

Chicago is home to many celebrated structures, and Franz Schulze and Kevin Harrington's Chicago's Famous Buildings catalogs all of the city's architectural riches. From city's classical legacy of Adler, Sullivan, Burnham, Root, Wright, and Mies van der Rohe to the massive reconstruction of Grant Park around Frank Gehry's Music Pavilion, Schulze and Harrington cover it all, and with a glossary of architectural terms, an extensive index, and more than two hundred new photographs of both old and new buildings, it's comprehensive and illustrative.

Speaking of Grant Park's restoration, Millennium Park was at the center of those efforts, and the resulting public space has quickly become one of the city's newest and most beloved treasures. Born out of civic idealism, raised in political controversy, and maturing into a symbol of the new Chicago, Millennium Park is truly a twenty-first-century landmark, and it now has the history it deserves in Timothy J. Gilfoyle's Millennium Park: Creating a Chicago Landmark. Part park, part outdoor art museum, part cultural center, and part performance space, Millennium Park is now an unprecedented combination of distinctive architecture, monumental sculpture, and innovative landscaping.

This city is many things to many people, but to Dominic A. Pacyga it is simply home. Chicago: A Biography is a magisterial account that both considers the famous—from Al Capone and Jane Addams to Mayor Richard J. Daley and President Barack Obama—to the not-so-famous—city's steelyard workers and kill floor operators—and maps the neighborhoods distinguished not by Louis Sullivan masterworks, but by bungalows and corner taverns. Filled with the city's one-of-a-kind characters and all of its defining moments, Chicago: A Biography is as big and boisterous as its namesake—and as ambitious as the men and women who built it.

For an authoritative account of the city, its myths and legends, look no further than the exhaustive Encyclopedia of Chicago. The definitive historical reference on metropolitan Chicago, the Encyclopedia brings together hundreds of historians, journalists, and experts on everything from airlines to Zoroastrians to explore all aspects of the rich world of Chicagoland, from its geological prehistory to the present. (And for more about the city's 230 very different neighborhoods and suburbs, check out Chicago Neighborhoods and Suburbs: A Historical Guide.)

No matter the IOC's decision Friday, Chicago will long prosper as a beacon of life, light, and culture on the prairie. It this continuum—the past, present, and future—that our final two books address. Sometimes it takes an outsider to capture the essence of an individual place. Bessie Louise Pierce's As Others See Chicago: Impressions of Visitors, 1673-1933 collects writings culled from over a thousand men and women who visited the city and commented on the best and worst it had to offer, from the skyscrapers to the stockyards. Taking us back to a time when Chicago was "more astonishing than the wildest visions of the most vagrant imaginations," As Others See Chicago offers an enthralling portrait of an enduring American metropolis.

And finally, Elmer W. Johnson peers into the city's future with Chicago Metropolis 2020: The Chicago Plan for the Twenty-First Century. A guide for those in all spheres of influence who are working to make cities economically and socially vigorous while addressing the greatest problems modern metropolises face, Chicago Metropolis 2020 addresses all facets of urban life, from public education to suburban sprawl, from transportation to social and economic segregation, with the expressed goal of continuing Chicago's tradition of renewal and foresight. An ambitious and necessary plan for a major city at the turn of the century, it aims at nothing less than economic vibrancy, quality of life, and equity of opportunity.

This list is by no means exhaustive, so check out our entire catalog of Chicago-related titles. Undoubtedly the IOC's decision, whatever it is, will factor in a future book about our fair city. So watch this space for exciting developments!

Archived in Books for the News | Chicago
Posted by at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This week's Chicago Reader has an excellent piece on the failure of Chicago's infamous housing projects and D. Bradford Hunt's new book on the subject Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing. Hunt offers a fresh and insightful look at why the highrise buildings of the Chicago Housing Authority became dilapidated post-apocalyptic wastelands that are now largely demolished. The Reader's Deanna Isaacs writes:

Amid all the unemployment, poverty, and broken families, the institutional racism, political corruption, and bureaucratic incompetence, Hunt believes he's found a relatively simple answer to the question of what went wrong with public housing in Chicago: too many kids. Taking into account all the other influences, he says, that was the single most important factor. The decisions that put multibedroom apartments filled with youngsters into hard-to-access towers were the CHA's blueprint for disaster.

Hunt wants to make it clear that he doesn't blame "families for having lots of kids, or single mothers. The tenants are the victims here," he says. "They wanted what everyone wants: building maintenance, security, and decent schools for their kids—and they fought to make the buildings work." The devil is in "the policy choices." The projects became ungovernable because there weren't enough adults, he says. "This concentration of people under 21 years old was unprecedented in the urban experience."

Hunt argues that these misguided policy decisions—made on both the federal and municipal levels—engendered disorder that pushed out the working class and, consequently, the rents needed to maintain the buildings. The resulting combination of fiscal crisis, managerial incompetence, and social unrest plunged the CHA into a social quagmire in which it still struggles.

To find out more about Hunt's take on the failure of the Chicago projects pick up a copy of this week's Reader or find the article online here.

Archived in Books for the News | Chicago | History | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 01:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Football fans nationwide know Soldier Field as the home of the Chicago Bears—where a last-minute field goal defeated the defending champion Pittsburgh Steelers yesterday. But as Liam T. A. Ford's book, Soldier Field: A Stadium and Its City, reminds us, the Bears are latecomers to Soldier Field. For more than half a century before football became the stadium's mainstay, it played host to everything from a worldwide gathering of Catholics, to heavyweight prizefights, and even rodeos—all while playing a pivotal role in the careers of some of Chicago's biggest political bosses as well.

As columnist John Kass notes in a recent article in yesterday's Chicago Tribune, many big names in Chicago politics—Mayor "Big Bill" Thompson and Edward Kelly to name a few—were intimately tied up in the stadium's construction and use as they pushed for the "great public works" that allowed them "to control gargantuan budgets and cement their power."

Drawing an analogy to the city's recent bid for the 2016 Olympic games Kass asks, "Does any of this have the ring of current events?"

As the day for the IOC's decision draws nearer, and debates about the public payoff of the games get louder, as Kass points out, Ford's new book offers some essential insights on the Chicago of today through a revealing look at the past of one of its great civic works.

To find out more read John Kass's article on the Chicago Tribune website.

Archived in Books for the News | Chicago | History
Posted by TXM at 01:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In his book A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music George E. Lewis, the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music at Columbia University, has produced the definitive history of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. Based in Chicago and counting among its members musicians like Anthony Braxton and Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith, the AACM emerged in the '60s as one of the most influential organizations in the history of North American avant-garde music and art. Since then it has become one of Chicago's premier outlets for the edgier side of jazz and has risen to international renown spawning groups like the globe-trotting Art Ensemble of Chicago.

And to this day, largely due to the AACM and its mission to carve out a space in the midst of Chicago's industrial landscape for musical creativity and experimentation, Chicago's avant-garde jazz scene continues to thrive. This Friday you can head on down to the Chicago Jazz Festival at the Petrillo Music Shell to check out the Trio featuring Muhal Richard Abrams and Roscoe Mitchell—both founding AACM members—alongside George Lewis himself on trombone. The Reader's Bill Meyer writes, "putting such uncompromising music on the big stage is a gutsy move by the Jazz Institute, but this may turn out to be the most rewarding set of the festival."

In the meantime, bone up on the history of the jazz in Chicago and all the Great Black Music the AACM helped produce with George E. Lewis's A Power Stronger Than Itself.

Read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Black Studies | Books for the News | Chicago | History | Music
Posted by TXM at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Leo "the Lip" Durocher began his five-decade career inauspiciously, riding the bench for the powerhouse 1928 Yankees, hitting so poorly that Babe Ruth nicknamed him "the All-American Out." But soon Durocher—who would become infamous for his cantankerousness, fighting moxie, and will to win—hit his stride taking the 1934 World Series with the "Gashouse Gang" Cardinals, turning the Brooklyn Dodgers around as player-manager five years later, and managing the New York Giants to their 1951 pennant win. But as Joe Distelheim notes in a recent review of Durocher's autobiography, Nice Guys Finish Last, not even "the Lip" could "swagger and tough talk" his way around The Curse of the Billy Goat. Distelheim writes:

Odds are good, dear reader, that I already was following the Cubs when your mother was born, so you'll understand that I took particular interest in the Chicago part of the chronology. Durocher had an easy act to follow; he took over in 1966 after a particularly fallow period even for the Cubs of that era. They were coming off an eighth-place finish and a failed five-year experiment with a "college of coaches" running things instead of a manager.

In the book, Durocher doesn't omit the oft-told story: He declared that the Cubs weren't an eighth-place team. Right. His first year, they finished 10th.

This was not a team without talent. It included future Hall of Famers Ernie Banks, Billy Williams and Fergie Jenkins (plus Durocher himself) and Hall shoulda-been Ron Santo. The trouble with the Cubs, though, Durocher writes, was all those home run hitters. In his view, Banks was too old, too hobbled, too admired by sports writers. Santo was too slow, too mouthy, too prone to fail in the clutch.

Banks, however, was and is regarded in Chicago as St. Francis is in Assisi. Santo was and is similarly adored. Durocher got no place with his bosses when he suggested trading them. So, he cooked up a deal for Williams, proposing to send him to the Orioles for a flock of Curt Blefarys. That didn't fly, either.

Even though burdened with these mediocrities, by Year Two of Durocher the Cubs were in the first division, primed for the 1969 pennant race that would become legendary for both the Collapsing Cubs and the Miracle Mets.

An entertaining account of the career of a man who presided over some of the most exciting wins, and disappointing losses of the 20th century, Leo Durocher's Nice Guys Finish Last brings the personalities and play-by-play of baseball's greatest era to vivid life.

For more read Distelheim's review in The Hard Ball Times or see another recent review of the book published in last week's Beachwood Reporter.

"Imagine getting behind-the-scenes reports from someone who absolutely doesn't care about stepping on toes. That's Nice Guys Finish Last." —Rick Kaempfer, Beachwood Reporter

Also read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Biography | Chicago | History | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's that time of year again and the Chicago Jazz Festival is right around the corner. While Chicago's jazz scene is active year-round (check one of these calendars for some upcoming shows) the festival offers audiences a unique opportunity to see some of the best local talent playing together with some of the international stars of jazz. And whether performing hard-bop improvisations over standard tunes, or completely unrehearsed avant-garde jam sessions, Chicago jazz masters like Mwata Bowden or soon to be octogenarian Fred Anderson always make it seem easy, sparking awe in those of us who still remember struggling through "Basic Basie" in junior high band class. So how do they do it?

