Did you know Chicago is home to absolute scads of wonderful authors? We here at The Book Cellar love supporting local, and here you can find books written by your fellow Chicagoans in addition to titles that'll teach you The Windy City has a richer history than you'd even guess!
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Chicago Books!
With special stories and experiences from fans and memorable moments about past and present players and coaches, this lively, detailed book explores the personalities, events, and facts every Blackhawks fan should know. It contains crucial information such as important dates, player nicknames, and outstanding achievements by singular players. This guide to all things Blackhawks covers the team's 49-year championship drought, and the transition from Chicago Stadium to the United Center. Now updated through the 2015-2016 season, it also includes the Hawks' triumphant win over the Tampa Bay Lightning in the 2015 Stanley Cup final.
There's never been a better time to be a Cubs fan, and this lively, detailed book explores the personalities, events, and facts every fan should know. More than a look at the century-long wait leading up to the team's unforgettable 2016 World Series win, the book contains crucial information for Cubs faithful, such as important dates, player nicknames, memorable moments, and outstanding achievements by singular players. This guide to all things Cubs also includes a list of must-do Cubs-related activities, which include taking in Wrigley field, traveling to Arizona for spring training, and sipping beers at the best Cubs bars around the country. This updated World Series edition features a new generation of Cubs stars who brought the championship back home to Chicago at last, including manager Joe Maddon, sluggers Anthony Rizzo and Kris Bryant, and more.
With 135 years of Chicago Cubs history, this lively, detailed book explores the personalities, events, and facts every Cubs fan should know. More than a look at the century-long wait for another World Series win, the book contains crucial information for Cubs fans, such as important dates, player nicknames, memorable moments, and outstanding achievements by singular players. This guide to all things Cubs also includes a list of must-do Cubs-related activities, which include taking in Wrigley field, traveling to Arizona for spring training, and sipping beers at the best Cubs bars around the country.
Soaring skyscrapers, deep-dish pizza, and improv comedy may be what the city is best known for, but they are only the beginning of Chicago's story. It could take a lifetime to experience everything this one-of-a-kind town has to offer. But what if you only have a few days to explore? You're in luck! The one hundred adventures in this candid insider's guide promise an authentic taste of the Windy City whether you're taking a weekend-sized bite or sticking around for the buffet of a lifetime. You'll find seasonal and themed itineraries to make planning your explorations easier. Discover which blues club locals swear by, pay a visit to a quiet green space hidden in plain sight, or dig in to an ice cream cone piled high with five different flavors! If you're visiting for the first time, or you're lucky enough to call Chicago home, these one hundred iconic experiences should top your to-do list.
It could take a lifetime to experience everything Chicago has to offer, but most tourists only have a day or two. Page gives you weekend-sized itineraries for your to-do list. Whether you're just making a stop-over or a Chicago resident entertaining out-of-town guests, you'll find something educational-- and fun-- in this book!
You may know Illinois as the former home of Abraham Lincoln or Chicagoland. But Illinois is more than just the Land of Lincoln or the location of one of the US's largest cities. 100 Things to Do in Illinois Before You Die introduces you to the state's rich history, showcasing the places with some of the best food and entertainment Illinois has to offer. Discover Cahokia Mounds and Dickson Mounds State Museum, which reveal sacred sites and customs of indigenous tribes who dwelled here before it became the United States. Experience Mark Twain-style paddleboats, world class museums, and unique lodgings like a train caboose or a treehouse. There are boulders for climbing, hot air balloons for riding, and some of the best spectator sports to enjoy--all just beyond the borders of your neighborhood or region. Local author Melanie Holmes shares her favorite tips about her home state. Whether you're a lifelong Illinoisan or visiting for the weekend, you'll find something in these pages to add to your bucket list. From sandstone-lined waterways to the best of theater, dance, and comedy clubs, Illinois has it all.
