Showing posts with label historical fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label historical fiction. Show all posts

Dark Hearts of Chicago Review

Dark Hearts of Chicago
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Dark Hearts of Chicago ReviewI bought this book because of William Horwood. Books like the Stonor Eagles, or the Skallagrigg, are utterly special experiences and I will look for him regularly to see whether he will lead me into new places, either of emotion or of adventure, with a new tale.

This is totally different from any work I have read from him, but excellent.
The setting is very real, Chicago in 1893 is well told, I can imagine it from the short and vivid descriptions. I hate too much telling of places and smells and flowers and shapes, but the way it is handled here is very well done, short and yet I could really feel where we were.
The short chapters are simply told, very stark, nearly just facts, and still, the tension mounts, the various strands flow together, the resolution develops step by step. Soon, I could not stop reading because the mystery that was being unveiled, the small and big cogs coming together was so gripping.
The persons were well drawn, I could get involved with them emotionally, although there is a bit of distance, somehow, as if I were also a journalist following a story. There is no comparison with the deeply emotional tales Horwood has written before, where faith and feelings and inner callings were so very important.
The partially horrific settings (madhouse, slums) are not overdone, I was frightened at moments that there might be too much horror, but it was always just enough for the story, no violence for violence's sake, and no obsession with the sick minds of some of the characters. Again, just enough to be vivid and to make the story very very clear, also in its darkness.
Finally, the telling from the women's point of view was a bonus. Not only did the women seem real for the time (no 21st century heroines put by chance in a long skirt), but to see the limitations and the courage and strength of them, and the first steps towards equality that were taken then, it was a true bonus. Never overwhelmed the story, but gave an extra dimension I enjoyed a lot.
I will read anything by these two authors again.
I recommend this book to anyone who likes a good mystery, who likes a well done realistic historical setting, and who still wants to be very well entertained.
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Claire: A Woman's Journey: NY Heiress - Chicago Madam Review

Claire: A Woman's Journey: NY Heiress - Chicago Madam
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Claire: A Woman's Journey: NY Heiress - Chicago Madam ReviewThis book made for some interesting reading. The writing had me hanging on to every word. Couldn't put down until I got to the end!Claire: A Woman's Journey: NY Heiress - Chicago Madam Overview

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The Chicago Connection Review

The Chicago Connection
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The Chicago Connection ReviewBeing a native of Chicago, stories about the city and the mob get my attention, as did The Chicago Connection. The story makes the book a real page-turner, a great addition for your vacation reading. I kept wondering how the main character was going to get out of the situations he created for himself with the Chicago mob of Prohibition times. What made it even more fascinating was to learn that the story was true and the characters real! Don't hesitate to add it to your reading list. You won't be sorry.The Chicago Connection Overview

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Alchemy of Bones: Chicago's Luetgert Murder Case of 1897 Review

Alchemy of Bones: Chicago's Luetgert Murder Case of 1897
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Alchemy of Bones: Chicago's Luetgert Murder Case of 1897 ReviewAs a descendant of the murder victim, I was contacted by the author and contributed what little I could toward his research. Of course, Mr. Loerzel contributed far more to my family tree research. Others had written about this case but I was never impressed with their results. It's difficult to make a good case or write a good story if most of the evidence is circumstantial. They didn't have DNA testing back then, so the few bone fragments that were recovered were never conclusively proven to be those of Louise Bicknese Luetgert. So, where is all the evidence from that trial? No one knows or remembers what's become of it. I'm hoping this book will bring enough attention to this case that someone out there will stumble upon those bits and pieces of evidence stowed away for decades in the attic of the old family home. If any story about this murder can help accomplish that, it's this one. It's written in the style of some of the best murder mystery novels.Alchemy of Bones: Chicago's Luetgert Murder Case of 1897 Overview

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The Gold Coast and the Slum: A Sociological Study of Chicago's Near North Side (University of Chicago Sociological Series) Review

