No comments about Chicago: Hand-Altered Polaroid Photographs.

2 comments about Modern Trains and Splendid Stations: Architecture, Design, and Rail Travel for the Twenty-First Century.

1. Compiled and edited by Martha Thorne (Associate Curator of Architecture at The Art Institute of Chicago), Modern Trains And Splendid Stations is a wonderfully descriptive and impressive collection of photographs showcasing inner-city railroad travel stations in North America, Europe, and Japan. Gorgeous color pictures, railway station histories, and an informed and informative wealth of background information on each spotlighted railway make Modern Trains And Splendid Stations an enthusiastically recommended title for personal and academic Architectural Studies, as well as a welcome contribution the reading list of any railroad buff.



2. In my thesis research on railway architecture, this book has been a delightful read. My opinion is that the "meat" of the book is in the essay written by Thorne, "Renaissance of the Train Station."

   She covers pertinent points about the historical experience of railway travel and its development as an infrastructure. Her comments are well developed and informed of timely events. Wessner and Phillips expand on the development of the infrastucture in Europe, Asia and the United States respectively.

   I was very pleased with the coverage of the projects as well, and have made this volume a keystone of my architectural library.

1 comments about Chicago's Beverly/Morgan Park Neighborhood (IL) (Images of America).

1. After WW II, my father left the service and we moved to Beverly, Chicago, Il. Recently, at age 66, I returned. Fortunately other dear friends presented us with this book when we arrived. I read it immediately and thoroughly. I learned ever so much more about my neighborhood and the old pictures are superb. When I walked the neighborhood with some grade school friends; and rode downtown on the METRA, on the old Rock Island roadbed, with the help of this book I noticed and appreciated ever so much more.
   
   My best recommendation - I have already sent 5 copies to friends.

4 comments about Blue Trout and Black Truffles: The Peregrinations of an Epicure.

1. Wechsberg's book is an established classic on a par with those of A. J. Liebling and Waverly Root. Like those other authors, Wechsberg was a journalist who wrote about food, restaurants, and food cultures in the mid-20th century, and his insights and great storytelling give the writing a permanent appeal. This can be seen from the reaction after this essay collection (whose chapters were originally written as magazine articles) appeared in this reprint edition in the mid-1980s. I was at a Christmas party with some accomplished food folks, including Paul Bertolli of the Chez Panisse in Berkeley, and was recounting to someone one of the stories ("Tafelspitz for the Hofrat") from this book. When I finished I found that most of the room was listening, and that many of them, independently, had recently read the book too. That particular essay, by the way, has lately been re-discovered in Vienna, where it was set, and has been proudly adopted by some restaurants there. In this book Wechsberg interviewed, and popularized to US readers, the legendary Fernand Point, chef and owner of the 20th-century's most famous and influential restaurant in France (and for whom the _Guide Michelin_ reportedly debated adding a fourth star to their rating system for premium restaruants). Some of the chapters are interviews, some experiences and some celebrations of food. This book is well known and indispensable to food fanatics and those seeking more of the background and context from which contemporary western culinary culture -- high cuisine as well as comfort food -- emerged.



2. Wechsberg's name ought to be mentioned alongside M.F.K. Fischer's. His writing is evocative, precise, and vivid. Reading this book makes me wish I could board a time machine and eat in the restaurants he described in the 1950s. Like many Viennese, Wechsberg loves the old city, the city that vanished after the wars, and resurrects it in memory.



3. What a romp in the world of food! You'll feel satisfied at the end of the book... like a good meal.



4. Though Blue Trout and Black Truffles is billed as Culinary journey, and it is at that, it is also something completely unexpected, an introduction to European life in the 1920s through 1940s. The exploration of food and wine is coupled with vibrant characters and unforgettable settings.

1 comments about Hands on Chicago, Rev. Ed..

1. Anyone who is interested in Chicago and already knows a bit about it should enjoy this book, which, by the way, appears in an original (1987) and revised (1993) edition; this is not immediately clear from the Amazon record.
   
   Kenan Heise is one of the many historians, between popular and scholarly, who have made their own mark on the Chicago bibliography. For a while he worked for the Chicago Tribune, long after that newspaper was nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Republican Party, and, until a few years ago, ran a bricks-and-mortar Chicago Historical Bookstore (in Evanston).
   
   I say that it's a bit eclectic; how could it be otherwise, a book about Chicago in such a small compass. Even the recent Encyclopedia of Chicago (U of Chi; 2004) leaves things out. Anyone who is acquainted with the city will miss one thing or another (I missed an explanation of the anomalous street numbers between 0 South, Roosevelt Road, Cermak, and 31st Street), but a handy size is in itself a merit, as entertaining reading material.
   
   I can imagine sitting down and reading this book from cover to cover. I think that Heise and his colleague Mark Frazel managed to pick out the things that really, anyone who cares about the city should know. It's not a comprehensive work, as I say, nor is it a tour guide. What tour guide would talk about Panhandlers in the Loop as if they had as much right to be there as the Bums Upstairs? Well, maybe the kind of tour guide that Studs Terkel would use. Terkel wrote the Forward. And there's a back cover blurb from the late Mike Royko. How can you go wrong?

2 comments about City in Time: Chicago.

1. If you love Chicago, you'll love this book, especially if you are no longer near Chicago.
   We have here 140 pages of pictures of Chicago landmarks, sorted into "then" on the left page and "now" on the right, accompanied by about a hundred words of caption explaining what you are looking at and why it is significant. All are landmarks of Chicago and include at least one spot everybody who has ever been there must have gone by, stared at, gone in, or admired.
   As a graduate of Illinois Tech., I did catch one awful clinker. To have the building on page 109 (the original Old Main of Armour Institute of Technology) called Crown Hall (it is really about two blocks from there) must have had Mies van der Rohe spinning in his grave for at least a month.



2. This book combines history and photography. Many landmarks are featured, including the Art Institute, the museums, the Regenstein Library of the University of Chicago, the Sears Tower, Daley Center (formerly the Civic Center), Wrigley Field, and much more.
   
   Chicago inventions are discussed, such as the Ferris wheel, the Chicago-style hot dog, the Hostess Twinkies, softball, etc. Besides, many "firsts" took place in Chicago, including the first man-made nuclear chain reaction in 1942.
   
   Although Chicago is now the third largest city in the US, and is dwarfed by many urban complexes throughout the world, it still is ranked among the top "Alpha" 10 cities in the entire world in terms of its overall influence (p. 11).
   
   A bibliography is provided for further reading about this exciting city.

No comments about Berlitz Guide Chicago (Berlitz Guide. Chicago).

1 comments about Chi Town.

1. Norbert Blei has been chronicling the landscape of such Midwester cities of Cicero and Chicago and the coutryside of Door County for years. In CHI TOWN he brings the reader home to a place that is solid and real. He fills the book with portraits of people and places, the scenes of Chicago with all the heartbreaking beauty and sorrow of a scene that is passing. Blei is the great nostalgist and he gives us full measure here. This book is a tribute to a city and its people and to an author who cares to put it down with love

1 comments about Lincoln Park, Chicago (IL) (Images of America).

1. This book is in the Arcadia series on various local areas of America. They try to get local residents with good photo albums--or access to them--to do the books. Lincoln Park succeeds because of the author's knowledge of the area, her obvious love for it, and her excellent collection of photos. She puts together a history that local residents as well as visitors can enjoy. My only criticism--a small one--is that she should have had more photos of Lincoln Park's decline from the 1960s to the 1980s when it revived. But that it is small omission from an otherwise good work.

No comments about Night Before Christmas in Chicago, The (Night Before Christmas (Gibbs)).