The books in Chicago Lives are by and about citizens who have played a significant role in the city’s history. Some are well known, others less so, but all have influenced the cultural, political, or social life of one of the world’s most dynamic metropol
This book is the memoir of Truman K. Gibson Jr., a civil rights advocate and attorney who campaigned to integrate the military and end restrictive housing covenants, and a sports executive in the world of boxing.
Instantly recognized as a gritty classic when it was first published in 1966, Hog Butcher was later adapted for the 1975 film Cornbread, Earl and Me. This new edition brings back into print Fair’s startlingly relevant indictment of Chicago’s inequalities.
The 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam were the first in which women—over the objections of many, including Pope Pius XI and the founder of the modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin—were allowed to run in the marquee track events.
By all accounts, Jovan Mosley was a good kid. He was working on a way out of his tough Chicago neighborhood and had been accepted at Ohio State University when he was forced to confess to a murder he did not commit. He then spent five years and ten months in jail without a trial. His efforts to exonerate himself got him nowhere until he happened to meet a successful criminal defense lawyer, Catharine O’Daniel.
Recipient of 2007 The Hyde Park Historical Society Paul Cornell Award At fifteen, Earl Burrus Dickerson stowed away on a train in Canton, Mississippi, fleeing the racial oppression of...
The famous, the infamous, and the unjustly forgotten—all receive their due in this biographical dictionary of the people who have made Chicago one of the world’s great cities. Here are the life stories—provided in short, entertaining capsules—of Chicago’s cultural giants as well as the industrialists, architects, and politicians who literally gave shape to the city. Jane Addams, Al Capone, Willie Dixon, Harriet Monroe, Louis Sullivan, Bill Veeck, Harold Washington, and new additions Saul Bellow, Harry Caray, Del Close, Ann Landers, Walter Payton, Koko Taylor, and Studs Terkel—Chicago Portraits tells you why their names are inseparable from the city they called home.
Chicago is famously a "city of neighborhoods" that somehow balances metropolitan and parochial life. In the seventeen vividly rendered stories in Ghosts of Chicago, John McNally likewise captures the poignancy of both the shared experiences of a city and the interior details of his everyday characters..
Illinois Democratic politics has recently produced the most skilled and inspirational politician in memory . . . and has also reminded us of the need for further reform. It is fitting, then, that the latest installment of the Chicago Lives series turns to Dawn Clark Netsch, a leading reformer of Illinois politics since the 1950s and the first woman major party nominee for governor of Illinois.
Foreword by Lerone Bennett and Valerie Gerrard Browne
In the second volume of Bridges of Memory, historian Timuel D. Black Jr. continues his conversations with African-Americans who migrated to Chicago from the South in search of economic, social, and cultural opportunities. With his trademark gift for interviewing, Black—himself the son of first-generation migrants to Chicago--guides these individual discussions with ease, resulting in first-person narratives that are informative and entertaining.
"A wonderful book that tells you the basic truths of our city." —Studs Terkel Few people know Chicago as do Rick Kogan and Charles Osgood, and their "Sidewalks" column for the...