In Robert R. Faulkner and Howard S. Becker's new book "Do You Know … ?" the authors—both jazz musicians with decades of experience performing—present the view from the bandstand, revealing the array of skills necessary for working musicians to do their jobs. While learning songs from sheet music or by ear helps, the jobbing musician's lexicon is dauntingly massive: hundreds of thousands of tunes from jazz classics and pop standards to more exotic fare. Since it is impossible for anyone to memorize all of these songs, Faulkner and Becker show that musicians collectively negotiate and improvise their way to a successful performance. Players must explore each others' areas of expertise, develop an ability to fake their way through unfamiliar territory, and respond to the unpredictable demands of their audience—whether an unexpected gang of polka fanatics or a tipsy father of the bride with an obscure favorite song.

"Do You Know … ?" dishes out entertaining stories and sharp insights drawn from the authors' own experiences and observations as well as interviews with a range of musicians. Faulkner and Becker's vivid, detailed portrait of the musician at work holds valuable lessons for anyone who has to think on the spot or under a spotlight.

Read an excerpt from the book.

Also check out some of these other related books on jazz and jazz in Chicago:

A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music

The Shadow and the Act: Black Intellectual Practice, Jazz Improvisation, and Philosophical Pragmatism

Come In and Hear the Truth: Jazz and Race on 52nd Street

Subversive Sounds: Race and the Birth of Jazz in New Orleans

Archived in Chicago | Commentary | Music | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In a New York Times op-ed on the blight that has infected tomato crops across the Northeast, chef Dan Barber opines that the disease spread more quickly than usual this year via a proliferation of home gardens. According to the National Gardening Association report Barber cites, 43 million households planned a backyard garden or put a stake in a share of a community garden in 2009, up from 36 million in 2008.

A look at the report reveals that more than a quarter of those 43 million households garden in the Midwest (and some of them, it's fun to look out our windows and observe, do so next door to our UCP offices). These local gardeners are inheritors of a long Chicago tradition, the history of which Cathy Jean Maloney narrates in Chicago Gardens.

Evoking the world of nineteenth-century Chicago vegetable gardening, Maloney recalls an article from the 1868 Prairie Farmers Annual that aimed to inspire backyard growers. "Did it ever occur to you," the writer wonders, " … that a well kept and properly planted acre in vegetables would make one-half the living of your family, which, with the product of your fruit garden adjoining, would render you happy and contented, and ward off dullness and disease, produced, perhaps, by a too liberal use of hog and hominy?"

If what Barber terms "the explosion of home gardeners" is any indication, Americans a century and a half later are having (blight aside) similar realizations.

The exhibition inspired by Maloney's book underscores this link between gardens past and present. This is the last week to visit the Chicago Tourism Center to see highlights including a look at the planning and growth of Millennium Park's Lurie Garden; gardens as explored in the book; public gardens in Chicago parks; community gardens; and photographs of private Chicago gardens and other artwork inspired by nature.

Archived in Chicago
Posted by at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In 1909, with the backing of the Commercial Club of Chicago, architects Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett published one of the most influential documents in the history of urban planning: The Plan of Chicago. Responsible for many of the city's most distinctive features, including its lakefront parks and roadways, the Magnificent Mile, and Navy Pier, the Plan (see a digitized scan of the original Plan at the Encyclopedia of Chicago website) reflected the city elite's response to the massive influx of inhabitants to urban centers during America's industrial age. Even today as the City of Chicago celebrates the centennial of the Plan's publication Burnham's influential document continues to spark debate over how urban planners can strike a balance between providing a livable habitat and one that can sustain industrial and economic growth.

For the centennial celebration, the city—along with the University of Chicago, the Press, the Chicago Public Library, and many other supporting organizations—is offering a chance for Chicagoans to engage that debate first-hand with a number of events and activities this summer and fall—from Zaha Hadid and the UNStudio's architectural exhibits in Millennium Park, "honoring the forward-looking spirit of the Plan of Chicago, to the CPL's One Book, One Chicago series which has, for it's Fall 2009 program, chosen author Carl Smith's fascinating examination of the Burnham Plan in, The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City.

The One Book, One Chicago program will run throughout the months of September and October with a number of readings and talks, hosted by some of the city's most prominent architects and scholars among others, focusing on Smith's book and it's insightful examination of Burnham's Plan. But beginning today and running through the weekend, Carl Smith himself will be hosting daily lectures and guided tours highlighting some of the city's most prominent historic landmarks and their relationship to the Plan. Smith will also give a talk this Sunday at the Arlington Heights Memorial Library and another at the Harold Washington Public Library downtown on October 24th (become a fan of our Plan of Chicago Facebook page for updates on more activities and talks featuring Smith and other UCP authors during the centennial celebrations).

It's impossible to understand where our fair city is headed without understanding its past, so read up on the subject with a copy of Smith's The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City or one of our other fascinating books on Chicago's storied architectural history (scroll down the page a bit) and then get involved with some of the great events for the Plan of Chicago Centennial Celebration.

Read the introduction and first chapter to Smith's book.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Author Events | Chicago | History
Posted by TXM at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Of the stories making today's headlines, the continued technical glitches in the Large Hadron Collider should particularly resonate with some Chicagoans—especially those with PhD's in particle physics. Until the construction of the LHC, the Batavia based Fermilab was home to the world's most powerful supercollider, the Tevatron, so named because of its ability to accelerate particles at energy states of up to one terravolt, (TeV). But since an international consortium of scientists powered up the LHC, which boasts a target operating energy seven times that of the Tevatron, the lab has been preparing to fade into the background as the new collider takes over its position conducting experiments at the cutting edge of particle physics.

But since 2007 several malfunctions have delayed CERN's first sub-atomic smash-ups, and now, as has been widely reported this morning, another malfunction may set those experiments back even further.

As the New York Times notes, this is obviously bad news for researchers and engineers eager to demonstrate the scientific payoff promised by the 15 year, $9 billion dollar project, but for the folks back at Fermilab, it may mean that the Tevatron gets to stay online for a little while longer as scientists whose work doesn't require the full capacity of the LHC return to Batavia during the interim for some good old 1 TeV particle-smashing.

And what better to enhance the experience of Fermilab's return to center-stage, than Lillian Hoddeson, Adrienne W. Kolb, and Catherine Westfall's fascinating historical account of the labs in Fermilab: Physics, the Frontier, and Megascience. Recalling a time when thick glasses and pocket protectors were all the rage and names like Robert R. Wilson and Leon M. Lederman rang throughout the accelerator tunnels, Fermilab takes readers on a fascinating journey through the history of the labs, with a special focus on its early role in the rise of "megascience,"—the collaborative struggle to conduct large-scale international experiments—in the context of the Cold War. Delivering a detailed account of the growth of the modern research laboratory and capturing the drama of human exploration at the cutting edge of science, Fermilab takes an illuminating look at science's past, and perhaps its future as well as scientists return to the labs, granting the accelerator another chance at isolating a Higgs boson, or perhaps shedding some light on the nature of dark matter before the LHC takes over the spotlight—eventually.

For more info see this special website for the book.

Also, for a fascinating look at the life and career of the lab's namesake, who's work also helped set the stage for the research performed there, see this excerpt from Fermi Remembered, edited by James W. Cronin.

Archived in Books for the News | Chicago | History and Philosophy of Science | Mathematics and Physics
Posted by TXM at 01:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The City of Chicago is celebrating the five-year anniversary of Millennium Park this week with a series of free outdoor events hosted at the park.

The past five years, though, represent only a tiny fraction of the history of the landmark. And, in Millennium Park, Timothy Gilfoyle tells that story from the beginning, when the site of the park was part of Lake Michigan. To do so, he studied the history of downtown; spent years with the planners, artists, and public officials behind Millennium Park; documented it at every stage of its construction; and traced the skeins of financing through municipal government, global corporations, private foundations, and wealthy civic leaders. As the Chicago Sun-Times observed when the book appeared, "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, including Mayor Richard M. Daley, fund-raiser John H. Bryan and his network of deep-pocket private donors, and architects Frank Gehry and Adrian Smith, among others.… This high-stakes game of push-and-pull forms the dramatic core of historian Timothy J. Gilfoyle's absorbing and lavishly illustrated Millennium Park."

The tribute this lovely book pays to the park will last for many, many birthdays. But our Trivia Quiz based on the book will only be fun before you read Millennium Park and learn all of the answers yourself!

Archived in Art and Architecture | Books for the News | Chicago | Commentary | History
Posted by at 01:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Chicago Public Library has just announced that Carl Smith's The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City has been selected for its One Book, One Chicago program starting this Fall. According to the CPL website the "One Book, One Chicago encourages all Chicagoans to read the same book at the same time, offering events, discussions, exhibits and more to enhance the experience." And what better topic to bring together our diverse city than the fascinating story of how it all began?

Arguably the most influential document in the history of 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, including its lakefront parks and roadways, the Magnificent Mile, and Navy Pier. And as Carl Smith's fascinating history points out, the Plan continues to influence debates, even a century after its publication, about how to create a vibrant and habitable urban environment.

Beginning this August, we'll be blogging here, and at our Plan of Chicago Facebook page to keep you updated on all the forthcoming One Book, One Chicago events and discussions. You can also find out more about the program at the Chicago Public Library website.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Books for the News | Chicago | History
Posted by TXM at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Humboldt Park native Michael Mann's new film Public Enemies, which portrays the life and death of one of the Chicago's most notorious criminals, John Dillinger, premiers in theaters this weekend. And in all likelihood, similar to last year's summer blockbuster Batman, you can be sure that thousands of Chicagoans, eager to see their city—or at least bits and pieces of their city—up on the big screen will be packing the theaters.

In light of such predictable crowds most reasonable people will choose to pass on Public Enemies in favor of some more edifying cultural experience this Fourth of July weekend. But, as David E. Ruth's Inventing the Public Enemy: The Gangster in American Culture, 1918-1934 demonstrates, with the right frame of mind—and the right book—Public Enemies might be as edifying as it gets. In Inventing the Public Enemy Ruth scrutinizes innumerable newspaper and magazine articles, scores of novels, and hundreds of Hollywood movies, to show how the media's "gangsters" are less a reflection of reality than a projection created from Americans' values, concerns, and ideas about what sells.

