Sitewide Banner Image
The Bookshop is open for your Holiday shopping enjoyment. Do come by and peruse!
Chicago
Reflections on race, class, violence, segregation, and the hidden histories that shape our divided urban landscapes.
Chicago's 1933 world's fair set a new direction for international expositions. Earlier fairs had exhibited technological advances, but Chicago's fair organizers used the very idea of progress to buoy national optimism during the Depression's darkest years. Orchestrated by business leaders and engineers, almost all former military men, the fair reflected a business-military-engineering model that envisioned a promising future through science and technology's application to everyday life. Fair organizers, together with corporate leaders, believed that progress rides on the tide of technological innovation and consumerism.
But not all those who struggled for a voice at Chicago's 1933 exposition had abandoned the traditional notions of progress that entailed social justice and equality, recognition of ethnic and gender-related accomplishments, and personal freedom and expression. The stark pronouncement of the fair's motto, "Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Conforms," was challenged by iconoclasts such as Sally Rand, whose provocative fan dance became a persistent symbol of the fair, as well as a handful of others, including African Americans, ethnic populations and foreign nationals, groups of working women, and even well-heeled socialites. They all met obstacles but ultimately introduced personal, social definitions of "progress" and thereby influenced the ways the fair took shape.
In this engaging social and cultural history, Cheryl R. Ganz examines Chicago's second world's fair through the lenses of technology, ethnicity, and gender. The book also features eighty-six photographs--nearly half of which are full color--of key locations, exhibits, and people, as well as authentic ticket stubs, postcards, pamphlets, posters, and other items. From fan dancers to fan belts, The 1933 Chicago World's Fair: A Century of Progress offers the compelling, untold stories of fair planners and participants who showcased education, industry, and entertainment to sell optimism during the depths of the Great Depression.
In 1921, Ben Hecht wrote a column for the Chicago Daily News that his editor called "journalism extraordinary; journalism that invaded the realm of literature." Hecht's collection of sixty-four of these pieces, illustrated with striking pen drawings by Herman Rosse, is a timeless caricature of urban American life in the jazz age, updated with a new Introduction for the twenty-first century. From the glittering opulence of Michigan Avenue to the darkest ruminations of an escaped convict, from captains of industry to immigrant day laborers, Hecht captures 1920s Chicago in all its furor, intensity, and absurdity.
"The hardboiled audacity and wit that became Hecht's signature as Hollywood's most celebrated screen-writer are conspicuous in these vignettes. Most of them are comic and sardonic, some strike muted tragic or somber atmospheric notes. . . . The best are timeless character sketches that have taken on an added interest as shards of social history."--L. S. Klepp, Voice Literary Supplement
Discover the history most Chicagoans don't know---the real Chicago Way.
The Windy City is full of forgotten landmarks and unusual stories that rarely get the benefit of a guided tour. Meet the African-American congressman who paved the way for Harold Washington and Barack Obama, the South Side Jewish girl who became the president of a South American country, and the visiting Romanian queen who charmed the city. Learn when Chicagoans were paid to smile, how furniture sprouts on Windy City streets after a blizzard and why Smell-O-Vision seemed like a good idea. From an in-city ski resort to the nation's greatest train robbery, author John R. Schmidt offers a glimpse of the overlooked scenery of Chicago's past.
WINNER OF THE MIDLAND AUTHORS AWARD FOR HISTORY - LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE - A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR - The "illuminating" (New Yorker) story of the Great Chicago Fire: a raging inferno, a harrowing fight for survival, and the struggle for the soul of a city--told with the "the clarity--and tension--of a well-wrought military narrative" (Wall Street Journal) In the fall of 1871, Chicagoans knew they were due for the "big one"--a massive, uncontrollable fire that would decimate the city. It had been bone-dry for months, and a recent string of blazes had nearly outstripped the fire department's already scant resources. Then, on October 8, a minor fire broke out in the barn of Irishwoman Kate Leary. A series of unfortunate mishaps and misunderstandings along with insufficient preparation and a high south-westerly wind combined to set the stage for an unmitigated catastrophe. The conflagration that spread from the Learys' property quickly overtook the neighborhood, and before long the floating embers had been cast to the far reaches of the city. Nothing to the northeast was safe. Families took to the streets with every possession they could carry. Powerful gusts whipped the flames into a terrifying firestorm. The Chicago River boiled. Over the next forty-eight hours, Chicago fell victim to the largest and most destructive natural disaster the United States had yet endured. The effects of the Great Fire were devastating. But they were also transforming. Out of the ashes, faster than seemed possible, rose new homes, tenements, hotels, and civic buildings, as well as a new political order. The elite seized the reconstruction to crack down on vice, control the disbursement of vast charitable funds, and rebuild the city in their image. But the city's working class recognized only a naked power grab that would challenge their traditions, hurt their chances to keep their hard-earned property, and move power out of the hands of elected officials and into private interests. As soon as the battle against the fire ended, another battle for the future of the city erupted between its entrenched business establishment and its poor and immigrant laborers and shopkeepers. An enrapturing account of the fire's inexorable march and an eye-opening look at its aftermath, The Burning of the World tells the story of one of the most infamous calamities in history and the new Chicago it precipitated--a disaster that still shapes American cities to this day.
*2025 Pattis award winner*
From the Author of the groundbreaking Chicago LGBTQ history book, Chicago Whispers!