In 2009, Loreen Niewenhuis walked completely around Lake Michigan. This book chronicles that journey, a 1,000-mile walk around the world's fifth-largest lake. The book explores both the geology of the lake and the measure of a person--a woman, married, mother of two sons (who joined her for portions of the walk). But most of the walk was done solo, an adventure in discovery of self and place. Niewenhuis conveys a sense of the magnitude of the lake she loves, a place so elemental to the four Midwestern states that form its shores. From a ground-level perspective, the book explores the natural and human history of Lake Michigan . . . and raises important questions about preserving our wild places and protecting fragile ecosystems on which we all depend.
-The ultimate insider's guide to Chicago, fully illustrated with 111 full-page color photographs -Features interesting and unusual places not found in traditional travel guides -Part of the international 111 Places/111 Shops series with over 170 titles and 1 million copies in print worldwide -Appeals to both the local market (9,5 million people call Chicago home) and the tourist market (over 60 million people visit Chicago every year!) Chicago. City of the Big Shoulders. What started off as a small fur-trading settlement is today a bustling metropolis. Once considered the hog butcher of the world, stacker of wheat, player with railroads and the nation's freight handler, Chicago's colorful past remains hidden in the nooks and crannies of this wonderful windy city. Adventures await, from the glamorous to the gritty. Sip dirty martinis in an elegant, underground, 1920's bank vault. Paddle a kayak down the infamous Bubbly Creek of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. While away an afternoon in a salt cave, or smoke a classic cigar in the oldest family-run tobacco shop in the U.S. Snorkel a 32-acre, limestone sheet shoal, one of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the Midwest. Dine outdoors in a 23rd floor Beaux-Arts cupola overlooking the Chicago River. Whether you're an out-of-towner or a diehard Chicago dweller who thinks you've seen it all, these 111 hidden places are waiting for you to discover them.
Chicago's love affair with opera began early, in 1850, when the frontier town welcomed its first traveling opera singers. A full house applauded the opening performance, but during a repeat performance the next day, the theater burned to the ground. Nonetheless, Chicago had been bitten by the opera bug, and it has never lost its enthusiasm for the art.
More than sixty years--and many visiting opera companies--would pass before the city established an opera company of its own. Robert Marsh recounts the trials and triumphs of the entrepreneurs and the colorful international artists who brought opera to Chicago and staged it in a number of different theaters. In the first half of the twentieth century, seven opera companies were started in Chicago--and failed. Finally, in 1954, three friends launched the company that became Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the city gained a company that not only thrived but earned recognition as one of the nation's great cultural institutions. This book also details the history and fortunes of the Chicago Opera Theater from its inception in 1974 to the present.
Singers, musicians, enterprising impresarios, richly decorated opera houses, and performances that held audiences spellbound all figure into Marsh's lively account of opera in Chicago. The story also provides an overview of changes in the operatic repertoire, audience development, and approaches to production as opera grew from a "stand-and-sing" event to its full flowering as enriching musical drama.
Enlivened with nearly a hundred illustrations, 150 Years of Opera in Chicago embraces its subject enthusiastically. This broad and engaging overview is supplemented with a list of professional opera performances in Chicago, from 1850 to 2005.
Look at me. Do you see me? Do you see me in my olive-green uniform, beret, and shiny black boots? Do you see the assault rifle slung across my chest? Finally! I am the badass Israeli soldier at the side of the road, in sunglasses, forearms like bricks. And honestly -- have you ever seen anything quite like me?