Ruth takes us through a media landscape filled with efficient criminal executives demonstrating the multifarious uses of organization; dapper, big-spending gangsters highlighting the promises and perils of an emerging consumer society; and gunmen and molls guiding an uncertain public through the shifting terrain of modern gender roles. In this fascinating study, Ruth reveals how the public enemy provides a far-ranging and insightful critique of modern culture.

Read more about the book here.

Archived in Books for the News | Chicago | History
Posted by TXM at 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A new exhibit at the Chicago Tourism Center showcasing some of Chicago's most gorgeous gardens is currently on display from June 17-August 16. According to the Chicago Tourism Center website, the exhibit highlights the planning and growth of Millennium Park's Lurie Garden; public gardens in Chicago parks; community gardens; garden inspired photography and artwork, as well as gardens as explored in Cathy Jean Maloney's, Chicago Gardens: The Early History.

Demonstrating how Chicago earned the sobriquet, Urbs in Horto, in Chicago Gardens Maloney draws on decades of researching the city's horticultural heritage to reveal the unusual history of Chicago's first gardens. Challenged by the region's clay soil, harsh winters, and fierce winds, Maloney shows how innovative horticulturalists found both pragmatic and aesthetic uses for many of the area's hardy native species. This same creative spirit thrived in the city's local fruit and vegetable markets, encouraging the growth of what would become the nation's produce hub. And her vibrant depictions of Chicagoans like "Bouquet Mary," a flower peddler who built a greenhouse empire, add charming anecdotal evidence to her argument—that Chicago's garden history rivals that of New York or London and ensures its status as a world-class capital of horticultural innovation.

With exquisite archival photographs, prints, and postcards, as well as field guide descriptions of living legacy gardens for today's visitors, Chicago Gardens will delight green-thumbs from all parts of the world.

Find out more about the book on our website including these extracts about five historic Chicago gardens, then plan your trip to see the exhibit at the Chicago Tourism Center, 72 E. Randolph Street 10 am - 6 pm, through August 16.

Archived in Author Events | Chicago | History
Posted by TXM at 01:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The City of Chicago's annual Great Chicago Places & Spaces festival takes place in May, featuring "an incredible line-up of free tours, events and activities downtown and at community sites throughout Chicago." For the second year the festival includes our Conversations Within Communities reading series featuring Press authors Cathy J. Maloney, Will Dunne, Ann Durkin Keating, and Joel Greenberg.

Tomorrow (Friday) at 12:15 pm at the Chicago Cultural Center and again at 6:30 pm at Second City, Will Dunne will speak about his new book The Dramatic Writer's Companion: Tools to Develop Characters, Cause Scenes, and Build Stories—a handbook to script writing that draws on the author's own extensive experience as a world renown playwright and teacher, having led over fifteen hundred workshops through his San Francisco program, and authored such plays as How I Became an Interesting Person and Hotel Desperado. Dunne is resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists.

Other upcoming readings will feature Anne Durkin Keating, speaking about her new book Chicago Neighborhoods and Suburbs: A Historical Guide on May 8, and Joel Greenberg author of Of Prairie, Woods, and Water: Two Centuries of Chicago Nature Writing on the 15th.

For more information see our author events listings. Also check out some of the other free Great Chicago Places & Spaces tours and events happening throughout the month of May; a full listing is on the City of Chicago office of tourism website.

Archived in Author Events | Chicago
Posted by TXM at 02:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In 1969, the Chicago Seven were charged with intent to “incite, organize, promote, and encourage” antiwar riots during the Democratic National Convention. The Chicago Conspiracy Trial is an electrifying account of the months-long trial that commanded the attention of a divided nation. John Schultz, on assignment for the Evergreen Review, witnessed the whole trial, from the jury selection to the aftermath of the verdict. His vivid account exposes the raw emotions and judicial corruption that came to define one of the most significant legal events in American history.

“A beautiful, compelling, tear-jerking, mind-boggling book.” —William Burroughs

“A probe into the American conscience.” —David Graber, Los Angeles Times

Read the press release or read an excerpt.

Archived in Chicago | History | Politics and Current Events | Press Releases
Posted by TXM at 09:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Anthropologist Ruth Fredman Cernea, the author of many books on Jewish culture and the former international director of publications and resources at the Hillel Foundations, died last week of pancreatic cancer at the age of 74. In an obituary that ran yesterday, the Washington Post noted that

Dr. Cernea dedicated her scholarly career to the study and interpretation of Jewish culture and symbols. Her books included The Passover Seder (1992), an anthropological analysis of the Passover holiday and ritual; and Cosmopolitans at Home: The Sephardic Jews of Washington, D.C. (1982), the product of five years of research among Jewish immigrants from North Africa living in Washington.

The Great Latke Hamantash Debate (2006) is a collection of "scholarly" presentations on behalf of the latke, the potato pancake traditionally served during Hanukkah, and the hamantasch, the triangular filled sweet pastry associated with Purim.

The annual event grew out of a street corner debate one night shortly after World War II involving a rabbi, an anthropologist and a historian in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. Unable to reach agreement, the rabbi suggested opening the question to eminences of the nearby University of Chicago.

The mock debate continues, drawing more than a thousand spectators every year to hear renowned scholars, university presidents and Nobel laureates offer exquisitely ridiculous arguments in favor of their favorite kosher holiday cuisine.

"Jews have always been able to use humor to lighten the load," Dr. Cernea told the Chicago Tribune in 2005. "Jewish humor is not silly, but it is absurd absurdity. It is the opposite of deep seriousness. In Jewish thought absurdity and humor is particularly an antidote to seriousness.… It could only happen at a place that is deeply serious."

We are proud to have published The Great Latke-Hamantash Debate (see excerpts). But we remain heavy-hearted at the absence this Passover of a such a great scholar and author.

Archived in Chicago
Posted by at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In 1926 a new magazine graced Chicago newsstands. With its pages filled with witty cartoons, profiles of local personalities, and a whole range of incisive articles, The Chicagoan was a hit, on par with its east coast counterpart The New Yorker, which it was clearly an attempt to emulate. Yet while the New Yorker would grow to achieve a national readership, after only nine years The Chicagoan was defunct and forgotten—that is, until its serendipitous re-discovery in the stacks of the Regenstein Library by University of Chicago Professor of History Neil Harris. Now, Harris has brought the magazine back into the spotlight with The Chicagoan: A Lost Magazine of the Jazz Age—a collection of covers, cartoons, editorials, reviews, and features from the magazine.

Although the book overflows with a variety of historic material from one of the most fascinating eras in the city's history, perhaps the most interest has been generated by its lavish reproductions of the magazine's Art Deco covers and illustrations. We've received more than a few requests for poster-sized prints of the book's art, and recently the Chicago Art Deco Society Magazine even ran a feature article—written by one of the book's contributor's, Teri Edelstein—that focuses on the magazine from the perspective of Art Deco design. In her article Edelstein writes:

The Art Deco style permeated the entire magazine, not only for obvious subjects. Football players, dandies, golfers, and bathing beauties all succumbed to the colorful, abstracting, geometricizing treatments of Arthur Hugh Ruddy in a series of covers. The smoke from the cigarette of a blasé flapper bifurcates a black sky in Nightscape of September 24, 1927, by William Cotant, as she blankly regards a wall of buildings from the Blackstone Hotel to the tower of Montgomery Ward which stretch in orange and yellow cubes. Inflected by Parisian style, the angular Chicagoans of Mervin Gunderson vainly try to retain their hats as the wind even blows over a traffic signal in Boul.Mich from March 10, 1928.

You can check out a gallery of covers and illustrations that includes a few of those Edelstein cites on our website, as well as download these sample pages in PDF (7.0Mb), or read an interview with the author.

And no, we don't currently have any posters for sale, but it sounds like a great idea for any savvy Art Deco entrepreneurs out there!

Archived in Art and Architecture | Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Chicago
Posted by TXM at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The alchemist's quest to transform base metals into gold lasted over 2500 years beginning with the ancient Egyptians and culminating with eighteenth century European and American alchemists like George Starkey and his apprentice Robert Boyle. As Stephen Heuser writes in a recent article for The Boston Globe: "Centuries of work and scholarship had been plowed into alchemical pursuits, and for what? Countless ruined cauldrons, a long trail of empty mystical symbols, and precisely zero ounces of transmuted gold. As a legacy, alchemy ranks above even fantasy baseball as a great human icon of misspent mental energy." But, Heuser asks, "was it really such a waste?"

In his article Heuser cites the rising number of scholars who would answer that question in the negative—including Press authors Bernard Lightman, Tara Nummedal, William R. Newman, and Lawrence M. Principe—all of whom have joined the ranks of historians, humanists, and philosophers of science that cite alchemy's profound influence on the beginnings of modern chemistry in calling for a reappraisal of its historical significance. Heuser's article continues:

Alchemists, they are finding, can take credit for a long roster of genuine chemical achievements, as well as the techniques that would prove essential to the birth of modern lab science[Robert Boyle is also today widely regarded as one of the founders of modern chemistry]. In alchemists' intricate notes and diagrams, they see the early attempt to codify and hand down experimental knowledge. In the practices of alchemical workshops, they find a masterly refinement of distillation, sublimation, and other techniques still important in modern laboratories.…

Bringing alchemy under the tent of science does more than illuminate a turning point in a distant history, however: It suggests a different way to think about science in our own time. Science might be the most productive tool ever invented for understanding the world, but despite its claims on truth, it is still just that: a tool, and a man-made one. Alchemy is an important reminder that modern science [also] has a context…

Isaac Newton, the first great physicist, reached for alchemy when he tried to formulate a theory of the universe that could account for everything from plant life to gravity. Albert Einstein tried, and failed, to cap his career by formulating a single theory that explained all the universe's forces. And at the cutting edge of modern physics, string theory purports to offer a complete but possibly unprovable explanation of the universe based on 11 dimensions and imperceptibly tiny strings.

Alchemists wouldn't recognize the mathematics behind the theory. But in its grandeur, in its claim to total authority, in its unprovability, they would surely recognize its spirit.

Read the rest of Heuser's article on the Boston Chronicle's website Boston.com. Or click on our author's names above to find our more about their books and the revival of alchemy studies.