The Gold Coast and the Slum: A Sociological Study of Chicago's Near North Side (University of Chicago Sociological Series)
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The Gold Coast and the Slum: A Sociological Study of Chicago's Near North Side (University of Chicago Sociological Series) ReviewThe Gold Coast and the Slum is one of the classic studies of the Chicago School of urban sociology. In that sense, it has been largely superceded by more sophisticated analyses in the intervening decades, yet in terms of readability and flair it is very difficult to think of a better introduction to the world of urban studies. Today, in fact, it reads more like a work of literature than a sociological study--but in a time in which the relative fortunes of sociology are on the decline and the fortunes of literary study are on the rise, it may have more to say now than it did even at the time of its first publication. When one considers the rise of what are now called "edge cities," those odd conglomerations of city and suburbia, whose major products are often far more closely related to the fantastic and the imaginary than to the tangible products of standard urban industrialism, perhaps a method which owes more to literary study than to the quantifying methods sociology has developed since the decline of the Chicago School is more appropriate. In that sense, The Gold Coast and the Slum may deserve a fresh look.The Gold Coast and the Slum: A Sociological Study of Chicago's Near North Side (University of Chicago Sociological Series) Overview

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Forever Open, Clear, and Free: The Struggle for Chicago's Lakefront Review

Forever Open, Clear, and Free: The Struggle for Chicago's Lakefront
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Forever Open, Clear, and Free: The Struggle for Chicago's Lakefront ReviewHere is the story the subtitle suggests: Chicagoans gradually realized that the lands fronting Lake Michigan were more than mere wastelands to be utilized variously by industrialists and conventioneers, and this realization led citizens from A. Montgomery Ward down to the plainest of the plain to do battle with a series of regimes which seemed to have a very odd construction of the phrase, from the city charter, "forever open, free and clear". It is the people, not the government of Chicago, whom we should thank that parts of Grant, Jackson, and Lincoln Parks are still "open, free and clear".
Beyond her immediate theme, however, Lois Wille has written an excellent concise introduction to the history of Chicago, which will especially appeal to those who approach history from the viewpoint of non-conformism. And in a city like Chicago, you're either part of the Machine or a non-conformist.
Lois Wille was a colleague of Mike Royko, all the way from the Chicago Daily News days. She has all of his creativity and productive skepticism, and, in her own way, did just as much to worry and afflict the destructive establishmentarians who by fair means and foul seem to wind up governing the City of Chicago.Forever Open, Clear, and Free: The Struggle for Chicago's Lakefront Overview

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Burnham of Chicago: Architect and Planner, Second Edition Review

Burnham of Chicago: Architect and Planner, Second Edition
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Burnham of Chicago: Architect and Planner, Second Edition ReviewThomas Hines is one of the best professors at UCLA; his classes on architectural history remain some of my very favorites from my four years at the school. This book is a fascinating account of architect Burnham's personal and professional life, and is bound to be interesting to students both of architecture, history and human nature.Burnham of Chicago: Architect and Planner, Second Edition Overview

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The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired Chicago Review

The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired Chicago
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The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired Chicago ReviewVery informative and the author writes with prose. It doesn't read like an encyclopedia. If you want to learn about the bad girls of Chicago during the 1930s, the ones that inspired CHICAGO (the musical), this book comes with my recommendation.
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Real Hope in Chicago Review

Real Hope in Chicago
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Real Hope in Chicago ReviewI read this book and wanted to cry. I asked the Lord where is this kind of true, loving, caring ministry today? Whatever the Lord has sent me to read, he will use. My husband and I are now in a one-year old ministry. I hope to use this book as a model of love and caring for the people of God. I have done much reading on what goes on in ministry for those who name the name of Jesus Christ and I have come away sorely discouraged and disappointed. I have given this work to our ministry leaders and asked them to read it! The comments from those who read it were truly blessed by this man's work and obedience to God. To think that his work started with a "washing machine"; just meeting the needs of God's people, opened a great door of ministry in Chicago. I truly love this work! I have never met the author, but his work has greatly influenced what we will do in our ministry for God. He that has begun a good work... I tell our leaders that this is the spirit we are endeavoring to have in our minstry at Christ's Church. Thank you for sharing his story and carrying this resource.Real Hope in Chicago Overview

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The 1933 Chicago World's Fair: A Century of Progress Review

The 1933 Chicago World's Fair: A Century of Progress
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The 1933 Chicago World's Fair: A Century of Progress ReviewThis is a must read for anyone interested in the history of world fairs.
Reading this book transports you back to 1933 Chicago. The explanations of the politics of the time are outstanding. I cold not pu it down. The 1933 Chicago World's Fair: A Century of ProgressThe 1933 Chicago World's Fair: A Century of Progress Overview

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The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America Review

