Illinois Books

This is a wonderful way to travel through 2005! Each month you get information on the various dance companies, performance times and best of all great pictures. These are the dancers, choreographers and dance companies we should all be going to see. The tap photo for April could have had more life, but the other images, like November and January, are just wonderful full color movement shots. Now I will always see when each show is happening in '05...and there is contact info for the companies if you are still a performer yourself.

The book is based on a lucid use of literature, as residents of the "hinterlands" flock to a great but chaotic city. The initial wave of migrants is followed by later migrants of diverse waste. The book provides a compelling vision of the wonders of a great city, and the nostalgia for the pastoral roots of many of its residents.

This is such a great book. It covers a lot of the history of Chicago that appeals both to kids as well as adults. My nephew really liked the book and had a lot of fun doing the crafts. It was refreshing to have so much fun with a book instead of trying to bear through it. Owen Hurd wrote this in such an intelligent way that it is as entertaining for adults as it is for kids.

This extensive and elegant work is the consummate guide to all things real estate in Chicago: interior design, remodeling, landscaping, and more. The volume is the first must-have, in-depth resource and reference manual for all of your Chicago housing needs. The Chicago Homebook will undoubtedly help your dreams of tomorrow, materialize today.

I bought this book simply for the list of potential employers it contains and found it to be a great resource for browsing employers in different categories. It contains web addresses, street addresses, short descriptions of what the company does, and all the companies are divided into different categories such as "Accounting and Management Consulting" or "Real Estate".

The only part that I found to be a joke is at the very beginning, concerning how to conduct a job search. The instructions are so general that they are useless and the cover letter and resume examples are only mildly useful. More importantly, information like that is already readily available in better and more detailed format on the internet, so they could really have just saved some paper and left this part out.

The bottom line is that this book is a crucial reference guide for companies you could be applying to that you didn't even know existed until you got this book. Since it narrows things down to one metropolitan area instead of a region or the nation as a whole, it allows the author to list even more employers for this specific city and with even more detail.

A must have if you are doing a focused job search!

Good to see Chicago modern art getting such a splendid treatment -- I learned a lot about all the different artists working, and came away with a sense of Chicago as a rich and exciting place for modernist painters

"You won't see the men and women pictured here on society pages or hobnobbing with the mayor..." (From the introduction.)

Photographer Richard Younker has produced an important book, based upon more than 20 years of photographing and interviewing "ordinary people" in the Chicago area. He has given a voice to people rarely heard from, the people whose gaze we avoid in the street, who we often ignore and put out of mind.

Yet these people are part of America and my city, and it's good to hear from them, if only for the three or four paragraphs reproduced across from their images.

And the photography! Younker is a very subtle, fly on the wall operator, and his images ring true. In some he has confronted his subjects, in others they seem unaware of his presence. All the images "work," providing a wide ranging look at a variety of people he describes as "living close to the edge."

Chicago People is a fine piece of work.

Highly recommended!

My husband and I enjoyed this book very much. It was very informative and very enlightening. I have recommended it to all of our friends who are interested in Chicago history.

Thank you.

This book was very informative and I truly enjoyed it and found it very easy to read. It appears as a school type book and in this sense being also for young adults. The only drawback is the book is only 100 pages and if it were in smaller print in a paperback, it would probably be only 60 pages or so, but nevertheless, it is very enlightening to the whole Chicago Seven Political Protest Trial.

The books sets the stage, very briefly describes the Characters, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin,, Rennie Davis, Lee Weiner, John Foines, Dave Dillinger, and Tom Heyden, also The head of the Black Panthers, Bobby Seals. Then there is the defense attorney, William Kunstler, the Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, the Prosecutor, Thomas Foran and the Judge Julius Hoffman.

There is no such thing as a completely objective book, however, it appears this book is as objective as it can get and you can decide who is right and who is wrong - in your opinion.

Personally speaking, I am no revolutionary, but I take the side of the seven to a major degree, at least their political ideas liberal freedom, as Che Chevara, however I am my own entity with my own value system. And their radicalness was also a sign of the times, times I think that at that time many person's minds had their perceptions opened from the use of psychedelics, enabling American society to have a large part of its populations of a higher conscious awareness level beyond the absolutism of political ideology in the flexible liberal element of free movement. And this is opposed to the stagnant political concepts of complete identification with the ego realty, and I'm sure especially to the Right conservative domination and power holders we have today.

The chapter on the their bios today is way too brief, but the book is about the trial, and so, it would be a good idea to read Hoffman's Auto bio and earlier books, "Revolution For The Hell Of It!," "Steal This Book," and, Rubin's "Do It!" and so forth to get a better grip. I've read a lot of the interviews of Alan Ginsberg, some of Leary's books and Ram Dass, some Che Chevara and Fidel Castro. Anyway this book was good, but to short. A little pricey too, but it comes in this really nice laminated hard cover, cosmetic and sturdy hard bound.

Lovers of Chicago's magnificent architecture will very much enjoy this unique little book. It is essentially comprised of a series of photographs (most of them from vintage postcards) of various architectural gems and highlights from Chicago's downtown, especially the Loop, which were erected between about 1866 to the mid 1930s, and many of which either no longer exist or have been significantly altered over the years. It is a look back into history.

The book is organized by area of town, i.e. Michigan Ave., Wabash Ave., State St., Dearborn St., Clark St., La Salle St., and along the river and North Michigan St. Each chapter opens with a street layout, with a key to each important building in the area, whether or not it is in the photographs. The photos/postcards follow, each identifying buildings, significant details, alterations, occasionally interior photos, and once in a while even text of the postcard on the back. The presentation is well thought out and thoroughly engrossing.

I am very glad I bought this book. I thumb through it often. If you are a fan of Chicago's architectural heritage, you ought to have a copy.