Archived in Books for the News | Chicago | History and Philosophy of Science | Politics and Current Events
Posted by TXM at 03:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Comedians Tim Reid and Tom Dreesen, authors of Tim and Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White, were interviewed Wednesday on NPR's News & Notes. In the interview Tim and Tom join host Tony Cox to talk about the trials and tribulations they faced touring the country in the late 60's as the nation's first—and last—interracial comedy duo, as well as some of their more recent experiences touring with their new book. Listen to the archived audio of the interview on the NPR website or see the video on the News & Views blog. We have an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Biography | Chicago
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Anne Durkin Keating, author of Chicago Neighborhoods and Suburbs: A Historical Guide made an appearance recently on WTTW's Chicago Tonight. On the show Durkin joined host Phil Ponce to discuss all things concerning the urban demography and geography of Chicagoland including whether Obama's house is really in Hyde Park, how the Olympics might impact the South Side, and a 149 year old Methodist summer camp in Des Plains.

Check out the archived video online on the WTTW website.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Cartography and Geography | Chicago | History | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 12:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Author Neil Harris, joined Eight Forty-Eight host Richard Steele on this morning's program to discuss how he stumbled upon several issues of the Chicagoan deep in the stacks at the University of Chicago's Regenstein Library and his resurrection of the forgotten 1920's publication in his new coffee table book, The Chicagoan: A Lost Magazine of the Jazz Age.

Listen in on the conversation on the website for Chicago Public Radio's Eight Forty-Eight.

Also read an interview with the author, see a gallery of covers and illustrations from the magazine and sample pages in PDF (7mb) from the book.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Chicago | History
Posted by TXM at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today the University of Chicago homepage features an article and video on Neil Harris's new book, The Chicagoan: A Lost Magazine of the Jazz Age. In the video, Harris discusses how he discovered issues of the Chicagoan in the Regenstein Library and his first impressions of the long-lost magazine. The article by Greg Borzo gives more details and notes how the magazine reflects the University's own prominence "in the city's cultural, political, and social life during the 1920s and '30s." Borzo quotes Harris as he explains:

"Back then, the University of Chicago was a bigger player, relatively speaking, than it is today because there was no University of Illinois-Chicago, and the Catholic universities were not as prominent. Plus, [former Chicago President Robert Maynard] Hutchins was the golden boy, and we had a football team."

As illuminating as the Chicagoan is about socialites and politicians, its deepest value is a record of its creators. "The significance and importance of this glorious publication lies in it contributors," Harris says.

There were a lot of contributors—468 people during one seven-month period, according to a magazine promotion. Harris tracked down the identity of scores of these contributors, and the book includes a chapter with short biographies of more than 80 of them. Most were quite young (and inexpensive) when they worked for the Chicagoan.

A surprising number attended the University, including Richard "Riq" Atwater, co-author of the award-winning Mr. Popper's Penguins; Meyer Levin, the best-selling novelist of the 1956 mystery Compulsion; Robert Pollak, drama and music critic; and Susan Wilbur, author and translator of literary works.…

"The Chicagoan carried within it the imprint of many aspiring talents," Harris wrote in his book. "It is hoped that this anthology will offer them not just a brief reprieve from oblivion but quite possibly a vestibule to new celebrity."

The feature also has a collection of cartoons from the magazine as well as links to our own interview with Harris and gallery of covers and illustrations.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Books for the News | Chicago | History
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Okay, so maybe you're not as ambitious as the recent Southern California group that, to celebrate the first day of Hanukkah, made the world's largest latke cooked by a solar oven. For equally delicious but smaller-scale potato pancakes, you might try this delicious recipe culled from The Great Latke-Hamantash Debate. (There's also a hamantashen recipe, if that's the side on which you find yourself in said debate.)

But, of course, the book's main attractions are not the recipes but the performances by members of elite American academies who attack the latke-versus-hamantash question with intellectual panache and an unerring sense of humor, if not chutzpah. This great latke-hamantash debate, occurring every November for the past six decades, brings Nobel laureates, university presidents, and notable scholars together to debate whether the potato pancake or the triangular Purim pastry is in fact the worthier food. What began as an informal gathering at the University of Chicago is now an institution that has been replicated on campuses nationwide.

If you didn't make your local debate this year, you can have a taste of what you missed by reading (or listening to) Ted Cohen's “Consolations of the Latke”—or, of course, by giving yourself a copy for Hannukah.

Archived in Books for the News | Chicago
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Author Neil Harris appeared yesterday evening on WFMT's Critical Thinking with Andrew Patner for the first of two conversations about his new book, The Chicagoan: A Lost Magazine of the Jazz Age. You can catch the second part of the conversation on WFMT next Monday, December 22. But until then, listen to the archived audio from yesterday's show and after each broadcast from the Critical Thinking webpage.

The Windy City's lost counterpart to the New Yorker, the Chicagoan sought to transform the city's reputation for organized crime, political mayhem, and industrial squalor by demonstrating the presence of style and sophistication in the Midwest. But after nine years of publication that straddled the roaring 20s and the Great Depression, the magazine folded and was forgotten. Now, Harris's book, featuring a stunning collection of articles, illustrations, and covers, resurrects the magazine in all its brilliance offering a window into one of the most exciting chapters in the city's history.

Also, read an interview with the author, see a gallery of covers and illustrations from the magazine and sample pages in PDF (7mb) from the book.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Chicago | History
Posted by TXM at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Historian Neil Harris, author of The Chicagoan: A Lost Magazine of the Jazz Age, will speak at the Harold Washington Library Center next Wednesday, December 10.

The Chicagoan ("a book you'll want to own, a coffee-table book nicer and better made than most coffee tables," said Matt Weiland in the NYTBR) will be available for purchase and signing afterward.

The Harold Washington Library Center is at 400 S. State Street in Chicago—right next to the "L" and just a hop, skip, and a jump from commuter train lines. The lecture is in the Cindy Pritzker Auditorium at 6 PM and is free and open to the public. If you're interested in Chicago history, the Jazz Age, or need a gift for somebody who is, Harris's talk is not to be missed!

If you're not in Chicago, you can listen to this interview he did for last week's installment of the Book Show on Australia's ABC National Radio. In the interview, Harris joins host Ramona Koval to discuss how he discovered a set of Chicagoan magazines deep in the stacks of the University of Chicago's Regenstein library, and how the story of the magazine's rise and fall opens a window into one of the most vibrant and fascinating era's in Chicago history.

Also read our interview with the author and see a gallery of covers and illustrations from the magazine.

Archived in Author Events | Chicago
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Last Sunday's New York Times Book Review closes with a noteworthy piece by Matt Weiland on Neil Harris's, The Chicagoan: A Lost Magazine of the Jazz Age. Weiland praises the book for its handsome resurrection of one of Chicago's most stylish publications, offered here for a whole new age to enjoy:

[The Chicagoan] was founded in 1926 by a group of Chicagoans inflamed by the example and success of the New Yorker, which had begun the year before. It was published every two weeks, and before long Time magazine was heralding it for having the "finish and flair worthy of a national publication." But its readership began to decline as the Great Depression set in, its frequency was reduced to monthly, and in 1935 it died a quiet death. Somehow this vibrant magazine was completely forgotten until a few years ago, when the distinguished cultural historian Neil Harris came upon a set of the magazine's run in the library of the University of Chicago. It has now been brought back into print, if not to life, by the University of Chicago Press.

What a marvelous job they have done! This is a book you will want to own, a coffee-table book nicer and better than most coffee tables. The University of Chicago Press has swung for the fences, producing the book to the highest standards—a nearly 400-page oversize volume, designed with care and attentiveness, to period detail and featuring loads of full-color images. It's a pleasure to see the ball sail into the bleachers… Thanks to Neil Harris's serendipitous discovery and the University of Chicago Press's superb effort, The Chicagoan takes its rightful place on the top shelf.

Read the review on the NYT website. We have a gallery of covers and illustrations from the magazine and sample pages in PDF (7mb) from the book.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Chicago | History | Reviews
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The 62nd annual Latke-Hamantash Debate takes place tomorrow evening, November 25, at 7:30 pm at Mandel Hall, 1131 E. 57th Street on the University of Chicago campus. This year the affair takes on something of the flavor of a presidential debate:

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.

Three years ago we published Ruth Fredman Cernea's The Great Latke-Hamantash Debate which collects the best of sixty years of the annual bash, featuring academics of all stripes including a few Nobel laureates. Both the latke aficionado and the hamantash devotee will find much to savor in this collection. Our online feature for the book includes the text and audio of Ted Cohen’s famous 1976 lecture “Consolations of the Latke” as well as recipes for both the immortal pancake and the equally worthy pastry.

Archived in Chicago
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“In all the seven seas and the lands bordering thereon there is probably no name which more quickly calls up thoughts of crime, violence, and wickedness than does that of Chicago.” So wrote journalist R. L. Duffus at the height of the Jazz Age—and he was not alone in that opinion. During those heady days, writers and newspapers nationwide lamented Chicago's utter filth and brutality. For most, the Windy City conjured images of slums, squalor, and social pathology. An industrial Gomorrah that made heroes of corrupt politicians, mob bosses, and murderers, Chicago had a serious image problem.

Enter the Chicagoan. Urbane in aspiration and first published just sixteen months after the first appearance of the New Yorker in 1925, the magazine sought passionately to redeem Chicago's unhappy reputation. In its own words, the popular biweekly claimed to represent “a cultural, civilized, and vibrant” city “which needs make no obeisance to Park Avenue, Mayfair, or the Champs-Elysees.” The University of Chicago Press is proud to publish The Chicagoan: A Lost Magazine of the Jazz Age by noted historian Neil Harris. The book brings this forgotten magazine back to brilliant and vivid life for a new generation of readers to enjoy.

Read the press release.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Chicago | History | Press Releases
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Tim Reid and Tom Dreesen contributed an editorial piece to CNN.com about the effect of Barack Obama's election on racial humor—a topic they are well-qualified to address as evidenced by their book Tim and Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White. In the editorial they touch on the routines they developed forty years ago, using them to illustrate the "challenge and the opportunity that comedy about race faces today."

We figured that if we were going to make comedy out of a black man and a white man sharing the same stage, it would have to be equal-opportunity comedy. Race wasn't the punch line in our routines, it was the vehicle. The aim was to get people to see, and to laugh at, the irony of racial attitudes in America.

And that's the challenge and the opportunity that comedy about race faces today. The presence of the Obama family in the White House means that it can't be business as usual any more.

America, black and white, won't be amused by humor that trades on the old stereotypes of interracial social encounters, impressions and fears. Like it or not, change has come. O.J. is in prison, and a black man is in the White House. Is everybody happy now?

