Illinois Books

I picked up this book, intrigued by the picture on the front of an Amish buggy on a lonely road in the country. The heart of this book is amazing! You turn the pages and your heart just fills with the plight of Samuel and his parents as they try to get help for Samuel and his long hospitalization. Robert J. Hastings is incredibly tender in his dealings with Samuel's parents; who take turns in the book, through Bob Hastings interviews, talking about the trials and troubles they go through. I was struck by the innocence and humility of Oba and Lorene. They were as naive as small children in having to deal with all the ugly things of this world; hospital bills, pettiness, uncaring people. Throughout their ordeal however, we are uplifted as the doors swing open for them! The strangers that open their homes and hearts to them. The miraculous survival of Samuel. The charity of Precious Moments artist and creator Sam Butcher who creates a commemorative Amish button that is sold at Hallmark stores and nets the family $20,000. I found their whole story so touching, more so because it was true. This family had to completely trust in the kindness of strangers and this they found in abundance! Read it, you will love it. I immediately bought six more copies and gave them away to people who had a special place in my heart. I now have a special place in my heart for Samuel. It is a beautiful book!

If you are reading this you are probably interested in buying it. I really suggest you do. I knew the author personally, he was my pastor. He was a great man, writer and individual. Unfortunately he died several years ago, but part of him still lives on through his ability to touch others with his tremendous ability to write. Bob, as we called him, writes about an Amish boy who is caught in a threshing machine. A boy named Samuel. His father first thinks him dead, but after hearing a slight moan they rush him to the hospital. Samuel lives. His condition allows him to have a phone in his house (which usually isn't permitted in Amish homes) for medical emergencies. It isn't just a tale about a boy, but how we put our faith in Jesus to heal not only our broken body, but our broken spirit. It is an inspirational story, and if you like it, I suggest Bob's other books which are Tinyburg Tales, Tinyburg Revisited, Nickel's Worth of Skim Milk, Penny's Worth of Minced Ham (both about growing up in the Depression), and several others. His work is always uplifting, getting you to focus on God, not on yourself and your own problems. I highly recommend anything he has ever written, because I have read them all. They are all a gift, just as the man himself was to me. Bob, you're missed.

The name is right. Many of these pieces are tresures. Volume 2 includes photos (a little too small... each is about 3.5 x 5 inches) of all 94 folios in Codice Saldivar 4(some enhanced because the original has sustained water damage). Also included are transcriptions to the sixty nine pieces in the manuscript. This is a scholarly edition and the transcriptions are for study, not for performance. Do not expect to see fingerings for either right or left hand or other indications for modern guitar.

This book is a must read for anyone interested in the Spanish baroque circa 1700 as well as info on transport of this music to the New World. Vol. 2 is of less use as the guitar tablature is barely readable. Michael Lorimer's facsimile edition of the Saldivar Codex is the definitive one to get.

"When SOM [Skidmore, Owings & Merrill] realized that their design was only ten stories short of what was supposed to the record-breaking height of the World Trade Center then under construction (1,368 feet), they broke the record, coming in at 1,454 feet.

"By Jay Pridmore. 64 pages, 5 3/4 x 6 1/2". Smythe-sewn casebound with dust jacket. ISBN: 0-7649-2021-9."--© Pomegranate

As an occupant of Sears Tower, I find that Pridmore provides an easily-understandable overview of Sears Tower with an especially good focus on how the building was conceived and developed, with dozens of color pictures. There are also a few pictures of the Tower's offices, including Sears Roebuck's old offices, though the offices are mysteriously devoid of human inhabitation. Too often people think that towers like Sears are built by Cities wanting to be boastful rather than private enterprise seeking profits, and in that sense Pridmore tells the story of the tower very well except the sterile interior pictures. He also avoids the cliches like how many toilets are in the Tower.

