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Chicago

GRACELAND CEMETERY IN CHICAGO

GRACELAND CEMETERY IN CHICAGO

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Graceland Cemetery is one of Chicago's most outstanding memorial grounds. It's like a little town with a private lake and mausoleums lining its streets. The funerary architecture is spectacular. Here lie Chicago's deceased: baseball players, boxers, ballerinas, fire victims, detectives, politicians, department store owners and inventors. They passed through nature and on to eternity but not without a pawky connection to Sherlock Holmes.

GRACELAND CEMETERY: CHICAGO ST

GRACELAND CEMETERY: CHICAGO ST

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One of Chicago's landmark attractions, Graceland Cemetery chronicles the city's sprawling history through the stories of its people. Local historian and Graceland tour guide Adam Selzer presents ten walking tours covering almost the entirety of the cemetery grounds. While nodding to famous Graceland figures from Marshall Field to Ernie Banks to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Selzer also leads readers past the vaults, obelisks, and other markers that call attention to less recognized Chicagoans like:
  • Jessie Williams de Priest, the Black wife of a congressman whose 1929 invitation to a White House tea party set off a storm of controversy;
  • Engineer and architect Fazlur Khan, the Bangladeshi American who revived the city's skyscraper culture;
  • The still-mysterious Kate Warn (listed as Warn on her tombstone), the United States' first female private detective.
  • Filled with photographs and including detailed maps of each tour route, Graceland Cemetery is an insider's guide to one of Chicago's great outdoor destinations for city lore and history.

    Guide to Chicago's Twenty-First-Century Architecture: Volume 1

    Guide to Chicago's Twenty-First-Century Architecture: Volume 1

    $34.95
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    Exploring a new century of architecture in the Windy City

    Chicago's wealth of architectural treasures makes it one of the world's majestic cityscapes. Published in collaboration with the Chicago Architecture Center, this easy-to-use guide invites you to discover the new era of twenty-first-century architecture in the Windy City via two hundred architecturally significant buildings and spaces in the city and suburbs. Features include:

  • Entries organized by neighborhood
  • Maps with easy-to-locate landmarks and mass transit options
  • Background on each entry, including the design architect, name and address, description, and other essential information
  • Sidebars on additional sites and projects
  • A detailed supplemental section with a glossary, selected bibliography, and indexes by architect, building name, and building type
  • Up-to-date and illustrated with almost four hundred color photos, the Guide to Chicago's Twenty-First-Century Architecture takes travelers and locals on a journey into an ever-changing architectural mecca.

    Historic Chicago Bakeries

    Historic Chicago Bakeries

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    As immigrants came from outside the United States and settled in pockets around Chicago, each neighborhood had its own bakery--and sometimes several. At one time, more than seven thousand bakeries dotted the city streets. Stalwarts like Dinkel's, Roeser's, Weber's, Pticek and Ferrara continue a legacy that shaped Chicago's food traditions: an atomic cake for family celebrations, bacon buns in the morning or a poppy seed bun for hot dogs and pączki and zeppole for holidays. Even the never-ending debate over seeded or unseeded rye. From pioneering bakers to today's cake makers, author Jennifer Billock puts the sweet and doughy history of Chicago on display.

    As immigrants came from outside the United States and settled in pockets around Chicago, each neighborhood had its own bakery--and sometimes several. At one time, more than seven thousand bakeries dotted the city streets. Stalwarts like Dinkel's, Roeser's, Weber's, Pticek and Ferrara continue a legacy that shaped Chicago's food traditions: an atomic cake for family celebrations, bacon buns in the morning or a poppy seed bun for hot dogs and pączki and zeppole for holidays. Even the never-ending debate over seeded or unseeded rye. From pioneering bakers to today's cake makers, author Jennifer Billock puts the sweet and doughy history of Chicago on display.

    HISTORY COMICS: THE GREAT CHIC

    HISTORY COMICS: THE GREAT CHIC

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    Turn back the clock with History Comics! In The Great Chicago Fire you'll learn how a city rose up from one of the worst catastrophes in American history.