In conjunction with the editorial piece, Reid was interviewed by CNN's D. L. Hughley. Hughley and Reid engage in a comedian-to-comedian dialogue about the changing attitudes towards racial comedy and why there hasn't been another interracial stand-up act since Tim and Tom left the stage back in the 70's.

Since the election Reid and Dreesen have been getting renewed attention. Learn more on the Tim and Tom website and read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Biography | Books for the News | Chicago
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If you're one of the many tourists flocking to Barack Obama's Chicago home, you'll come up against formidable barricades. And touring the rest of what the city has dubbed Presidential Chicago will only take so much time. So, after you're done following in the president-elect's footsteps, why not chart a path of your own?

• Our Guide to Chicago's Murals, divided into easy-to-read geographical sections with useful maps for walking tours, is the perfect companion for tourists or Chicagoans interested in coming to know better this aspect of the city's history.

• Chicago's Famous Buildings get a similarly user-friendly treatment in our leading pocket guide to the architecture that comprises Chicago's breathtaking skyline, its dozens of monuments, and its historic legacy.

• For fairweather travelers, The Chicago River, by veteran river tour guide David Solzman, offers a diverse collection of easy and enjoyable tours for anyone who wants to experience the river by foot, boat, canoe, or car.

• If you don't want to leave Obama territory, The Robie House of Frank Lloyd Wright functions as the perfect companion for a visitor to what may now be the second most famous home in the neighborhood.

• And, finally, the Press is only about a thirty minute walk from that red brick house behind the barricades. So, drop on in:

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Archived in Chicago | Commentary | Politics and Current Events
Posted by at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In 1926 a colorful new magazine appeared on newsstands and in magazine racks across Chicago. The Chicagoan was the Windy City's attempt at an arts and culture magazine to rival the sophistication of the New Yorker, whose first issue was published only months before. But while the New Yorker would grow to reach a national audience, maintaining a wide circulation even in today's anti-print climate, after nine short but exciting years that straddled "prohibition, the depression and the jazz age," the Chicagoan folded and was forgotten—until now. Enter Neil Harris's new book The Chicagoan: A Lost Magazine of the Jazz Age—a fascinating collection of articles, photographs, and illustrations that, as a recent review in the UK's Spectator magazine notes, brings the heyday of the publication—and the city—back to life:

Think quiz. 'A crescent-shaped town, 26 miles by 15, along a great lake. An unchallenged murder record—a splendid university—hobo capital to the country—and the finest of grand opera. Altogether the most zestful spectacle on this earth.' Where are we? In case of doubt, the city's short-lived house magazine spelled out the answer in 48 point type, 'Chi - CA - go.' Actually the emphasis should have been on the Chic, because as demonstrated by this elegant collection of covers, illustrations and stories from the Chicagoan, in its heyday Chicago was the most stylish, exciting and quintessentially American of all the cities that encircle the United States landmass. New York looked over its shoulder to Europe, New Orleans pretended to be French, San Francisco was a rootless amalgam of Spanish mission and Pacific piracy, but Chicago sucked pure Americana out of the corn, cattle and railroads of the mid-West to create a culture that was unique to the continent. Forget Al Capone and the stench of the stockyards, this is where Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman made an art out of jazz, where Frank Lloyd Wright created modern architecture, where skyscrapers, city parks and suburbs were born.

Even the New Yorker itself has published a brief review acknowledging its long-lost counterpart's return to the stage.

Also, see this special website for the book featuring a gallery of sample cover images.

Archived in Chicago | History | Reviews
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The Chronicle of Higher Education's Peter Monaghan has written several interesting articles recently about the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, "a celebrated avant-garde collective that began in the poorest neighborhoods of Chicago in the 1960s," and the subject of George E. Lewis's recent A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music. In both articles Monaghan notes the significance of Lewis's book as the first academic treatment of the AACM and the highly influential experimental music it produced, and ponders the question, put forth in Lewis's book, of why such a groundbreaking group of artists hasn't received more attention by mainstream academics:

In his book, both social history and critical study, Lewis makes a claim that devotees of the AACM have long embraced but that is discomforting some composers and critics: The jazz-related collective, which emerged from black, working-class areas of Chicago in the 1960s, became one of the most significant artistic forces of the 20th century—yet histories of American musical experimentalism almost never say so.…

Lewis cites the historian Jon D. Cruz's observation that criticism of the new music as "just noise" recalled many slave owners' earlier obliviousness to the significations of slave songs. "Similarly," writes Lewis, "the noisy anger of the new musicians seemed strange, surprising, and unfathomable to many critics, along with the idea that blacks might actually have something to be angry about."

As a result, Lewis contends, music historians have failed to acknowledge the influence of the "transgressive new black music" of the AACM and other innovators like Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Cecil Taylor, dispatching them to the ranks of mere jazz oddballs.

Lewis's critique of American avant-gardism is "profoundly important and long overdue," according to a specialist in American and 20th-century music, Amy C. Beal, an associate professor of music at the University of California at Santa Cruz. "Histories of 20th-century music and jazz are racially segregated, and there are various institutional reasons why that happens," she says, "It's time we started examining them."

You can read both Monaghan's pieces —"Thoroughly Modern Music" and "Experimental Music and Academe"—online at the Chronicle.com website.

Also read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Black Studies | Chicago | History | Reviews | Sociology
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Last night, an estimated quarter of a million people (your humble and hopeful correspondent included) gathered in Grant Park to celebrate the election of our nation's 44th president, Barack Obama. While the spotlight undoubtedly shined brightest on the man who will become our first African-American commander-in-chief, the city of Chicago—and its diverse and dedicated citizenry—was also on glorious display. As we bask today in the afterglow of a historic victory and a safe and successful rally (it was, as the Chicago Sun-Times reports today, a "Night for dancing, not trouble, in the streets"), we offer you a reading list for those who couldn't join us on our city's "front lawn."

Though from the air, it may have appeared that all of Grant Park was teeming with revelers last night, a section just north of the camera's view was quiet as a museum after visiting hours--and a museum is just one way to describe the incredible space. In 2004, a nearly 25-acre parcel of northern Grant Park, which was previously occupied by an unused railroad yard and parking lots, was remade into the whimsical and inspiring Millennium Park. Part park, part outdoor art museum, part cultural center, and part performance space, the park is now an unprecedented combination of distinctive architecture, monumental sculpture, and innovative landscaping; it includes structures and works by Frank Gehry, Anish Kapoor, Jaume Plensa, and Kathryn Gustafson, among others. Timothy J. Gilfoyle's 2006 biography of the park Millennium Park: Creating a Chicago Landmark is every bit as breathtaking as its subject: loaded with more than 350 eye-popping photos, it brings the astonishing urban oasis into tactile focus for anyone who wants to travel to Chicago without leaving their favorite reading nook.

Chicago is often described as a city of neighborhoods. In sports, there is a famous schism that pits South Siders against North Siders. But in Grant Park on election night, the divisions that characterize our city melted away and for a glorious few hours we were all simply Chicagoans. After the rally, however, the crowds dispersed to the various corners of the city. If you wondered where everyone came from and where they went home to afterward, look no further than Ann Durkin Keating's new Chicago Neighborhoods and Suburbs: A Historical Guide. With 230 neighborhoods and 77 official community areas, the city of Chicago is an expansive metropolis carved into small hamlets with distinct personalities and persons. Now that the city's residents have gone home from the park, Keating's book will help anyone interested in urban demography and history understand what divides us—and brings us back together again.

When the Obama camp first announced its plan to hold an election night rally in Grant Park, it was heralded as a bold move that would finally exorcise the ghosts of the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the violence that transpired in that space 40 years ago. Frank Kusch's Battleground Chicago: The Police and the 1968 Democratic National Convention revisits that dark chapter in American history.

Finally, for anything not covered in the books above, consider thumbing through the comprehensive Encyclopedia of Chicago. Comprising more than 1,400 entries, the Encyclopedia covers the full range of Chicago's neighborhoods, suburbs, and ethnic groups, as well as the city's cultural institutions, technology and science, architecture, religions, immigration, transportation, business history, labor, music, health and medicine, and hundreds of other topics.

And for more books about Chicago, check out of expansive list of regional titles with national interest.

As president-elect Obama gets to work assembling his administration, we hope you take some time to get to know the city that was so instrumental to his ascent. Chicago, at least last night (though we would argue it always is), was the most exciting place to be in America.

Archived in Chicago | Commentary
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In the early part of the twentieth century H. G. Wells pronounced the city of Chicago "a great industrial desolation" and a "nineteenth century nightmare." Often noted by outsiders only for its slums, squalor, and stockyards, during the twenties and thirties Chicago fought hard to transform its image into one of a sophisticated urban center, struggling for cultural superiority with it's arch rival to the east, and the burgeoning megalopolis in the west. One of the city's weapons in this struggle was a new publication which, in its own words, claimed to represent "a cultural, civilized, and vibrant" city "which needs make no obeisance to Park Avenue, Mayfair, or the Champs Elysees." Urbane in aspiration and first published just sixteen months after the 1925 appearance of the New Yorker, the Chicagoan sought passionately to redeem the Windy City's unhappy reputation by demonstrating the presence of style and sophistication in the Midwest. Nevertheless, for all it's elegance and flair the magazine had a life span of less than a decade, forgotten as the boom years of the Jazz age lapsed into the Great Depression.

Now, as Julia Keller notes in a recent review for the Chicago Tribune, "thanks to the archival detective work of Neil Harris, emeritus professor at the University of Chicago, we can glide our way back to an era when elegance mattered—not only in dress and deportment, but also in sentence and image. In the The Chicagoan: A Lost Magazine of the Jazz Age… a hefty, gorgeous hunk of a book that reproduces one entire issue as well as 149 covers and many articles, a vanished era returns. It comes back in all of its fussy glory, its daffy humor, its gentle insistence that even a city best known for gangsters and stockyards could yearn for beauty and glamor."

Keller continues:

Harris dug out the issues, tracked down the identities of the artists, writers and editors who created them and put the whole enterprise into historical context in the spirited essays that precede each section. With its vivid covers, its book and theater and concert reviews, its whimsical cartoons, and its cheeky profiles, The Chicagoan sought to convey "the personality of its namesake city," Harris writes, billing itself as "the only oracle of smart Chicago.…" It tried to suggest that a city's cultural life was key, that the Midwest wasn't just a holding pen for cows and crooked politicians. The place had style. The place had charm. The place was here to stay—even if The Chicagoan, sadly, wasn't.