Joel Chasnoff is twenty-four years old, an American, and the graduate of an Ivy League university. But when his career as a stand-up comic fails to get off the ground, Chasnoff decides it's time for a serious change of pace. Leaving behind his amenity-laden Brooklyn apartment for a plane ticket to Israel, Joel trades in the comforts of being a stereotypical American Jewish male for an Uzi, dog tags (with his name misspelled), and serious mental and physical abuse at the hands of the Israeli Army. The 188th Crybaby Brigade is a hilarious and poignant account of Chasnoff's year in the Israel Defense Forces -- a year that he volunteered for, and that he'll never get back. As a member of the 188th Armored Brigade, a unit trained on the Merkava tanks that make up the backbone of Israeli ground forces, Chasnoff finds himself caught in a twilight zone-like world of mandatory snack breaks, battalion sing-alongs, and eighteen-year-old Israeli mama's boys who feign injuries to get out of guard duty and claim diarrhea to avoid kitchen work. More time is spent arguing over how to roll a sleeve cuff than studying the mechanics of the Merkava tanks. The platoon sergeants are barely older than the soldiers and are younger than Chasnoff himself. By the time he's sent to Lebanon for a tour of duty against Hezbollah, Chasnoff knows everything about why snot dries out in the desert, yet has never been trained in firing the MAG. And all this while his relationship with his tough-as-nails Israeli girlfriend (herself a former drill sergeant) crumbles before his very eyes. The lone American in a platoon of eighteen-year-old Israelis, Chasnoff takes readers into the barracks; over, under, and through political fences; and face-to-face with the absurd reality of life in the Israeli Army. It is a brash and gritty depiction of combat, rife with ego clashes, breakdowns in morale, training mishaps that almost cost lives, and the barely containable sexual urges of a group of teenagers. What's more, it's an on-the-ground account of life in one of the most em-battled armies on earth -- an occupying force in a hostile land, surrounded by enemy governments and terrorists, reviled by much of the world. With equal parts irreverence and vulnerability, irony and intimacy, Chasnoff narrates a new kind of coming-of-age story -- one that teaches us, moves us, and makes us laugh.
A Cubs dynasty founded on fastballs and fisticuffs.
Unlike today's Chicago Cubs, the Cubs of 1906-1910 were not at all lovable, and certainly did not always display traits customarily linked with a winning team. Their manager would brawl with his own players, and the players brawled with each other. Their second baseman and shortstop hated each other and didn't speak for years. Their best pitcher pitched with a mutilated hand. Their star catcher got into a spat with management and left the team for a year to play professional billiards. Their manager over time grew to despise the team owner. Yet, this group of brawlers, bickerers, and battlers dominated the National League and established a baseball dynasty, winning four National League pennants and two world championships in 5 years. Author Gary D. Santella follows the story of a team whose toughness and tenacity was a fitting reflection of early twentieth-century Chicago.
Chicago's 1933 world's fair set a new direction for international expositions. Earlier fairs had exhibited technological advances, but Chicago's fair organizers used the very idea of progress to buoy national optimism during the Depression's darkest years. Orchestrated by business leaders and engineers, almost all former military men, the fair reflected a business-military-engineering model that envisioned a promising future through science and technology's application to everyday life.
But not everyone at Chicago's 1933 exposition had abandoned notions of progress that entailed social justice and equality, recognition of ethnicity and gender, and personal freedom and expression. The fair's motto, "Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Conforms," was challenged by iconoclasts such as Sally Rand, whose provocative fan dance became a persistent symbol of the fair, as well as a handful of other exceptional individuals, including African Americans, ethnic populations and foreign nationals, groups of working women, and even well-heeled socialites. Cheryl R. Ganz offers the stories of fair planners and participants who showcased education, industry, and entertainment to sell optimism during the depths of the Great Depression. This engaging history also features eighty-six photographs--nearly half of which are full color--of key locations, exhibits, and people, as well as authentic ticket stubs, postcards, pamphlets, posters, and other it
Chicago's 1933 world's fair set a new direction for international expositions. Earlier fairs had exhibited technological advances, but Chicago's fair organizers used the very idea of progress to buoy national optimism during the Depression's darkest years. Orchestrated by business leaders and engineers, almost all former military men, the fair reflected a business-military-engineering model that envisioned a promising future through science and technology's application to everyday life.
