No comments about Night+Day Chicago (The Cool Cities Series).

1 comments about Outsourcing my Education (Matt's Travelogues).

1. Okay, full confession--I wrote this book. Then again, it's only a buck, why don't you try it? Lots of people enjoyed it when I sent it out via email the first time around, maybe you will too!

No comments about A Guide to Art at the University of Illinois: Urbana-Champaign, Robert Allerton Park, and Chicago.

1 comments about Time Out Chicago (Time Out Guides).

1. The author took note of The History of Beer and Brewing in Chicago, 1833-1978 by Bob Skilnik in this book as "A somewhat slight but largely engrossing history of beer in this most boozy of cities."
   
   Considering that this is the ONLY book ever published on the subject, I'd like to know what Mr. La Quesne has to compare this 263-page book to?
   
   Time Out Chicago (the magazine) also did a half-hour phone interview of me about my book, and did a follow-up call to confirm some information, and then had the chutzpah to use facts from the interview in one of their features and conveniently forgot to mention that the information came from The History of Beer and Brewing in Chicago, 1833-1978 or my extensive interview with one of their lazy staff writers. Yes, I'm the author.

No comments about North Michigan Avenue: A Building Book from the Chicago Historical Society.

2 comments about Along the Divide: Photographs of the Dan Ryan Expressway (Center Books on Chicago and Environs).

1. This book is not be overlooked. It is a must have for photographers, collectors, and anyone who wants a look into the bowels of a divided Chicago. A spectacular photobook...



2. Jay Wolke says in his short introduction that he took thousands of photos, between 1981 and 1985, of this serpent like highway and there is a stunning one on page thirty-three which sums up the book for me. Taken in 1982 at Exit 57B it shows downtown in the middle distance and the Dan Ryan pointing to it like an arrow. The massive width of the four inner express and three outer distributor lanes plus the Red Line CTA railway sandwiched in the middle really comes across and it's easy to appreciate how this huge construction project cut South Side Chicago in half for almost twelve miles.
   
   Other beautifully composed photos capture the highway and the surrounding environment, bridges, on and off ramps, scrap yards, the extensive human activity beneath the elevated sections. A nice touch, I thought, were several showing the Dan Ryan from windows of buildings along the route. Of the sixty (mostly landscape) photos there are several that I thought didn't quite work though. These are close-ups of moving vehicles and could have been taken on any city expressway. As well as a visual journey along the concrete there is an interesting fifteen page essay by Dominic Pacyga about the planning, building and current status of Dan Ryan.
   
   The book's production is the classic photo book style: generous wide margins and well printed in a fine screen on matt paper. There is the usual annoyance of having all the one line captions at the back rather than under each photo and there is a rather inadequate small map of the route on a page facing the captions. This, I think, would have worked so much better it was over a spread with small thumbnails of each photo arrowed into it.
   
   Along the Divide came across as an almost but not quite book for me. If the editorial flow had been organized differently, with more of the stunning photos (though less of the anywhere ones) and Pacyga's excellent text integrated with a more substantial map it could have been an almost perfect book about a part of America's man-made landscape.
   
   ***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

No comments about Chicago Originals, Rev. Ed..

No comments about We'll Always Have Paris: American Tourists in France since 1930.

1 comments about City Smart: Chicago.

1. CITY SMART: CHICAGO is a great book about the Chicago metro area. It tells you where the best shopping, food, and transportation are, as well as describing many of the neighborhoods in both the city and the suburbs. Being that this book was written in 1999, some of what it tells you does need to be taken like the humor in ALONG CAME POLLY, SABRINA, THE TEENAGE WITCH, 13 GOING ON 30, SIMPLY IRRESISTIBLE, DRIVE ME CRAZY, and the two GARFIELD movies, but it's still worth picking up.

No comments about Fodor's Chicago's 25 Best, 6th Edition (25 Best).