See our online gallery for The Chicagoan, including two dozen covers and interior images from the magazine. Read Keller's review on the Chicago Tribune website.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Chicago | History | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 12:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Noting that "cities bear the brunt of the world's financial meltdowns, crime waves, and climate crises in ways national governments never will," Foreign Policy has just unveiled its inaugural Global Cities Index of the "the 60 cities that shape our lives the most." Developed in collaboration with the the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the management consultancy A. T. Kearny, the index ranks Chicago eighth among the world's cities, according to its strengths in areas that include business activity, cultural experience, and political engagement. (Crain's Chicago Business handily sums up the criteria.)

Of course, UCP has chronicled Chicago's significance—globally and locally—for decades. In addition to publishing the first major history of Chicago ever written, we've produced an entire library's worth of books about our hometown's countless angles. From Nelson Algren's prose poem Chicago: City on the Make to Paul D'Amato's photographs of Pilsen and Little Village, from the definitive history of Millennium Park to the definitive history of the AACM, from a guide to Chicago's murals to the story of the Plan of Chicago, our local and regional titles paint an idiosyncratic portrait-in-books of one of the world's most significant cities.

Our newest addition to this growing list, The Chicagoan: A Lost Magazine of the Jazz Age, resurrects a Chicago counterpart to the New Yorker that mysteriously had slipped through the cracks of history and memory. We're so excited about its publication next month that we're offering a preview (PDF) of some of its beautiful pages.

Archived in Books for the News | Chicago
Posted by at 02:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Almost forty years have passed since Tim Reid and Tom Dreesen hit the road as the first integrated comedy team in show business. But now they're back together, traveling across America in support of their new book, Tim and Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White.

Last week they toured the East Coast making appearances everywhere from the Late Show with David Letterman to the Barnes and Noble bookstore in Long Island to talk about their experiences countering the racial unrest of the sixties and seventies—with laughter. Here's some online media from the most recent leg of their tour including their spot on Letterman (below), an interview on Boston's Fox TV, and an article about the duo posted at CNN.com, containing a fascinating slideshow of some of their early stand-up acts with a running commentary by the authors.

Also, read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Biography | Books for the News | Chicago
Posted by TXM at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After a week of radio and TV interviews, public appearances, and book signings in the Windy City, Tim Reid and Tom Dreesen, co-authors with Ron Rapoport of Tim and Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White, are moving on to the Big Apple this week to do it all over again. The comedy duo have events scheduled this week that range from book signings at several local bookstores (see the listings on our author events page) to taping an appearance for tonight's Late Show with David Letterman.

Here'a a wrap-up of some of the Chicago interviews that are available online: Last Wednesday the authors stopped by the WBEZ studios at Navy Pier for an interview with Richard Steele for Chicago Public Radio's Eight-forty Eight. Last week the authors also made several TV appearances including an interview with Janet Davies for ABC7 Chicago, an interview with Bill Zwecker for CBS2's Eye on Chicago, and long interview (with some video from their act) for WTTW's Chicago Tonight.

See the Tim and Tom website and read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Author Events | Biography | Chicago
Posted by TXM at 02:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Monday night at Gibsons Steakhouse, Tim Reid and Tom Dreesen kicked off a whirlwind week of publicity in the town that gave them their start. As a bevy of Chicago notables—including Mayor Richard M. Daley, actor Dennis Farina, restaurateur Richard Melman, and Chicago Bears Tom Thayer and Tim Wrightman—looked on, Tim and Tom recounted performing at Mr. Kelly's, the legendary Chicago nightclub that occupied the spot on Rush Street where Gibsons now stands. Taking turns on the mic, they told of the surprise and anger they encountered from audiences in their early days as a duo; the long, hard road they followed to eventual success as solo performers; and the unbreakable bond they forged in their years as a team. To cheers, toasts—and, of course, laughter—Chicago welcomed Tim and Tom home. (For more about the party check out the latest posting on the official Tim and Tom blog.)

Yesterday during morning drivetime, Tim and Tom were interviewed on WGN Radio's Spike O'Dell Show. Both audio and video are available for that interview. In last Sunday's Chicago Sun-Times, reporter Mike Thomas delivered a nice synopsis of the duo's groundbreaking career. Nodding to a few other Chicago celebrities, Thomas writes that Tim and Tom were “side-splitting social commentators and creators of such characters as Super Spade and the Courageous Caucasian … the Gale Sayers and Brian Piccolo of yuks, the Barack Obama and Joe Biden of politically incorrect humor. Minus the fame and fortune.”

This week Tim and Tom continue to celebrate Tim and Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White with more Chicago events. Tonight they sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during seventh-inning stretch at Wrigley Field, where the Cubs face the Brewers. Thursday at noon they are at the Borders on State Street and at the Borders in Beverly at 7:30 Thursday evening . This Saturday at 2:30 pm they are at Barnes and Noble in Naperville before heading to New York for another leg of the book tour.

For details on these and other events in Chicago and across America head to our author events page. You can also read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Author Events | Biography | Chicago
Posted by TXM at 03:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Though the 2008 presidential election campaign serves to remind all of us that race remains a potent issue in American life, it’s important to realize just how far we’ve come as a nation in a few short decades. Back in the late 1960s, the riots and violence stemming from simmering racial inequities threatened to forever rend American society. And it was at that moment that two young men—one white, one black—took to stages across the country and helped America confront its racial divide … by laughing at it.

The story of America’s first and only interracial comedy team, Tim and Tom presents that turbulent era through the eyes of Tim Reid and Tom Dreesen, two young men who trekked from nightclub to nightclub just looking for a laugh—and hoping to make it big. As they delivered frank (and funny) jokes about race, they met with skepticism, resistance, and even violence, and though they won over audiences night after night, they eventually came to realize that they were simply ahead of their time.

An unforgettable mix of showbiz and social change, humor and history, Tim and Tom resurrects a lost chapter in American comedy.

Read the press release.

Also read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Biography | Chicago | Press Releases
Posted by TXM at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Fall 2008 print edition of the Rain Taxi Review of Books published a positive review of George E. Lewis's new book A Power Stronger than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music. Rain Taxi contributor W. C. Bamberger begins:

Founded in 1965, the AACM … seeks to enable black composers and performers of experimental music to take control of its presentation and recording. For more than forty years the name and acronym have been appearing in the liner notes of recordings by The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Muhal Richard Abrams, and many others, but information about the group has always been rather hazy, a frustration that George E. Lewis's impressive sociological-historical study more than remedies.

Lewis, a trombonist and electronic musician, is also an AACM member and past president, and so brings an insider's perspective to his analysis. He also conducted nearly 100 interviews with musicians and writers and presents their memories and views, some of them clashing, in hopes that "a useful story might be realized out of the many voices heard in this book, the maelstrom of heteroglossia in which we nervously tread water." There is no picket fencing here: Lewis doesn't utilize the high point or famous member system, so many too-little known musicians have their say. This is in part to give credit where credit is due, and to refuse "stars" exclusive rights to the AACM's history.…

Others in his wake will find this a valuable resource, and will also find it difficult to match Lewis for depth and critical insight.

Pick up a copy of the Fall 2008 edition of Rain Taxi to read the review.

Also read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Black Studies | Chicago | History | Music | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 09:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Julia Vitullo-Martin has an interesting review of Derek S. Hyra's new book, The New Urban Renewal: The Economic Transformation of Harlem and Bronzeville, in Sunday's New York Post. In his book Hyra looks at the nation's two most important historic, urban black neighborhoods—New York's Harlem and Chicago's Bronzeville—to explore the shifting dynamics of class and race as these two iconic black communities undergo an unprecedented period of gentrification. From the Post review:

Hyra's most fundamental concern: As these neighborhoods come back economically, what will happen to their poor residents? Hyra notes that both Bronzeville and Harlem are "revitalizing without drastic racial changeover." In the last 10 years, Central Harlem's white population increased to 2% from 1.5%, and the white proportion in Bronzeville increased to 4% from 2.5%.

Yet while Hyra is very worried about the displacement of the poor, he argues that class antagonism is actually important to the redevelopment of formerly impoverished communities. Black middle-class values translate into effective political activity and organizations, including block clubs, planning boards and religiously affiliated community development corporations. The problem, as he sees it, is that the "coming home" of the black middle class will produce a neighborhood in which poor blacks are no longer welcome.

Is he correct? Only time will tell. After all, the new, large, urban black middle class is itself a new phenomenon. How its development will affect the historic neighborhoods it treasures is an open question.

Read the rest of the article on the New York Post website.

Archived in Anthropology | Black Studies | Chicago | History | Politics and Current Events | Reviews | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thirty-five years after the comedy duo of Tim and Tom split up, they are a cover story in their hometown. This week's edition of the Chicago Reader has an extended book excerpt about how Tim and Tom played to the tough crowd that gathered at Club Harlem in Atlantic City back in 1973. The online version of the article has a couple of video snippets, including a Chicago version of the bit featured in the book excerpt.

Tim Reid and Tom Dreesen are the authors of Tim and Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White, the story of the first—and last—interracial comedy team in show biz.

The Reader issue also includes a "Hot Type" piece by Michael Miner about their writing collaborator, Ron Rapoport.

Also see our book trailer on YouTube and an exhaustive listing of Tim and Tom events on our author events page.

Archived in Biography | Books for the News | Chicago
Posted by TXM at 01:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Most of us probably think we know how urban gentrification works: rich young whites move into poor, non-white areas and gobble up cheap real estate, eventually forcing longtime residents to move to more affordable but distant locales. Since the late 1990s, however, a surprising new pattern has emerged as a handful of poverty-stricken black neighborhoods have evolved into residential hotspots boasting high-income housing, destination dining, designer boutiques, and even bed-and-breakfasts—all while managing to stay black.

No two neighborhoods in the country exemplify this trend better than Harlem in New York City and Bronzeville in Chicago. In this groundbreaking book, Derek S. Hyra—a resident of both of these neighborhoods—moves from the streets to city hall to corporate boardrooms, tracing the web of factors at play in the remarkable revitalization of these two historic enclaves.

Read the press release.