    A deadly blaze engulfs Chicago for two terrifying days! A brother, a sister, and a helpless puppy must race through the city to stay one step ahead of the devilish inferno. But can they reunite with their lost family before it's too late?

    History Comics: The Great Chicago Fire: Rising from the Ashes

    History Comics: The Great Chicago Fire: Rising from the Ashes

    $19.99
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    Turn back the clock with History Comics! In The Great Chicago Fire you'll learn how a city rose up from one of the worst catastrophes in American history.

    A deadly blaze engulfs Chicago for two terrifying days! A brother, a sister, and a helpless puppy must race through the city to stay one step ahead of the devilish inferno. But can they reunite with their lost family before it's too late?

    History Lover's Guide to Chicago

    History Lover's Guide to Chicago

    $23.99
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    Founded next to a great lake and a sluggish river, Chicago grew faster than any city ever has. Splendid department stores created modern retailing, and the skyscraper was invented to handle the needs of booming businesses in an increasingly concentrated downtown. The stockyards fed the world, and railroads turned the city into the nation's transportation hub. A great fire leveled the city, but Chicago rose again. Glorious museums, churches and theaters sprang up. Explore a missile site that became a bird sanctuary and discover how Chicago's first public library came to be located in an abandoned water tank. Follow the steps of business leaders and society dames, anarchists and army generals, and learn whose ashes were surreptitiously sprinkled over Wrigley Field. Combining years of research and countless miles of guided tours, author Greg Borzo pursues Chicago's sweeping historical arc through its fascinating nooks and crannies.
    HISTORY OF THE CHICAGO PORTAGE

    HISTORY OF THE CHICAGO PORTAGE

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    Seven muddy miles transformed a region and a nation

    This fascinating account explores the significance of the Chicago Portage, one of the most important--and neglected--sites in early US history. A seven-mile-long strip of marsh connecting the Chicago and Des Plaines Rivers, the portage was inhabited by the earliest indigenous people in the Midwest and served as a major trade route for Native American tribes. A link between the Mississippi River and the Atlantic Ocean, the Chicago Portage was a geopolitically significant resource that the French, British, and US governments jockeyed to control. Later, it became a template for some of the most significant waterways created in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The portage gave Chicago its name and spurred the city's success--and is the reason why the metropolis is located in Illinois, not Wisconsin.

    A History of the Chicago Portage: The Crossroads That Made Chicago and Helped Make America is the definitive story of a national landmark.

    House for the Struggle: The Black Press and the Built Environment in Chicago

    House for the Struggle: The Black Press and the Built Environment in Chicago

    $24.95
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    Recipient of the 2022 Jane Jacobs Urban Communication Book Award
    Winner of the 2023 ULCC's (Union League Club of Chicago) Outstanding Book on the History of Chicago Award
    Recipient of a 2023 Best of Illinois History Superior Achievement award from the Illinois State Historical Society
    Honorable Mention for the 2021-22 RSAP Book Prize (Research Society for American Periodicals)

    Buildings once symbolized Chicago's place as the business capital of Black America and a thriving hub for Black media. In this groundbreaking work, E. James West examines the city's Black press through its relationship with the built environment. As a house for the struggle, the buildings of publications like Ebony and the Chicago Defender embodied narratives of racial uplift and community resistance. As political hubs, gallery spaces, and public squares, they served as key sites in the ongoing Black quest for self-respect, independence, and civic identity. At the same time, factors ranging from discriminatory business practices to editorial and corporate ideology prescribed their location, use, and appearance, positioning Black press buildings as sites of both Black possibility and racial constraint.

    Engaging and innovative, A House for the Struggle reconsiders the Black press's place at the crossroads where aspiration collided with life in one of America's most segregated cities.

    Iconic Chicago, Dishes, Drinks and Desserts

    Iconic Chicago, Dishes, Drinks and Desserts

    $23.99
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    The food that fuels hardworking Chicagoans needs to be hearty, portable and inexpensive. Featuring select stories and recipes, author Amy Bizzarri surveys the delectable landscape of Chicago's homegrown culinary hits.


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