I have only seen one good discussion of the daily life in a skyscraper, and this is not it. (See the Feb '89 National Geographic if interested.) Pridmore's discussion of the Tower post-construction is limited to discussing renovations and neglects other aspects that my friends usually find much more interesting. For instance, Tower occupants often see amazing sunsets--that is, when the upper floors aren't enshrouded in clouds. Some Tower occupants become motion-sick when the building sways and creaks in windstorms--also not discussed. A man can punch the windows with his fist but they will not break. (I've seen it tried--but don't you try it.) Finally, rumor is that although Sears Roebuck lost its ownership of the Tower a decade ago, they still own the giant Calder sculptures and mobile on the Wacker side. Sears was unable to move the artwork when they left, and because they are screwed in place, the artwork is not technically part of the building.

"Season of Joy" takes a multidimensional approach to the subject of how Chicagoans celebrated Christmas from 1674 until the present. It's packed with heartwarming descriptions of the rich helping the poor, and families coming together over dinner tables loaded with roast turkey, glazed vegetables, and plum pudding, while a gift-ringed Christmas tree glitters and winks in the background.

Benes goes beyond recounting acts of philanthropy, family dinners, and generic holiday customs, however. He focuses on Chicago-specific traditions such as the gigantic Marshall Field's Christmas Tree, which made its first appearance in the elegant Walnut Room in 1907, the Cinnamon Bear radio serial, and the Apollo Chorus, which has been performing Handel's "The Messiah" yearly since 1879.

The book is not confined to Yuletide stories alone. There are also encapsulated versions of the general news that occupied the minds of residents during the Christmas season: on Christmas Eve 1921, Sacco and Vanzetti were denied a new trial, setting off worldwide complaints about miscarriage of justice, while the December 19, 1941 edition of the Tribune declared that "Nazis Can't Kill Santa!" It was referring to a party that American soldiers in Britain were holding for young raid victims. In addition, each year's popular songs, live shows, movies (during later years), and gift prices are recounted.

"Season of Joy" can be appreciated as a history book or as holiday reading. For me, it was both.

Jim Benes' "Season of Joy" is a book of surprises providing the reader with insights into life in America (Chicago, specifically) which go far beyond the customs of celebrating the holiday. The author weaves together a colorful pattern of stories about the social, artistic, political and economic life of one of America's great cities. As diverse as the stories are, they come together to produce a yearly snapshot. Reading through them causes the reader to reflect on how things change, and how they stay the same. Often, there is a strange and moving juxtaposition between tragic realities and recurrent joys of life. Christmas - the season of joy - is the constant, but it is seen in the context of any ever changing world. You can start anywhere in this book. (I started with the year I was born.) Go from front to back, back to front, or skip around, and you will surely find yourself reminiscing and pondering where we've been. This book is not just for Christmas. I highly recommend it to all interested in the culture of the United States.
Fred Neuschel

Very useful book. Excellent illustrations. If you want to know what sedges are, I give it five stars.

Mohlenbrock's addition to the illustrated floras available in the midwest is most welcome. This volume describes the taxonomy and illustrates each species of Carex found in Illinois. The application to adjacent states is relatively easy since the genus is widespread. The book provides an update of the Carex section of the Gleason New Britton and Brown Illustrated Flora which is now out of print. Mohlenbrock's Illinois Flora was not illustrated and given the complexity of the genus, the clear diagrams and location maps make an arduous taxonomic task somewhat, I emphasize somewhat, easier. If you are working in wetlands this volume will be of special interest to you and should be a part of your office collection.

"She Rode The Rails" is based on the true life of traveling photographer, Mrs. Mary Jane Wyatt. A contemporary of J. B Silvis and pioneer photographer, Solomon Butcher, she was the only woman to own and operate a traveling photograph car on the Nebraska railroad in the late 1800's. She ran studios in Roseville, Il, and in Nebraska towns for over three decades. Mary Jane took many portraits of early pioneers and western landscapes, some of which are included in this book and published for the first time.

The story unfolds as her son, Charles Sears, remembers her life. He recalls how Mary Jane began as an unwed mother working as a lowly housemaid in Ohio to become a successful traveling photographer in Nebraska. With the support of her husband, sheriff and Burlington Missouri River RR engineer, Andrew A. Wyatt, she operated several galleries in a time when women were expected to stay home.

