Whether you’re a Chicago native or just passing through for the summer, there is so much to find if you travel through the city’s sprawling neighborhoods and visit their many bookstores! Readers can make an all-day trek from the Northside down to the Southside and discover the wonder of some
Posts tagged as “Chicago”
This May, we’re reading Country and Midwestern: Chicago in the History of Country Music and the Folk Revival by Mark Guarino for our #ReadUCP Twitter book club. Get in the mood by listening to this playlist drawn from the book, and join us on Twitter on May 25 at 1
Billy Boy Arnold has been playing Chicago blues for just about as long as the genre has existed, with a recording and performing career that spans over seventy years. His newly published autobiography, The Blues Dream of Billy Boy Arnold—hailed by Library Journal as a “lively, illuminating memoir essential to
The post Listen to a Playlist of Billy Boy Arnold’s Most Essential Tracks appeared first on The Chicago Blog.
The University of Chicago Press is pleased to announce that Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side by Eve Ewing and The Republic of Color: Science, Perception, and the Making of Modern America by Michael Rossi are the recipients of the 2020 and 2021 Gordon
The post Eve L. Ewing and Michael Rossi Receive the 2020 and 2021 Laing Awards appeared first on The Chicago Blog.
On March 4, 1837, Chicago was officially incorporated as a city. In the one hundred and eighty-four years since then, the city has grown and changed. On this anniversary of incorporation, we suggest ten books to get to know this complex city a little bit better. Sun Ra’s Chicago: Afrofuturism and the City In Sun Ra’s Chicago, William Sites brings this visionary musician back to earth—specifically to the city’s South Side, where from 1946 to 1961 he lived and relaunched his career. The postwar South Side was a hotbed of unorthodox religious and cultural activism: Afrocentric philosophies flourished, storefront prophets sold “dream-book bibles,” and Elijah Muhammad was building the Nation of Islam. It was also an unruly musical crossroads where the man then known as Sonny Blount drew from an array of intellectual and musical sources—from radical nationalism, revisionist Christianity, and science fiction to jazz, blues, Latin dance music, and pop exotica—to construct a philosophy and performance style that imagined a new identity and future for African Americans. Sun Ra’s Chicago shows that late-twentieth-century Afrofuturism emerged from a deep, utopian engagement with the city—and that by excavating the postwar black experience of Sun Ra’s South Side milieu, we can come to see the […]
The post A History of Chicago in 10 Books appeared first on The Chicago Blog.
This week on the blog, we're highlighting one of our most timely and important new releases—The Torture Letters: Reckoning with Police Violence
The post An Unflinching Excerpt from ‘The Torture Letters’ by Laurence Ralph appeared first on The Chicago Blog.
We may have missed National Polka Day (August 9) and National Accordion Awareness Month (June), but that doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate a Polka legend any time of the year. And since October is Polish American Heritage Month, it seemed the perfect time to talk about Li’l Wally Jagiello, the Polka King, a favorite performer and icon of Polish Chicago. We’ll let Dominic A. Pacyga tell the story in this piece from his new book American Warsaw: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of Polish Chicago. “Walter Jagiello, known as Mały Władziu to his Polish American fans, was born and raised in Chicago. He began playing and singing polka music at the age of eight and started his career on Division Street in those same bars that Algren wrote about, places like the Gold Star, the Midnight Inn, Phyllis’s, Zosia’s, Al’s Village Inn, the Orange Lantern, and the Lucky Stop. Roughly sixty taverns lined Division Street in Polonia, and most offered live music. A consummate performer, Li’l Wally performed nearly nonstop his entire career. His 1956 hit “I Wish I Was Single Again” was on the top 40 charts, a rarity for a polka recording. Jagiello was one of the first […]
The post Get to Know the Polka King: Read an Excerpt from “American Warsaw” appeared first on The Chicago Blog.
To study the disappearing past of Chicago's Maxwell Street neighborhood and acquaint himself with its present, Tim Cresswell explored the area on foot, photographing everything he saw. Here are a few of our favorite photos, from Cresswell's newly released book, Maxwell Street: Writing and Thinking Place.
The post Exploring Chicago’s Maxwell Street with Tim Cresswell appeared first on The Chicago Blog.
To study the disappearing past of Chicago's Maxwell Street neighborhood and acquaint himself with its present, Tim Cresswell explored the area on foot, photographing everything he saw. Here are a few of our favorite photos, from Cresswell's newly released book, Maxwell Street: Writing and Thinking Place.
The post Exploring Chicago’s Maxwell Street with Tim Cresswell appeared first on The Chicago Blog.
ComEd parent company Exelon Corporation has announced plans to build the largest urban solar power plant in the nation in the city’s south side, committing $60 million to the project with plans for completion by the end of his year. More…
Former Chicago White Sox player Bo Jackson has partnered to open a new bank in Burr Ridge.
Chase Bank has filed suit to recover on a $7 million load given to Andrew "Flip" Filipowski, the 1990’s Chicago tech wiz who became a billionaire after selling Platinum Technologies.