Chicago

Chicago PDF Author: Nelson Algren
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226013855
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 156

Get Book Here

Book Description
Newly annotated with everything from slang to Chicagoans--famous and obscure--this book is, as Studs Terkel says, "the best book about Chicago".

Chicago

Chicago PDF Author: Nelson Algren
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226013855
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 156

Get Book Here

Book Description
Newly annotated with everything from slang to Chicagoans--famous and obscure--this book is, as Studs Terkel says, "the best book about Chicago".

Bronzeville Nights

Bronzeville Nights PDF Author: Steven C. Dubin
Publisher: Cityfiles Press
ISBN: 9781733869027
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 96

Get Book Here

Book Description
A dazzling and surprising visual visit to Bronzeville, Chicago's vibrant African-American community, during the segregated 1940s and 1950s.

Bronzeville’s Bootstraps

Bronzeville’s Bootstraps PDF Author: Wallace S. Hall
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1796020516
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 452

Get Book Here

Book Description
Bronzeville’s Bootstraps describes the growth of African American businesses in the mid-twentieth century and how successful businesspersons overcame serious obstacles and simultaneously lit lanterns of hope for future generations. This unusual, provocative novel details how Chicago’s black private sector made Bronzeville the most prosperous community in the nation during the turbulent fifties, sixties, and seventies. The protagonist, Jerome Gerard, leaves his Beaumont, Texas, home with his family, seeking employment as a registered pharmacist. After failing in several cities, Jerome stops at the Pershing Hotel to relax for the weekend. The manager, Lester “Turkey” Stevens, introduces Gail and Jerome to Bronzeville’s nightlife. The next day, Lester takes Jerome to Felix and Bea’s restaurant to meet the “swells.” Because of their help-another-brother philosophy, the swells find Jerome a job and a home overnight. After being blatantly lied to by his boss, Jerome schemes to get the cash to buy his first drugstore. He learns what motivates Caucasians and uses their stimuli against them to build a chain. But it wasn’t easy. Jerome encountered racist, economic, and illegal obstacles at every turn.

Dead Man's Blues

Dead Man's Blues PDF Author: Ray Celestin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1681776081
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 358

Get Book Here

Book Description
Chicago, 1928. In the stifling summer heat, three disturbing events take place: A clique of city leaders is poisoned in a fancy hotel; a white gangster is found mutilated in an alleyway in the Blackbelt; and a famous heiress vanishes without a trace. Pinkerton detectives Michael Talbot and Ida Davis are hired to find the missing heiress by the girl’s troubled mother. But it soon proves harder than expected to find a face that is known across the city, and Ida must elicit the help of her friend, Louis Armstrong. While the police take little interest in the Blackbelt murder, Jacob Russo—crime scene photographer—can’t get the dead man’s image out of his head, leading him to embark on his own investigation. And Dante Sanfelippo—rum-runner and fixer—is back in Chicago on the orders of Al Capone, who suspects there’s a traitor in the ranks and wants Dante to investigate. But Dante is struggling with his own problems, as he is forced to return to the city he thought he’d never see again . . .

The Party Train

The Party Train PDF Author: Robert Alexander
Publisher: White Pine Press (NY)
ISBN:
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Get Book Here

Book Description
Defines the American prose poem

Smokestacks & Skyscrapers

Smokestacks & Skyscrapers PDF Author: David Starkey
Publisher: Loyola Press
ISBN:
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 568

Get Book Here

Book Description
Features 114 selections of Chicago writing from more than seventy authors; each selection is accompanied by an author biography and an introduction and afterword that place Chicago writing in its historical framework.

The Barn

The Barn PDF Author: Wright Thompson
Publisher: Random House Large Print
ISBN: 0593949102
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 609

Get Book Here

Book Description
An instant New York Times bestseller! “It literally changed my outlook on the world…incredible.” —Shonda Rhimes "The Barn is serious history and skillful journalism, but with the nuance and wallop of a finely wrought novel… The Barn describes not just the poison of silence and lies, but also the dignity of courage and truth.” — The Washington Post “The most brutal, layered, and absolutely beautiful book about Mississippi, and really how the world conspired with the best and worst parts of Mississippi, I will ever read…Reporting and reckoning can get no better, or more important, than this.” —Kiese Laymon “An incredible history of a crime that changed America.” —John Grisham "With integrity, and soul, Thompson unearths the terrible how and why, carrying us back and forth through time, deep in Mississippi—baring, sweat, soil, and heart all the way through.” —Imani Perry A shocking and revelatory account of the murder of Emmett Till that lays bare how forces from around the world converged on the Mississippi Delta in the long lead-up to the crime, and how the truth was erased for so long Wright Thompson’s family farm in Mississippi is 23 miles from the site of one of the most notorious and consequential killings in American history, yet he had to leave the state for college before he learned the first thing about it. To this day, fundamental truths about the crime are widely unknown, including where it took place and how many people were involved. This is no accident: the cover-up began at once, and it is ongoing. In August 1955, two men, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, were charged with the torture and murder of the 14-year-old Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi. After their inevitable acquittal in a mockery of justice, they gave a false confession to a journalist, which was misleading about where the long night of hell took place and who was involved. In fact, Wright Thompson reveals, at least eight people can be placed at the scene, which was inside the barn of one of the killers, on a plot of land within the six-square-mile grid whose official name is Township 22 North, Range 4 West, Section 2, West Half, fabled in the Delta of myth as the birthplace of the blues on nearby Dockery Plantation. Even in the context of the racist caste regime of the time, the four-hour torture and murder of a Black boy barely in his teens for whistling at a young white woman was acutely depraved; Till’s mother Mamie Till-Mobley’s decision to keep the casket open seared the crime indelibly into American consciousness. Wright Thompson has a deep understanding of this story—the world of the families of both Emmett Till and his killers, and all the forces that aligned to place them together on that spot on the map. As he shows, the full horror of the crime was its inevitability, and how much about it we still need to understand. Ultimately this is a story about property, and money, and power, and white supremacy. It implicates all of us. In The Barn, Thompson brings to life the small group of dedicated people who have been engaged in the hard, fearful business of bringing the truth to light. Putting the killing floor of the barn on the map of Township 22 North, Range 4 West, Section 2, West Half, and the Delta, and America, is a way of mapping the road this country must travel if we are to heal our oldest, deepest wound.

