The Mee-Ow Show at 50 presents the history of Northwestern’s Mee-Ow Show, now the longest-running original student sketch comedy and improv show in the country, and its considerable impact on contemporary comedy.
Edited by David Schaafsma, Lauren DeJulio Bell and Roxanne Pilat
Contributions by Samira Ahmed, Dhana-Marie Branton, Anne Calcagno, Ana Castillo, Maxine Chernoff, Shelly M. Conner, Stuart Dybek, Saja Elshareif, Emil Ferris, Jessie Ann Foley, Charles Johnson, Rebecca Makkai, Daiva Markelis, James McManus, David Mura, Nnedi Okorafor, Christian Picciolini, Tony Romano, Erika Sánchez, George Saunders and Luis Alberto Urrea
Foreword by Luis Alberto Urrea
Growing Up Chicago is a collection of coming-of-age stories written by Chicagoland authors that reflects the diversity of the city and its metropolitan area. Primarily memoir, the book asks, What characterizes a Chicago author?
Penned by a former editor in chief of the Chicago Sun-Times, Binga is the definitive biography of the first black banker in Chicago as well as a history of race, politics, and finance in early twentieth-century Chicago.
Southern Exposure is the definitive guide to the often overlooked architectural riches of Chicago’s South Side by architecture expert and former Chicago Sun-Times architecture writer Lee Bey.
This history of the Woman’s Club of Evanston, an exemplary philanthopic leader within the women’s club movement, reflects many currents in U.S. and feminist history since its founding in 1889.
Sacred Ground is the personal memoir of famed Chicago historian Timuel Black, whose life and times from 1919 to the present capture pivotal moments in Chicago history as well as the civil rights movement in Chicago and nationally.
by Don Meyer, Chris White, Kate Carter and Brad Jungwirth
To celebrate the 125th anniversary, this album offers 18 pieces of “souvenir music” from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. The tracks have little to do with the music actually heard at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition; instead, the music on this album capitalized on the Fair craze in Chicago and across the country. Along with buttons, medals, brochures, postcards, and other memorabilia that flooded the market, this sheet music offered a musical “souvenir” of one’s time at the Fair. Some of these pieces were made popular in local theaters, either played by orchestras or performed by popular singers on the vaudeville stage. Others were simply meant to be taken home and played on the parlor piano. They provide a glimpse into the way the visitors understood and remembered this profound experience.
by Abdul Alkalimat, Rebecca Zorach and Romi Crawford
With vivid images and words, The Wall of Respect: Public Art and Black Liberation in 1960s Chicago tells the story of the mural on Chicago’s South Side whose creation and evolution was at the heart of the Black Arts Movement in the United States.
The Tunnel under the Lake tells the story of the one of the great engineering feats of the nineteenth century. A two-mile tunnel dug and bricked by hand thirty-five feet below the floor of Lake Michigan, the Chicago lake tunnel was designed to bring fresh drinking water to a city in dire need. At the time of its opening in March 1867, it was hailed as the "wonder of America and of the world."