Archived in Black Studies | Chicago | History | Politics and Current Events | Press Releases | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 02:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In yesterday's New York Sun Harvard economist Edward Glaeser reviewed Derek Hyra's new book The New Urban Renewal: The Economic Transformation of Harlem and Bronzeville. Hyra's book looks at urban gentrification in two neighborhoods—Chicago's Bronzeville and New York's Harlem—and its impact on various socio-economic groups, revealing a sharp divide between middle-income and less affluent residents in benefiting from such transformations. As Glaeser explains:

A dynamic private sector… has made New York and Chicago increasingly prosperous places over the last 15 years.… As these cities have done well, demand for space has exploded. We see rising demand in the skyrocketing price of space in Manhattan and in the cranes that seem to be a permanent feature of Chicago's Lake Shore Drive skyline. Booming demand has also increased the desire among middle-class people to move to formerly poor areas such as Harlem and Bronzeville: Upwardly mobile urbanites, priced out of more expensive areas, have become urban pioneers "gentrifying" areas that used to be poor. But just as the real pioneers weren't always such a blessing for the American Indians on the frontier, gentrifiers aren't always a boon for the established residents of an area.…

Continue reading the article on the New York Sun website.

Archived in Black Studies | Chicago | Economics | Politics and Current Events | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The comedic duo of Tim Reid and Tom Dreesen bear the unique distinction of having been the first—and only—interracial comedy team in the history of show business. Getting their start in Chicago nightclubs during the 1960s, the pair took their show on the road, from the North to the still simmering South, developing routines that helped Americans confront their racial divide: by laughing at it.

And in their forthcoming book, Tim and Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White, they tell the fascinating tale of their groundbreaking careers together touring across America, inspiring both laughter and controversy.

Tim and Tom will reunite this September to promote the book at various locations across the States. Check our author events page for details. In the meantime, find out more about Tim and Tom by watching our YouTube book-trailer above, or visit the Tim and Tom website.

Archived in Author Events | Biography | Books for the News | Chicago
Posted by TXM at 03:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This week's edition of the Chicago Reader is running an interesting review of Frank Kusch's Battleground Chicago—an unconventional look at the 1968 'police riots' at the Democratic National Convention. The event has become infamous for the brutality of the police in attempting to control the groups of anti-war protesters demonstrating at the convention. But Kusch's book goes beyond this stereotypical image using seldom heard accounts of the event from the police's point of view to arrive at a more nuanced understanding of how and why they acted as they did. The Reader's Barry Wightman writes:

Kusch… constructs his narrative from interviews he conducted with 80 former Chicago policemen who were on the street during the convention. These are regular guys who fought in World War II and Korea, lived in the bungalow belt, and found themselves on the fault line during one of the tectonic shifts of the period. And every time one of them is quoted, the story comes alive.…

Read the review from the Reader. Also read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Chicago | History | Politics and Current Events | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 02:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After pulling apart the peonies and deadheading the last of the mums, gardeners will take a long look at their backyards and head indoors to plan for next season. And as the hostas yellow and wilt outside, nature enthusiasts can take shelter with—and inspiration from—the stories in Cathy Jean Maloney’s beautiful new book, Chicago Gardens: The Early History.

Maloney has spent decades researching the city’s horticultural heritage, and her latest book reveals the remarkable story of Chicago’s first gardeners. Challenged by the region’s clay soil and harsh winters, Midwestern pioneers were forced to find imaginative uses for prairie plants, pounding salsify into gravy and grinding grain into coffee. Innovative nurserymen and florists would later develop a market for local fruit and flowers, in part by naming their varieties after Chicago’s well-known: the Mrs. Potter Palmer Carnation, for example, as well as the well-grown: the Bridgeport Chicago Drumhead Cabbage, in honor of the neighborhood’s Irish inhabitants. Gardening was no longer simply a way to fill one’s belly, but also a way to line one’s pockets. By the late 1880’s, Chicago had become the nation’s produce hub.

Today, Chicago earns the limelight as a leader in “green” cities. Chicago Gardens unveils a tradition of horticultural innovation—a story too long hidden under a bushel basket.

Read the press release.

Also see a special web feature for the book, five Chicago gardens.

Archived in Biology | Chicago | Economics | History | Press Releases
Posted by TXM at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The latest edition of Time Out Chicago is running an article about Kelan Phil Cohran—whose notable work as a jazz composer and multi-instrumentalist once landed him a spot in Sun Ra's Arkestra and, more recently, a central role in George E. Lewis's new book A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music. Lewis's book is the definitive history of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, an important and influential Chicago jazz collective which Cohran helped to found in 1965. But as Time Out's Jake Austen notes, Cohran not only played an important role in organizing the association and establishing Chicago as a mecca for avant-garde jazz, but continues to be a major force in the jazz scene today:

After settling in Chicago in the mid-'50s, Cohran became an integral part of the South Side's cultural fabric during the next half-century, forming the AACM and turning a Bronzeville movie house into the Afro-Arts Theater (home base of Cohran's Artistic Heritage Ensemble, Oscar Brown Jr. and Gwendolyn Brooks, among others). He also became a fixture in public schools, teaching and demonstrating his musical ideas from 1965 until the '90s.… But Cohran is best known for his stint with Sun Ra's Arkestra from 1959 to 1961.…

Yet what makes Cohran's work so compelling to contemporary audiences may be the ways he veers away from Sun Ra and his AACM colleagues. While Ra explored the spaceways, Cohran… studied his own planet.… Cohran's interest in folk, as well as an activist's desire to serve the people, makes his music more populist than most experimental sounds. "My music is an expression of my community," he says. "That's why it lasts: because it wasn't for me."

And tonight starting at 6:30 you can catch Cohran at the Pritzker Pavilion in downtown Chicago where he headlines a concert titled "Made in Chicago: Kelan Phil Cohran and the Legacy of Sun Ra." To find out more about Cohran, his stint with the Arkestra, and the role he played in forming the AACM, check out this excerpt from Lewis's book. To find out more about the show navigate to the Time Out Chicago website.

Archived in Black Studies | Books for the News | Chicago | History | Music
Posted by TXM at 01:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

John Kieswetter, the Cincinnati Enquirer's TV/Radio/Media reporter heralded the arrival of one of Cincinnati's favorite TV personalities, comedian and actor Tim Reid, with a nice post to his blog last Thursday. His posting touches on Reid's historic career in comedy, and details his recent itinerary, which brought him back to the city he once fictionally inhabited as radio DJ Venus Flytrap on the late 70's sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati. According to Keiswetter, Reid was scheduled to host the local Emmy Awards dinner and to throw out the first pitch at the Reds-Astros game. In his post Kieswetter remarks: "I bet he's surprised at how often he's recognized here, and how fondly so many of us remember 'WKRP.'"

But while most people recognize Reid from his hit TV show, fewer remember his earlier work in the pioneering stand-up act "Tim and Tom" with comedian Tom Dreesen—the first interracial comedy team in the history of show business. Now with Reid's forthcoming book, Tim and Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White, co-authored with Dreesen and Ron Rappaport, the fascinating story of this ground-breaking comedic duo is revealed—from their beginnings in the nightclubs of Chicago to to their acrimonious breakup after 5 hard years on the road.

The book is set to publish this September and Dreesen and Reid are scheduled to make quite a few appearances in support of the book's release. Navigate to the Tim and Tom book page to find out more about the book or to place an advance order. Also, see our author events page to find out more about the upcoming events.

Archived in Black Studies | Books for the News | Chicago | History | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 01:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviewed George E. Lewis's new book A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music for the July 29 edition of NPR's Fresh Air. In the review, Whitehead outlines the book's captivating scholarly portrait of the Chicago avant-garde jazz collective known as the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, which, since its inception in 1965, has counted among its ranks internationally acclaimed artists such as Anthony Braxton, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and Muhal Richard Abrams, and gained world wide recognition as one of the defining forces in the avant-garde jazz scene.

Listen to the archived audio on the NPR website.

Also, read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Black Studies | Chicago | History | Music | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 12:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Twenty-nine houses could be added to the Frank Lloyd Wright catalog of built work. The houses in question are all in suburban Chicago and include two in Berwyn, one each in Wilmette and Glen Ellyn, and an incredible twenty-four houses in River Forest, all on the 700 block of William Street. A group of researchers led by William Allin Storrer has gone public with the claim that Wright designed these homes during a period of his life when attributing a design to him would have detracted from the salability of the house.

Chicago Tribune architectural critic Blair Kamin discussed the claims in a story in yesterday's edition. The houses have previously been attributed to other Prairie School architects, but examination of both interior and exterior details has led the research team to conclude that Wright designed them. The houses date from the 1910s; during this period Wright was a social outcast in the Chicago area because of the scandal of his affair with Mamah Cheney, wife of client Edwin Cheney.

Photos of all the houses and many more details are available on Storrer's website, the FLlW Update. We have published two books by Storrer, The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright: A Complete Catalog and The Frank Lloyd Wright Companion. The early twentieth-century period of Wright's professional life is examined in Anthony Alofsin's Frank Lloyd Wright—the Lost Years, 1910-1922. We have also published Meryle Secrest's biography, Frank Lloyd Wright and a volume of Blair Kamin's columns, Why Architecture Matters.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Books for the News | Chicago
Posted by DB at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mary Pattillo, author of Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City was interviewed yesterday on WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show to discuss the gentrification of urban African American communities.

Pattillo's book is an eye-opening sociological exploration of Chicago's North Kenwood–Oakland neighborhood and the community's embattled process of revitalization, where the often conflicting interests of the black middle-class, their less-fortunate neighbors, and the established centers of white economic and political power frame a dramatic tale of the transformation of black communities in the twenty-first century.

In the interview Pattillo touches on many of the issues discussed in her book and fields some interesting questions from WNYC listeners. Listen to the audio on the WNYC website.

Also read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Anthropology | Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Black Studies | Chicago | History | Politics and Current Events | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Derek S. Hyra, author of The New Urban Renewal: The Economic Transformation of Harlem and Bronzeville, was interviewed today on the BBC Radio 4 program Thinking Allowed. Host Laurie Taylor, on the ground in Harlem, interviewed Harlem residents and neighborhood leaders, as well as Hyra and other authors to understand both the history of Harlem and the "Second Harlem Renaissance" that is renewing and stressing the neighborhood.

Does gentrification bring upheaval or stability? Is change always good? Who are the winners and who are the losers?

The archived audio is available from the BBC.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Black Studies | Chicago | Sociology
Posted by DB at 04:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The June issue of Downbeat Magazine is running a positive review of George Lewis's new book A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music—the definitive history of one of the most influential avant-garde jazz collectives in existence, the Chicago-based Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. Writing for Downbeat jazz critic Howard Mandel begins his review:

George Lewis's epic history of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians sets a new standard for scholarly writing about the people who make Great Black Music, or any other kind. A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music, interweaves interviews with 67 of Lewis's AACM colleagues, select journalistic reports and theoretical writings with the perspective of a trusted insider across a societal portrait worthy of Tolstoy. Lewis dramatizes the story of independent, underfinanced, determined, sophisticated artists from a working-class minority subculture struggling to launch an esthetic movement that emphasizes individuality, continuous exploration and personal development in a world that could hardly care less.