Chicago After Stonewall: Gay Lib to Gay Life is by award-winning historian, journalist, and Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame inductee, St Sukie de la Croix - author of the groundbreaking Chicago Whispers: A History of LGBT Chicago Before Stonewall.
Chicago After Stonewall is a detailed account of how LGBTQ Chicagoans responded to the Stonewall Riots. The book pulls together jigsaw pieces of information from many sources, including a wealth of documents held in the McCormick Library of Special Collections at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, to reveal a picture of a raggle-taggle band of dysfunctional rebels with one cause.
In post-Stonewall Chicago, several attempts were made to publish a gay newspaper, but none lasted. The longest was the Chicago Gay Crusader with twenty-six issues, between 1973-1975. However, the paper was irregular and a hangover from the 1960s hippie underground press in style. It wasn't until June 20, 1975, when Grant L. Ford published Volume 1/Number 1 of Chicago Gay Life, that Chicago boasted a professional gay newspaper.
However, from the Stonewall Riots until the publication of Chicago Gay Life, there was no reliable source for local gay news, only irregular gay publications like The Paper, Mattachine Midwest Newsletter, or hippie underground/alternative rags, Seed, Kaleidoscope, Reader, and Second City, and college newspapers like Maroon and Roosevelt Torch.
This book begins with Stonewall and Henry Weimhoff, a University of Chicago student, and ends with the first issue of Gay Life on June 20, 1975, and an impassioned editorial by Valerie Bouchard for the community to "come together, unite, and focus on similarities and not differences."
Chicago Avant-Garde tells the story of five women who took radical risks in their lives and in their art: artist Gertrude Abercrombie, poet Gwendolyn Brooks, choreographers Katherine Dunham and Ruth Page, and dealer-curator Katharine Kuh. Inspired and challenged by Chicago, they helped transform the city into a hub of avant-garde experimentation.
This catalog accompanies an exhibition opening at the Newberry Library on September 10, 2021. Designed by graphic artists Nick Butcher and Nadine Nakanishi of Sonnenzimmer and letterpress printer Ben Blount, Chicago Avant-Garde includes more than 100 photographs, an engaging and deeply researched essay by Liesl Olson (Director of Chicago Studies at the Newberry), and powerful new poems dedicated to each of the five avant-gardists by Chicago-based poet and educatorEve L. Ewing.
Despite its rough-and-tumble image, Chicago has long been identified as a city where books take center stage. In fact, a volume by A. J. Liebling gave the Second City its nickname. Upton Sinclair's The Jungle arose from the midwestern capital's most infamous industry. The great Chicago Fire led to the founding of the Chicago Public Library. The city has fostered writers such as Nelson Algren, Saul Bellow, and Gwendolyn Brooks. Chicago's literary magazines The Little Review and Poetry introduced the world to Eliot, Hemingway, Joyce, and Pound. The city's robust commercial printing industry supported a flourishing culture of the book. With this beautifully produced collection, Chicago's rich literary tradition finally gets its due. Chicago by the Book profiles 101 landmark publications about Chicago from the past 170 years that have helped define the city and its image. Each title--carefully selected by the Caxton Club, a venerable Chicago bibliophilic organization--is the focus of an illustrated essay by a leading scholar, writer, or bibliophile. Arranged chronologically to show the history of both the city and its books, the essays can be read in order from Mrs. John H. Kinzie's 1844 Narrative of the Massacre of Chicago to Sara Paretsky's 2015 crime novel Brush Back. Or one can dip in and out, savoring reflections on the arts, sports, crime, race relations, urban planning, politics, and even Mrs. O'Leary's legendary cow. The selections do not shy from the underside of the city, recognizing that its grit and graft have as much a place in the written imagination as soaring odes and boosterism. As Neil Harris observes in his introduction, "Even when Chicagoans celebrate their hearth and home, they do so while acknowledging deep-seated flaws." At the same time, this collection heartily reminds us all of what makes Chicago, as Norman Mailer called it, the "great American city." With essays from, among others, Ira Berkow, Thomas Dyja, Ann Durkin Keating, Alex Kotlowitz, Toni Preckwinkle, Frank Rich, Don Share, Carl Smith, Regina Taylor, Garry Wills, and William Julius Wilson; and featuring works by Saul Bellow, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sandra Cisneros, Clarence Darrow, Erik Larson, David Mamet, Studs Terkel, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Frank Lloyd Wright, and many more.
An inside look at the music born, bred, and perfected in Chicago.
Chicago house music originated in the city's Black, gay underground in the late seventies and became one of the most popular musical genres in the world by the end of the century. In Chicago House Music: Culture and Community, Marguerite Harrold tells the story of the genre's rise and the prolific creators who have sustained it for decades. You'll learn about house music's early innovators, like Ron Hardy and Frankie Knuckles, who transformed the social and political turmoil around them into a revolution in dance music. You'll also hear remembrances from contemporary figures in the house community, like DJ Lady D, Avery R. Young, Czboogie and Edgar "Artek" Sinio, who have forged new paths as the genre has evolved. It's a story about much more than music--it's about a community struggling for acceptance, love, liberation, and freedom, and about the creative pioneers whose resilience helped turn house music into a worldwide phenomenon.
Full of interviews and first-hand accounts from the people who stood behind the turntables, carried crates of records, or danced until dawn, Chicago House Music is the history of an art form that continues to be a force for social interaction, spiritual liberation, and community today.