Mother Chicago: Truant Dreams and Specters Over the Gilded Age By Martin Billheimer Feral House Chicago is a dark place. All cities are. The more humans you pack into a […]
David Anthony Witter was born in Miller, Indiana—“across the lagoon from Nelson Algren’s summer home,” as he puts it—but has spent most of his life in Chicago. Growing up in […]
A History of the Chicago Portage: The Crossroads That Made Chicago and Helped Make America By Benjamin Sells Northwestern University Press Let me tell you: I’m a huge Chicago history […]
Landscapes of Hope: Nature and the Great Migration in Chicago By Brian McCammack Harvard University Press For African Americans who took part in the Great Migration in the first half […]
Move on Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power By Aaron Cohen University of Chicago Press One of the pleasures of reading Aaron Cohen’s 2019 Move On Up: Chicago […]
Queer Legacies: Stories from Chicago’s LGBTQ Archives John D’Emilio University of Chicago Press Reviewed by Carr Harkrader Who doesn’t love a parade? It wouldn’t be completely wrong to describe Queer […]
The Loop: The ‘L’ Tracks that Shaped and Saved Chicago by Patrick T. Reardon Southern Illinois University Press Reviewed by Mary Wisniewski There are lovelier and more prestigious symbols of […]
Patrick T. Reardon, a regular contributor to Third Coast Review, recently released his new book, The Loop: The “L” Tracks That Shaped and Saved Chicago (SIU Press). More than a […]
Part 1 of Two Parts. Carl Smith’s Chicago’s Great Fire, published in August by Atlantic Monthly Press, is an important book of Chicago history, and a rousing crackerjack work that’s […]
Chicago’s Great Fire: The Destruction and Resurrection of an Iconic American City by Carl Smith Atlantic Monthly Press Devastation is devastation, whether brought about by fire or pandemic. The Great […]
The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth and Power by Deirdre Mask St. Martin’s Press In her introduction to The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal […]
Part 1 of this article can be found here. The original inspiration for this article came from a reference in the WPA Guide to Illinois, created by the Federal Writers’ Project. One […]