Chicago Sketches

Chicago Sketches PDF Author: June Skinner Sawyers
Publisher: Wild Onion Books
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Get Book Here

Book Description
Chicago Sketches is a collection of seventy-two essays on Chicago history. The essays are arranged according to subject and, within each category, further divided into chronological order. There are sections devoted to early Chicago, radicals and reformers, literary institutions, neighborhood life, law and disorder, spirituality, politics, disasters and events, the art, visitors, and sports and recreation. The book contains a dozen maps and fifty-one black-and-white photographs. The appendix provides a chronology of major events in Chicago history and a listing of Chicago mayors and historic landmarks and districts. An annotated bibliography offers suggestions for further reading.

And They All Sang

And They All Sang PDF Author: Studs Terkel
Publisher: New Press/ORIM
ISBN: 1595586555
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 330

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Pulitzer Prize–winning historian talks with some of twentieth century’s most iconic musicians—“Riveting . . . Just about every interview has a revelation” (San Francisco Chronicle). Through the second half of the twentieth century, Studs Terkel hosted the legendary radio show “The Wax Museum,” presenting Chicago’s music fans with his inimitable take on music of all kinds, from classical, opera, and jazz to gospel, blues, folk, and rock. Featuring more than forty of Terkel’s conversations with some of the greatest musicians of the past century, And They All Sang is “a tribute to music’s universality and power” (Philadelphia Inquirer). Included here are fascinating conversations with Louis Armstrong, Leonard Bernstein, Big Bill Broonzy, Bob Dylan, Dizzy Gillespie, Mahalia Jackson, Janis Joplin, Rosa Raisa, Pete Seeger, and many others. As the esteemed music critic Anthony DeCurtis wrote in the Chicago Tribune, “the terms ‘interview’ or ‘oral history’ don’t begin to do justice to what Terkel achieves in these conversations, which are at once wildly ambitious and as casual as can be.” Whether discussing Enrico Caruso’s nervousness on stage with opera diva Edith Mason or the Beatles’ 1966 encounter in London with revered Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar, “Terkel’s singular gift for bringing his subjects to life in their own words should strike a chord with any music fan old enough to have replaced a worn-out record needle” (The New York Times). “Whether diva or dustbowl balladeer, Studs treats them all alike, with deep knowledge and an intimate, conversational approach . . . as this often remarkable book shows, Studs Terkel has remained mesmerized by great music throughout his life.” —The Guardian “[Terkel’s] expertise is evident on every page, whether debating the harmonic structure of the spirituals or discerning the subtleties of Keith Jarrett’s piano technique . . . As ever, he is the most skillful of interviewers.” —The Independent “What makes And They All Sang a rousing success isn’t just Terkel’s phenomenal range and broad knowledge, it’s his passionate love of the music and his deep humanity.” —San Francisco Chronicle

The New Urban Renewal

The New Urban Renewal PDF Author: Derek S. Hyra
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226366049
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Get Book Here

Book Description
Two of the most celebrated black neighborhoods in the United States—Harlem in New York City and Bronzeville in Chicago—were once plagued by crime, drugs, and abject poverty. But now both have transformed into increasingly trendy and desirable neighborhoods with old buildings being rehabbed, new luxury condos being built, and banks opening branches in areas that were once redlined. In The New Urban Renewal, Derek S. Hyra offers an illuminating exploration of the complicated web of factors—local, national, and global—driving the remarkable revitalization of these two iconic black communities. How did these formerly notorious ghettos become dotted with expensive restaurants, health spas, and chic boutiques? And, given that urban renewal in the past often meant displacing African Americans, how have both neighborhoods remained black enclaves? Hyra combines his personal experiences as a resident of both communities with deft historical analysis to investigate who has won and who has lost in the new urban renewal. He discovers that today’s redevelopment affects African Americans differentially: the middle class benefits while lower-income residents are priced out. Federal policies affecting this process also come under scrutiny, and Hyra breaks new ground with his penetrating investigation into the ways that economic globalization interacts with local political forces to massively reshape metropolitan areas. As public housing is torn down and money floods back into cities across the United States, countless neighborhoods are being monumentally altered. The New Urban Renewal is a compelling study of the shifting dynamics of class and race at work in the contemporary urban landscape.