Liebling, a writer and editor for the New Yorker, lived in Chicago for nearly a year. While he found a home among its colorful inhabitants, he couldn't help comparing Chicago with some other cities he had seen and loved, notably Paris, London, and especially New York. His magazine columns brought down on him a storm of protests and denials from Chicago's defenders, and he gently and humorously answers their charges and acknowledges his errors in a foreword written especially for the book edition. Liebling describes the restaurants, saloons, and striptease joints; the newspapers, cocktail parties, and political wards; the university; and the defining event in Chicago's mythic past, the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre. Illustrated by Steinberg, Chicago is a loving, if chiding, portrait of a great American metropolis.
City Indian focuses on the privileged members of the American Indian community in Chicago: doctors, nurses, business owners, teachers, and entertainers. During the Progressive Era more than any other time in the city's history, they could be found in the company of politicians and society leaders, at Chicago's major cultural venues and events, and in the press, speaking out. When Mayor "Big Bill" Thompson declared that Chicago public schools teach "America First," American Indian leaders publicly challenged him to include the true story of "First Americans."
As they struggled to reshape nostalgic perceptions of American Indians, these men and women developed new associations and organizations to help each other and to ultimately create a new place to call home in a modern American city.
"Gregory Pratt had a rare front-row seat to the passions, problems, peculiarities, hopes, disappointments, shenanigans, and pettiness in the drama and farce that was Lori Lightfoot's uneasy tenure on the fifth floor at City Hall. What he delivers on these pages takes us backstage to give us a powerful, incisive portrait of the woman, the details of her mayoralty, and the many players who shared the stage." --Rick Kogan, Chicago Tribune reporter and author of A Chicago Tavern
Introduce babies and toddlers to iconic symbols of the Windy City with Nicole LaRue's quirky, modern illustrations.
This bright board book makes learning about Chicago as easy as 1, 2, 3! Covering everything from deep-dish pizza to sailboats, baseballs, monarch butterflies, and fishing poles Count On Chicago is the perfect gift for little Chicagoans and tiny tourists alike. This fresh and contemporary take on the Windy City will be a hit with little learners.
"Obama's writing is incisive yet forgiving. This is a book worth savoring."--Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here "One of the most powerful books of self-discovery I've ever read, all the more so for its illuminating insights into the problems not only of race, class, and color, but of culture and ethnicity. It is also beautifully written, skillfully layered, and paced like a good novel."--Charlayne Hunter-Gault, author of In My Place
"Dreams from My Father is an exquisite, sensitive study of this wonderful young author's journey into adulthood, his search for community and his place in it, his quest for an understanding of his roots, and his discovery of the poetry of human life. Perceptive and wise, this book will tell you something about yourself whether you are black or white."--Marian Wright Edelman
E. James West's fresh and fascinating exploration of Ebony's political, social, and historical content illuminates the intellectual role of the iconic magazine and its contribution to African American scholarship. He also uncovers a paradox. Though Ebony provided Bennett with space to promote a militant reading of black history and protest, the magazine's status as a consumer publication helped to mediate its representation of African American identity in both past and present.
Mixing biography, cultural history, and popular memory, West restores Ebony and Bennett to their rightful place in African American intellectual, commercial, and political history.
Less celebrated than the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, the 1933-1934 Century of Progress Exposition brought visitors face-to-face with gleaming American consumerism in the midst of the Great Depression. Lindsay Fullerton draws on a wealth of personal photographs, scrapbooks, oral histories, and writings to illuminate the wildly different experiences of fairgoers against the backdrop of a city steeped in poverty and segregation.
The Exposition took place amidst massive changes sparked by expansion of mass media, Franklin Roosevelt's election, the repeal of Prohibition, and the Great Migration. A diverse cross-section of Chicagoans informs Fullerton's history of the event in the context of the fast-changing America of the interwar era. These personal accounts tell stories of how attendees interpreted their own experiences while being surrounded by whiz-bang products and full-throated evangelism on the benefits of progress.
A colorful people's history, Ephemeral City takes readers inside the other Chicago World's Fair and how visitors interacted with a pivotal moment in American history.
Elegantly designed in compact editions, printed on acid-free paper, and textually authoritative, the American Poets Project makes available the full range of the American poetic accomplishment, selected and introduced by today's most discerning poets and critics.