Downbeat magazine seems to be having some technical difficulties with their website, but for now you can read the full unedited version on Howard Mandel's blog Jazz Beyond Jazz.

Also read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Black Studies | Chicago | History | Music | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 12:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Founded in 1965 and still active today, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) is an American institution with an international reputation. From its working-class roots on the South Side of Chicago, the AACM went on to forge an extensive legacy of cultural and social experimentation, crossing both musical and racial boundaries. The success of individual members and ensembles from Muhal Richard Abrams, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and Anthony Braxton to Douglas Ewart, the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, and Nicole Mitchell has been matched by the enormous international influence of the collective itself in inspiring a generation of musical experimentalists.

George E. Lewis, who joined the collective as a teenager in 1971, establishes the full importance and vitality of the AACM with this communal history, written with a symphonic sweep that draws on a cross-generational chorus of voices and a rich collection of rare images.

Read the press release.

Also, read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Black Studies | Chicago | History | Music | Press Releases
Posted by TXM at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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 (1)

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 (2)

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
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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
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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's absorbing and lavishly illustrated Millennium Park: Creating a Chicago Landmark, to be published this week."

Archived in Art and Architecture | Cartography and Geography | Chicago | History | Reviews
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No plans for the weekend? Well, it's supposed to be beautiful, and what better way to spend the day then wandering along Dearborn Street buying books?! The Printer's Row Book Fair takes place this weekend, and the University of Chicago Press will be there selling books in tent A at the corner of Congress and Dearborn.

Press authors will also be represented in the events this weekend. Stuart Dybek, author of Childhood and other Neighborhoods speaks Sunday at 2 pm at the Harold Washington Library; Joel Greenberg, author of A Natural History of the Chicago Region speaks Saturday at 12:30 p.m. at Grace Place/2nd floor; James Grossman, editor of The Encyclopedia of Chicago appears at 11 a.m. Sunday in the University Center/Lake Room, and Louise Knight, author of Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy, speaks at 1 p.m. on Saturday in the University Center/Lake Room. Of course, there are many more scheduled events, including appearances by John Updike, Dave Eggers, Nikki Giovanni, and Curious George—not currently scheduled to appear together, but who knows what can happen on Chicago streets at a book fair on a beautiful weekend in June?

For a full schedule of events with a map of venues see the Printers Row Book Fair Web site.

Archived in Author Events | Chicago
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Chicago Magazine recently highlighted Timothy J. Gilfoyle's Millennium Park: Creating a Chicago Landmark: "Loyola history professor Timothy Gilfoyle captures all the soaring architectural drama, petty human squabbling, and commendable leadership behind the city's newest civic jewel in Millennium Park, out this month. Right on time: The park celebrates its second anniversary in July."

Part park, part outdoor art museum, part cultural center, and part performance space, Millennium Park is now an unprecedented combination of distinctive architecture, monumental sculpture, and innovative landscaping. Gilfoyle's thoroughly readable and lavishly illustrated history of Millennium Park is a wonderful testament to this twenty-first century landmark.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Chicago | History | Reviews
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Today, Gapers Block highlights the Encyclopedia of Chicago Web site. Brush up on Chicago trivia by visiting the special features section of the site, which features essays, maps, photo galleries, indices, timelines, and tables.

If you're impressed by the Web site, be sure to check out The Encyclopedia of Chicago book. At 1152 pages, it's the definitive historical reference on metropolitan Chicago. If you think you know how Chicago got its name, if you have always wondered how the Chicago Fire actually started and how it spread, if you have ever marveled at the Sears Tower or the reversal of the Chicago River—if you have affection, admiration, and appreciation for this City of the Big Shoulders, this Wild Onion, this Urbs in Horto, then The Encyclopedia of Chicago is for you.

Archived in Chicago | History | Reference and Writing
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The Chicago Tribune reports that Millennium Park's popular Cloud Gate sculpture (also known as "the Bean") is set to be dedicated on May 15 at 11 a.m. The dedication ceremony will feature Cloud Gate sculptor Anish Kapoor, Chicago First Lady Maggie Daley, and music by jazz artist Orbert Davis.

This June, the University of Chicago Press will publish Timothy J. Gilfoyle's Millennium Park: Creating a Chicago Landmark. Part park, part outdoor art museum, part cultural center, and part performance space, Millennium Park is now an unprecedented combination of distinctive architecture, monumental sculpture, and innovative landscaping. Gilfoyle's thoroughly readable and lavishly illustrated history of Millennium Park is a wonderful testament to this twenty-first century landmark.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Chicago | History
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The New Republic recently praised Louise W. Knight's Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy. From the review by Christine Stansell: "Louise W. Knight's excellent book makes the case for Addams as a pre-eminent social thinker and a masterful politician.… Knight brings alive the sheer pleasure of [Hull House].… While preserving Addams's essential modesty, Knight is still able to show what a powerful operator she was becoming.… One hopes for a second volume of Knight's fine work."

This masterful biography explores how Addams was born to one life and chose another. Though raised in a small town, Addams was driven to become a pioneer in urban reform, working through the Hull House—which she co-founded—in Chicago and beyond as a leader in labor relations and an advocate for children, immigrants, and the poor. And though she was the product of a highly class-conscious and morally absolutist family and culture, she developed into one of our nation's foremost pragmatic ethicists, on a par with Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and her good friend John Dewey.

Read an excerpt.

Visit Louise W. Knight's Citizen Web site.

Archived in Biography | Chicago | History | Reviews
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Yesterday, Dominic A. Pacyga appeared on WBEZ radio's Eight Forty-Eight program to give his perspective on this week's immigrant rally and how it compares to past immigrant movements in Chicago. Pacyga, an expert on immigrant and labor history, is author of Polish Immigrants and Industrial Chicago: Workers on the South Side, 1880-1922. This book explores the lives of immigrants in two iconic South Side Polish neighborhoods—the Back of the Yards and South Chicago—and the stockyards and steel mills in which they made their living.

Listen to an audio file of the program by scrolling down to May 2, 2006.

Archived in Author Events | Chicago | History | Sociology
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The New York Review of Books recently praised Louise W. Knight's Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy. From the review by Alan Ryan: "[Citizen] is enviably well-written and deeply engrossing, and a considerable addition to the literature, not just on an extraordinary woman, but on an extraordinary epoch.… Louise Knight has a particular talent for writing as though she knows at any point in the narrative no more than her heroine does of what is about to befall her next; it is a technique that suits her subject perfectly."

Jane Addams was the first American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. This masterful biography reveals her early development as a political activist and social philosopher in lively detail and with deep appreciation for motive and character. In Citizen, we observe the powerful mind of a woman encountering the radical ideas of her age, most notably the ever-changing meanings of democracy.

Read an excerpt.

Archived in Biography | Chicago | History | Reviews
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On March 25, at 8:00 p.m., the 18th Annual Nelson Algren Birthday Party will take place at Acme Art Works (1714 N. Western Avenue). Algren (1909-1981), author of Chicago: City on the Make, is being honored by the Nelson Algren Committee, a group dedicated to promoting interest in Algren, who "made Chicago his trade." The event will feature readings, music, a photographic exhibition, a drawing for Algren books and memorabilia, and of course, birthday cake.

Ernest Hemingway once said of Nelson Algren's writing that "you should not read it if you cannot take a punch." The prose poem, Chicago: City on the Make, filled with language that swings and jabs and stuns, lives up to those words. This 50th anniversary edition is newly annotated with explanations for everything from slang to Chicagoans, famous and obscure, to what the Black Sox scandal was and why it mattered. More accessible than ever, this is, as Studs Terkel says, "the best book about Chicago."

We also publish H. E. F. Donohue's Conversations with Nelson Algren, a collection of frank and often devastating conversations in which Algren reveals himself with all the gruff humor, deflating insight, honesty, and critical brilliance that marked his career. Algren discusses everything from his childhood to his compulsion to write to his relationship with Simone de Beauvoir. The result is a masterful portrait of a rebel and a major American writer.

Archived in Author Events | Biography | Chicago | Literature
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This week (March 22-26), Charlottesville hosts the Twelfth Annual Virginia Festival of the Book. This free event features readings, panels, and discussions with authors, illustrators, and publishing professionals. Four of our authors will participate:

Joel Agee, translator of Hans Erich Nossack's The End: Hamburg 1943 will appear on an "Individual Voices" panel on March 24, noon, at UVa Wilson Hall Auditorium, Room 402, (UVa Central Grounds)

Johanna Drucker, author of Sweet Dreams will explore how artists draw inspiration and materials from popular culture on March 22, 2 p.m., at the UVa Art Museum, Pine Room (UVa Central Grounds)

Louise W. Knight, author of Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy will appear on the "19th Century Women: Biography" panel on March 25, noon, at New Dominion (404 E. Main Street)

Lawrence Weschler, author of A Wanderer in the Perfect City: Selected Passion Pieces will interview comic artist Art Spiegelman on March 25, 8 p.m., at the Culbreth Theatre (UVa Central Grounds). Weschler will make a second appearance, lecturing on modern art on March 26, 1:30 p.m., at the Culbreth Theatre (UVa Central Grounds)

Read an excerpt from The End.

Read an excerpt from Sweet Dreams.

Read an excerpt from Citizen.

Read the foreword to A Wanderer in the Perfect City.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Author Events | Biography | Chicago | History | Literature
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On March 9, Chicago Public Radio's "Eight Forty-Eight" program aired a nice tribute to Wayne Booth (1921-2005). David Thompson, Associate Dean for Planning and Programs at the University of Chicago, shared memories of Booth and discussed the impact of Booth's 1961 classic The Rhetoric of Fiction, on literary criticism.

Listen to the tribute on Chicago Public Radio's Web site.

This May, the University of Chicago Press will publish The Essential Wayne Booth.

Read an excerpt from For the Love of It: Amateuring and Its Rivals.

See all our books by Wayne Booth.

Archived in Chicago
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On Saturday, March 11, at 11:00 a.m., Ann Durkin Keating will discuss her new book Chicagoland: City and Suburbs in the Railroad Age at the Newberry Library in Chicago (60 West Walton Street ). The event is free and open to the public. Copies of Chicagoland will be available for purchase.

Historian and coeditor of the acclaimed