Book (b)

From the back cover: "Over the decades, Catholics in Chicago have earned a reputation for 'prayerful heterodoxy.' That means they pray deeply about their faith and feel empowered and compelled to say what they believe, while respecting and celebrating the unity and diversity that both defines and challenges them. In this slim volume of stories, essays, poems, and passionate personal pleas, more than thirty Chicago Catholics reveal their hopes for the church they love--sometimes ardently, sometimes painfully, but always faithfully....Taken together, their experiences paint a portrait of the Catholicism being lived at this moment in this unique American city." The concept behind the book, written on the eve of Francis Cardinal George's retirement, was to take "snapshots" of the local church for the benefit of the next archbishop (and whoever else might be interested).

Wealth of Nations is a black & white illustrated book about the economy and workers.

Chapbook of poems by H. Melt, documenting their personal experience of surviving Chicago (the "City of Cold Shoulders") as a member of the transqueer community.

The common assumption, at the time this book was written, was that the Chicago Public Library system had been founded in a distinct moment after the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, with help from the British. Author Gwladys Spencer argues that by 1871, the founding of CPL was already underway. The book presents a history of CPL up to 1872, and sets it in the greater context of the library movement in Illinois and around the country. (Adapted from introduction.)

From back cover: "...Studs Lonigan has established itself as a classic of the American social novel. Its setting is the South Side of Chicago during the moral chaos of the Prohibition era. Its protagonist, Studs Lonigan, is a young man seeking a destiny he cannot find, leaving behind him only lost ideals and unanswered questions to mark his swift passage from youth to early death. In his frustrated ambitions, his gradual brutalization, and his final failure, Studs emerges as a prototype of the lost and self-alienated American, both product and victim of urban society. The trilogy is, in the words of Philip Allan Friedman, 'a monumental work in the tradition of American literary naturalism...' Alfred Kazin has called Studs Lonigan 'one of the most honest and important works of our time.'"

Catalogue for Extinct Entities - a project that explores various histories of Chicago based art-spaces and collectives that no longer exist through dialogue with artists and scholars as a public forum for research.* *taken from introduction

For twenty-six years Chicagoan Mike Royko has written the best doggone daily essay column in America. Along the way he's discovered the strange, the unusual, and the truth. So now meet his creation, Dr. I. M. Kookie, who thinks the world is just one big madhouse. Mike Royko thinks so too, but his remedy is to laugh.* *Abstract taken from back cover

For nearly half a century, the greater Lawndale area was the vibrant, spirited center of Jewish life in Chicago. It contained almost 40 percent of the city's entire Jewish population with over 70 synagogues and numerous active Jewish organizations and institutions, such as the Jewish People's Institute, the Hebrew Theological College, and Mount Sinai Hospital. Its residents included "King of Swing" Benny Goodman, Israeli prime minister Golda Meir, journalists Irv Kupcinet and Meyer Levin, federal judge Abraham Lincoln Marovitz, civil rights attorney Elmer Gertz, Eli's Cheesecake founder Eli Shulman, and comedian Shelley Berman. Many of the selected images come from the author's extensive collection. This book will bring back memories for those who lived there and retell the story of Jewish life on the West Side for those who did not. No matter where the scattered Jews of Chicago live now, many can trace their roots to this "Jerusalem of Chicago." (via: https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/9780738560151/Chicagos-Jewish-West-Side)

This book is Lew Rosenbaum's first published collection of poetry

Dan S. Wang interviewed Dan Peterman about a range of topics: Peterman's art practice, the community that inhabited the building at 61st Street and Dorchester, the fire that destroyed the building, the struggle against the city to rebuild, and the rebirth of the building as the Experimental Station.