Chicago
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.
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.
Enterprising locals transform standard fare into Chicago classics, including Spinning Salad, Flaming Saganaki, Jumpballs, Jim Shoes, Pizza Puffs and Pullman Bread. The restaurants, bakeries, taverns and pushcarts cherished from one generation to the next offer satisfying warmth in winter and sweet refreshment in summer. This timeless balancing act produced icons like the Cape Cod Room's Bookbinder Soup and the Original Rainbow Cone, as well as Andersonville Coffee Cake and Taylor Street's Italian Lemonade.
The Stephen Curry Underrated Literati Book Club Pick!
"[A] powerful novel.... Tragic, hopeful, brimming with love, Wolfe's debut is a remarkable achievement."--New York Times Book Review
Named a Best Book of Summer by Good Housekeeping, Chicago Magazine, The St. Louis Post Dispatch, Chicago Tribune, Veranda, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Publishers Weekly, and more!
For fans of Jacqueline Woodson and Brit Bennett, a striking coming-of-age debut about friendship, community, and resilience, set in the housing projects of Chicago during one life-changing summer.
Even when we lose it all, we find the strength to rebuild.
Felicia "Fe Fe" Stevens is living with her vigilantly loving mother and older teenaged brother, whom she adores, in building 4950 of Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes. It's the summer of 1999, and her high-rise is next in line to be torn down by the Chicago Housing Authority. She, with the devout Precious Brown and Stacia Buchanan, daughter of a Gangster Disciple Queen-Pin, form a tentative trio and, for a brief moment, carve out for themselves a simple life of Double Dutch and innocence. But when Fe Fe welcomes a mysterious new friend, Tonya, into their fold, the dynamics shift, upending the lives of all four girls.
As their beloved neighborhood falls down around them, so too do their friendships and the structures of the four girls' families. Fe Fe must make the painful decision of whom she can trust and whom she must let go. Decades later, as she remembers that fateful summer--just before her home was demolished, her life uprooted, and community forever changed--Fe Fe tries to make sense of the grief and fraught bonds that still haunt her and attempts to reclaim the love that never left.
Profound, reverent, and uplifting, Last Summer on State Street explores the risk of connection against the backdrop of racist institutions, the restorative power of knowing and claiming one's own past, and those defining relationships which form the heartbeat of our lives. Interweaving moments of reckoning and sustaining grace, debut author Toya Wolfe has crafted an era-defining story of finding a home--both in one's history and in one's self.
"Toya Wolfe is a storyteller of the highest order. Last Summer on State Street is a stunning debut."--Rebecca Makkai, New York Times bestselling author of The Great Believers
we must look hard at them.
Chicago author, Greg Borzo, recalls the city's celebrated lost restaurants.
Many of Chicago's greatest or most unusual restaurants are no longer taking reservations, but they're definitely not forgotten. From steakhouses to delis, these dining destinations attracted movie stars, fed the hungry, launched nationwide trends and created a smorgasbord of culinary choices. Stretching across almost two centuries of memorable service and adventurous menus, this book revisits the institutions entrusted with the city's special occasions. Noted author Greg Borzo dishes out course after course of fondly remembered fare, from Maxim's to Charlie Trotter's and Trader Vic's to the Blackhawk.
A visual compendium revealing the philosophy and life of America's renowned architect
The story of Louis H. Sullivan is considered one of the great American tragedies. While Sullivan reshaped architectural thought and practice and contributed significantly to the foundations of modern architecture, he suffered a sad and lonely death. Many have since missed his aim: that of bringing buildings to life. What mattered most to Sullivan were not the buildings but the philosophy behind their creation. Once, he unconcernedly stated that if he lived long enough, he would get to see all of his works destroyed. He added: "Only the idea is the important thing."In Louis Sullivan's Idea, Chicago architectural historian Tim Samuelson and artist/writer Chris Ware present Sullivan's commitment to his discipline of thought as the guiding force behind his work, and this collection of photographs, original documentation, and drawings all date from the period of Sullivan's life, 1856-1924, that many rarely or have never seen before. The book includes a full-size foldout facsimile reproduction of Louis Sullivan's last architectural commission and the only surviving working drawing done in his own hand.