The Devil in the White City:  Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America
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The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America ReviewErik Larson does a bang-up job of conveying what life must have been like in the "Second City" as the 19th century drew to its fitful conclusion. Bristling at the constant reminder of New York City's superiority in so many areas, Chicago's city fathers rallied the troops and went all out in proving to New Yorkers, to the nation and to the world that Chicago was equal to the great challenge of mounting a World Exposition of truly monumental stature. Larson's descriptions of the Herculean effort put forth by numerous architects, builders, politicians, etc. lead the reader to a true appreciation of these "can do," spirited individuals.
Yet beneath the teeming activity and a short distance away from the gleaming white Pleasure Palaces of the Fair, there stood a building of a different sort entirely, inhabited by one of the most vicious, truly evil creatures the young nation ever produced. Larson does an adequate, but not great job of telling the darker story surrounding H H Holmes, the mesmeric Svengali whose brilliant blue eyes and engaging charm seduced at least a score (one estimate was up to 200, which the author disputes) unfortunate women. Unlike Jack the Ripper, to whom he was later likened, he didn't limit himself to female victims. Business partners who had outworn their usefulness and several children were amongst his prey, as well. He just had a penchant for murder.
The sections on the construction of the Columbia Exposition are filled with fascinating anecdotes, ranging from the origins of the sobriquet "windy city (derisively coined by Charles Anderson Dana, Editor of The New York Sun)" to the dramatic entrance of Annie Oakley, barreling in on horseback and blazing away with her two six-shooters in Buffalo Bill Cody's Western Show adjacent to the Fair Grounds. Larson also provides an interesting side story surrounding Patrick Predergast, a delusional political aspirant who turns assassin. He paints a compelling portrait of Fredrick Law Olmstead, American History's premier landscape architect who took up the almost impossible task of designing and overseeing the Exposition's parks and lagoons. The hero of the book, however, is Daniel Hudson Burnham, who was ultimately responsible for the lion's share of the planning, construction and smooth running of the entire enterprise. He had a little over two years from the time Congress selected Chicago from a list of candidate cities that included Saint Louis and New York, to the day of the Expo's official opening. That he got the job done within the alloted time is one of the great marvels in an age of marvels, especially given the myriad difficulties which he and his crew had to overcome.
The Holmes narractive appears a bit lackluster in comparison to the story of the Fair's construction. Larson acknowledges the difficulty he faced in recreating Holmes' vicious crimes via imaginary vignettes. He states in an afterword that he went back and read Capote's IN COLD BLOOD for the technique in which Capote so brilliantly engaged in his imaginative reconstruction of events. The only problem with this approach is that Capote had access to and the confidence of the two killers that are at the center of IN COLD BLOOD. Larson had only newspaper accounts from the period as well as a very unreliable journal that Holmes wrote after he was tried and sentenced to death (he was hanged several months after the trial). It would appear that Larson goes a bit too far out of his way to avoid the lurid and sensationalitic aspects of Holmes' killing spree. One has only to visit some of the numerous web sites devoted to Holmes to see that Larson is particularly reticent to discuss Holmes' sexual deviance. This is understandable, as Larson wants to be taken seriously as an historian, yet the facts are out there (most of them well documented) so it wouldn't have hurt to have included a bit more of the darker details. The book could also have used more illustrations. The Chicago Tribune, at the time the story first broke in 1894, included a detailed floor plan of the "Chamber of Horrors" Holmes built on the corner of Sixty-Third and Wallace in the Englewood section of Chicago. That illustration would have given the reader a better sense of the bizarre layout of the structure. More pictures of the Exposition would have also been helpful. Here again, there are several sites on the web devoted to the Columbia Exposition that have many pages of great photographs.
The books virtues far outweigh its shortcomings and I have no problem in recommending THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY to anyone interested in US History, Chicago Architecture, or just a well told story.
BEKThe Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America Overview

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Chicago: City on the Make: Sixtieth Anniversary Edition Review

Chicago: City on the Make: Sixtieth Anniversary Edition
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Chicago: City on the Make: Sixtieth Anniversary Edition ReviewThis is the book that the Chicago Chamber of Commerce didn't want the world to see. Instead of pumping up the tourism and real estate industries with promotional-pamphlet blather, Algren's essay presents the real history and state of Chicago: the back alleys, the dispossessed, the swindlers dressed up in their Prarie Avenue finery, the kill-or-be-killed ethos of this cutthroat "trader's town." Seldom has indignation been so lyrical.Chicago: City on the Make: Sixtieth Anniversary Edition Overview

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