This book was awarded an Editor's Choice Award. The following quote from an independent review of the book:

"The author seems to have done meticulous research about Mary Jane and the time period in which she lived. The information about photography and trains is quite interesting, as is the background on real hardships Union soldiers experienced during the Civil War. This book will find its place in our national memory."

This book has received an Editor's Choice award. A quote from one of the independent reviews:

"The author seems to have done meticulous research about Mary Jane and the time period in which she lived. The information about photography and trains is quite interesting, as is the background on real hardships Union soldiers experienced during the Civil War. This book will find its place in our national memory."

Dena Epstein was a Chicago Librarian. She wasn't a paid musicologist, but she was determined to find out the story of African American music from the time we got off the slave ships until the Civil War. She emerged with a triumph.

No one who has not read this book really knows anything about African American, or for that matter American culture and music, worth knowing. Rather than the abstract dwelling on Africanism in this or that part of Black culture, she refutes the idea that the slaves were robbed of their culture she shows how the musical culture of West Africa was carried here and how it was modified and added to.

One of the most interesting aspects of Epstein's book for me is the record of the many different African instruments that were brought to the New World or were remade by Africans in the New World. The common idea that African instruments were limited to drums is refuted here strongly with her references to descriptions of different instruments found in the US and the West Indies. Along the way, Epstein was one of the first to reassert the AFricanness of the banjo and document it.

One interesting question which with the easiness of hindsight and futher research I raise is the issue of fiddling. Epstein documents that contrary to the popular stereotype that AFricans in the America were primarily banjoists or drummers, in the US until the point in the 19th Century when banjos became generally available and popular among most black and poor folks, African American musicians were most closely indentified with the fiddle. This is true not only in the US but in the West Indies.

Epstein does document how quickly after being "imported" African born musicians became excellent players of the fiddle, makers of fiddles, and even teachers of fiddling. She points out that the fiddle was so essential to the lives of planation African Americans that the question of whether the slave master should provide his slaves with a full time fiddler for slave dances was debated in circles who discussed how to manage slaves.

The question is really posed that such quick mastery of a very difficult instrument, and the rather rapid way it was used to play African based music could not be just a coincidence or a product of some kind of general African musical ability, but the product of retention of traditions that come from West African bowed instruments. Blacks who were fiddlers already in AFrica on African fiddle like instruments were enslaved, and their rapid progress another feature of transmission of AFrican culture into this country.

Of course, I am looking back from advances pioneered by Epstein and those who followed her.

Read this books and celebrate that triumph and learn what must be known about Black music and American culture.

Epstein expertly culls available documentary evidence, including contemporary accounts as well as such sources as runaway slave notices mentioning that the slave in question was a fiddler, to fill in a lot of gaps in our knowledge of how African music developed when it was transplanted to North America. The book is well-written and full of groundbreaking research. It's absolutely essential if you are interested in this subject.

One of the greatest books on Chicago Architecture that I've read. I reccomend this book to anyone with even the slightest intrest in architecture or this great city. Perfect, scholarly writing skills. Couldn't ask for anything more. In one word: Perfect.

Las tipologías de edificios que se encuentran en la ciudad de chicago, desde los viejos donde los materiales crean la apariencia pesada de una masa que se extiende o intenta extenderse al cielo hasta los modernos que parecieran realizar un pequeño esfuerzo para alcanzar tales alturas.

it is about time that a new anthology of america's true city of letters was published. this collection covers the biggest names in chicago writing (or any literature period) to the moer obscure authors. it's all here, novel extracts, poems, memoirs, essays, articles, stories, drama... and there is so much more to chicago style writing than what is in this collection, as is pointed out in the afterward. but this is an excellent place to start. i highly recommend this collection to everyone, and i think that those who love chicago or live in chicago should be required to read it.

this collection really captures the essence of chicago. the selections are top notch. today i toured the stockyards

This is the premier book for information regarding the recovery of the Great Chicago Fire. An absolute must read for anyone seriously studying Chicago history or, like me, an emergency management student.

This is exactly what I was looking for. My great great grandparents lived in Chicago during the great fire. I always wondered what my family had experienced during the years they were in Chicago and why they decided to leave for Nebraska. I believe I found my answers.