But not everyone at Chicago's 1933 exposition had abandoned notions of progress that entailed social justice and equality, recognition of ethnicity and gender, and personal freedom and expression. The fair's motto, "Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Conforms," was challenged by iconoclasts such as Sally Rand, whose provocative fan dance became a persistent symbol of the fair, as well as a handful of other exceptional individuals, including African Americans, ethnic populations and foreign nationals, groups of working women, and even well-heeled socialites. Cheryl R. Ganz offers the stories of fair planners and participants who showcased education, industry, and entertainment to sell optimism during the depths of the Great Depression. This engaging history also features eighty-six photographs--nearly half of which are full color--of key locations, exhibits, and people, as well as authentic ticket stubs, postcards, pamphlets, posters, and other it
A violent period of American labor history reached its bloody apex in 1937 when rattled Chicago police shot, clubbed and gassed a group of men, women and children attempting to picket Republic Steel's South Chicago plant. Ten died and over one hundred were wounded in what became known as the Memorial Day Massacre. A newsreel camera captured about eight minutes of the confrontation, yet local and congressional investigations amazingly reached opposite conclusions about what happened and why. In the first book on the subject, John Hogan sifts through the conflicting reports of all those entangled in that fateful day, including union leaders, news reporters and an undercover National Guard observer revealed after seventy-six years.
The Chicagoland, IL 7 County Atlas covers the City of Chicago and surrounding suburbs, Cook County suburbs, Du Page County, Kane County, Kendall County, Lake County, McHenry County, and Will County. Maps are up-to-date and easy-to-read, and indicate post offices, schools, parks, golf courses, airports, libraries, trains, hospitals and other points of interest. At home, at work, or on the road, the Chicagoland 7 County Atlas is a driver's best friend. Accurate maps provide convenient, clear reference for navigating close to home or points unknown.
From the Loop to Lakeview, Hyde Park to Wicker Park, Chinatown to Greektown, as well as Milwaukee, this all-new guide takes you on an insider's tour of the Windy City and its surroundings. You'll find trusted ratings and reviews for over 1,000 restaurants, based on the opinions of keen local diners. In addition, we've also added 41 handy indexes to guide you to the perfect place for any occasion.
Celebrate the 2016 World Series champions with the only official publication licensed by Major League Baseball! When the Cubs clinched the final out of the 2016 World Series, the city collectively exhaled; the wait was finally over. Chicago's National League franchise ended its 108-year title drought this season, winning a Major League-best 103 games and leading the NL Central wire to wire. All five of the Cubs' starting pitchers posted double-digits in wins, while Kyle Hendricks led the Majors in ERA and WHIP with Jon Lester not far behind. And a young core bolstered by Kris Bryant, Addison Russell, Javier Baez and countless other stars who had led the club to the playoffs in back-to-back seasons brought the world title to Wrigleyville for the first time since 1908, ushering in a new era of prosperity. 2016 World Series Champions takes fans out to the ball game and right down to the field-level action. Published in partnership with MLB and researched and written by their own in-house team of committed and knowledgeable baseball experts, this commemorative keepsake offers fans not only a detailed game-by-game recap of the World Series Champion's run through the annual Fall Classic, but also a history of the World Series. With more than 200 incredible photographs, descriptive game analysis, profiles of every member of the team, statistics and box scores, this official MLB publication celebrates the most memorable and magical highlights from the entire 2016 MLB season. It's all here -- the biggest hits, the unbelievable throws, the most talked-about trades, great plays, amazing comebacks, and a season of unforgettable moments.
This entertaining and informative reference reveals the Lovable Losers in all their beleaguered glory, from the real story behind the Curse of the Billygoat to Steve Bartman's infamous bleachers grab. Delving deep into Cub history, it provides even the most dyed-in-the-wool uniform fan a full year's worth of anecdotes, information, and team lore.
Paperback Fiction
Hardcover Non-Fiction
Hardcover Fiction
