The Great Chicago Trivia Fact Book

Facts about Chicago are presented in chapters, each of which is chronologically arranged, thus presenting timelines on various facets of Chicago. Bruce Hatton Boyer is an ETHS alumnus, class of 1964.

A fun-filled volume for Chicagoans, visitors, and anyone interested in Chicago, it is a collection of fascinating facts, wonderful quotations, and surprising history about famous biggests, longests, oldests, and firsts"". A useful, entertaining introduction to America's most livable great city.""

The Great New York City Trivia and Fact Book is a celebration of the people and institutions that have given New York it's unique character among the great cities of the world

Despite its rough-and-tumble image, Chicago has long been identified as a city where books take center stage. In fact, a volume by A. J. Liebling gave the Second City its nickname. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle arose from the midwestern capital’s most infamous industry. The great Chicago Fire led to the founding of the Chicago Public Library. The city has fostered writers such as Nelson Algren, Saul Bellow, and Gwendolyn Brooks. Chicago’s literary magazines The Little Review and Poetry introduced the world to Eliot, Hemingway, Joyce, and Pound. The city’s robust commercial printing industry supported a flourishing culture of the book. With this beautifully produced collection, Chicago’s rich literary tradition finally gets its due. Chicago by the Book profiles 101 landmark publications about Chicago from the past 170 years that have helped define the city and its image. Each title—carefully selected by the Caxton Club, a venerable Chicago bibliophilic organization—is the focus of an illustrated essay by a leading scholar, writer, or bibliophile. Arranged chronologically to show the history of both the city and its books, the essays can be read in order from Mrs. John H. Kinzie’s 1844 Narrative of the Massacre of Chicago to Sara Paretsky’s 2015 crime novel Brush Back. Or one can dip in and out, savoring reflections on the arts, sports, crime, race relations, urban planning, politics, and even Mrs. O’Leary’s legendary cow. The selections do not shy from the underside of the city, recognizing that its grit and graft have as much a place in the written imagination as soaring odes and boosterism. As Neil Harris observes in his introduction, “Even when Chicagoans celebrate their hearth and home, they do so while acknowledging deep-seated flaws.” At the same time, this collection heartily reminds us all of what makes Chicago, as Norman Mailer called it, the “great American city.” With essays from, among others, Ira Berkow, Thomas Dyja, Ann Durkin Keating, Alex Kotlowitz, Toni Preckwinkle, Frank Rich, Don Share, Carl Smith, Regina Taylor, Garry Wills, and William Julius Wilson; and featuring works by Saul Bellow, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sandra Cisneros, Clarence Darrow, Erik Larson, David Mamet, Studs Terkel, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Frank Lloyd Wright, and many more.

A collection of anecdotes and excerpts collected from Chicago's rich literary legacy, with profiles of the neighborhoods featured in key works and those that inspired some of the city's authors.

John Del Greco's life dramatically changes when, as a newly-sworn lawyer, he reluctantly agrees to represent a maverick group of black bridge workers who are fighting City Hall for recognition of their new organization and to oust a union that collaborated with the old Chicago political machine. The idealistic Del Greco knows he's up against a powerful union, but what he doesn't know is that a racist killer lurks on the river intimidating anyone who supports the new union. This killer brazenly murdered twenty-year-veteran white bridge tender, Stanley "Stosh" Kozinski, at his own job site on the 18th Street Bridge during the times of Chicago's worst racial tension since the race riots of 1919. Del Greco is paired with an alluring ally in his fight for justice for the bridge workers. Michelle Jordan is the attractive black opposing special counsel hired by the City and is sympathetic to the plight of the black river workers. Greco and Jordan's clandestine and professionally unethical collaboration lead to a passionate love affair and dramatic life-and-death confrontation with the river murderer.

Route 66 Adventure Handbook is your personal guide to the vanishing American roadside, with all of its exuberance, splendor, and absurdity. For this updated and expanded fifth edition, Drew Knowles has included it all: magnificent architecture, natural wonders, Art Deco masterpieces, vintage motels and cafes, unique museums, offbeat attractions, fascinating artifacts and icons, and kitschy tourist traps. The addition of city maps, showing the multiple paths of Route 66 and displaying the exact locations of points of interest, is a major improvement over the already critically acclaimed fourth edition of the book. The fifth edition also includes hundreds of beautiful new photographs and the addition of dozens of new attractions. Additionally, GPS coordinates have been added for virtually all of the photos, so that travelers can plug the information into their smartphones and other navigation devices and instantly determine where each photo was taken and compare it to the condition of that particular site at the time of their visit. Filled with wonderfully quirky side trips and fun bits of trivia, Route 66 Adventure Handbook is the most authoritative resource for anyone looking to explore the Mother Road. Fasten your seat belts!