Return Again to the Scene of the Crime: A Guide to Even More Infamous Places in Chicago Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy Return Again to the Scene of the Crime: A Guide to Even More Infamous Places in Chicago? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Return Again to the Scene of the Crime: A Guide to Even More Infamous Places in Chicago. Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

Return Again to the Scene of the Crime: A Guide to Even More Infamous Places in Chicago ReviewI don't know how author Rich Lindberg comes up with his material, but he has a knack for story-telling, and this true-crime anthology is just as good, if not better than the first volume in the series, "Return to the Scene of the Crime: A Guide to Infamous Places in Chicago." The sequel features the story of the executed Nazi spy, Herbert Haupt, captured on the North Side in 1942. It is particularly timely, given the ponderous debate over what to do with the captured American Taliban, John Walker. In 1942, Haupt slipped into Chicago and was promptly seized by the FBI, tried, convicted and executed within a few months. This is but one of an amazing assortment of stories lost to history. The "Vampire Woman" of Hammond is another, and the two female "Torso Killers" of Wrigleyville is quirky, amazing, and gruesome but one that I never heard of until now. This chilling crime of passion happened in 1935, proving once again that the daily dose of violent and heinous crime we hear about we are subjected to on the news every night is not exclusive to our modern times. Blanche Dunkel and Evelyn Smith, the two North Side femme fatales, chopped up the victim Irvin Lang in 1935. Lindberg's research on this case is meticulous: he even looked up their parole dates, and unlike other authors who leave us hanging once the suspects are arrested and tried, he tells us the rest of the story. This book is not only crime told with grim irony, an occasional dash of cynicism, and much pathos, it is a moving account of the City of Chicago, and the people that shaped its destiny for good and bad. Lindberg is a fine writer, and it will be interesting to see what he comes up with next.Return Again to the Scene of the Crime: A Guide to Even More Infamous Places in Chicago Overview

Want to learn more information about Return Again to the Scene of the Crime: A Guide to Even More Infamous Places in Chicago?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now

Read More...

Moon Handbooks Illinois Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy Moon Handbooks Illinois? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Moon Handbooks Illinois. Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

Moon Handbooks Illinois ReviewThe Moon Handbook series are a great travel guide for both tourists and residents. I recently moved to Chicago and had bought the Michigan and Wisconsin books, and liked them so much I also got the Illinois. The books break the states down by region and list the must sees in those regions. They have a good mix of history about the town or region, as well as activities, accommodations and restaurants. They are a great resource - both for day trips and longer trips.Moon Handbooks Illinois OverviewThere are numerous guidebooks to Chicago, but a comprehensive guide to Illinois is certainly lacking on travel bookshelves. Local author Christine des Garennes guides history buffs, outdoor enthusiasts, wine aficionados, and shoppers alike through the rural and metropolitan destinations of the region: Ulysses S. Grant's home, Shawnee National Forest, wine boutiques, world-class department stores, antique shops, Chicago's Millennium Park, and The Art Institute of Chicago. Moon Handbooks Illinois helps you have truly personal experience, on or off the beaten path. Suggested travel strategies and lists of must-see sights provide you with real insights so you can decide where you should go, stay, and eat—without hassles or regrets. Christine details where to trek, climb, and mountain bike, and includes a wealth of information about the birds, animals, and plants of Illinois. Complete with maps, photographs, illustrations, and special emphasis on leading destinations, Moon Handbooks Illinois has the tools you need to create your own unique trip.

Want to learn more information about Moon Handbooks Illinois?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now

Read More...

The Third City: Chicago and American Urbanism (Chicago Visions and Revisions) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy The Third City: Chicago and American Urbanism (Chicago Visions and Revisions)? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on The Third City: Chicago and American Urbanism (Chicago Visions and Revisions). Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

The Third City: Chicago and American Urbanism (Chicago Visions and Revisions) Review"The Third City" is on the ROROTOKO list of cutting-edge intellectual nonfiction. The book interview of Professor Bennett ran here as the cover feature on December 1, 2010.The Third City: Chicago and American Urbanism (Chicago Visions and Revisions) Overview
Our traditional image of Chicago—as a gritty metropolis carved into ethnically defined enclaves where the game of machine politics overshadows its ends—is such a powerful shaper of the city's identity that many of its closest observers fail to notice that a new Chicago has emerged over the past two decades. Larry Bennett here tackles some of our more commonly held ideas about the Windy City—inherited from such icons as Theodore Dreiser, Carl Sandburg, Daniel Burnham, Robert Park, Sara Paretsky, and Mike Royko—with the goal of better understanding Chicago as it is now: the third city.Bennett calls contemporary Chicago the third city to distinguish it from its two predecessors: the first city, a sprawling industrial center whose historical arc ran from the Civil War to the Great Depression; and the second city, the Rustbelt exemplar of the period from around 1950 to 1990. The third city features a dramatically revitalized urban core, a shifting population mix that includes new immigrant streams, and a growing number of middle-class professionals working in new economy sectors. It is also a city utterly transformed by the top-to-bottom reconstruction of public housing developments and the ambitious provision of public works like Millennium Park. It is, according to Bennett, a work in progress spearheaded by Richard M. Daley, a self-consciously innovative mayor whose strategy of neighborhood revitalization and urban renewal is a prototype of city governance for the twenty-first century. The Third City ultimately contends that to understand Chicago under Daley's charge is to understand what metropolitan life across North America may well look like in the coming decades.


Want to learn more information about The Third City: Chicago and American Urbanism (Chicago Visions and Revisions)?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now

Read More...

Uncommon Carriers Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy Uncommon Carriers? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Uncommon Carriers. Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

Uncommon Carriers ReviewHarriet Beecher Stowe once wrote that "to do common things perfectly is far better worth our endeavor than to do uncommon things respectably." The focus of John McPhee's excellent new book, Uncommon Carriers, is on people who do uncommon things remarkably well.
On my first, nervous day in the ocean shipping industry (an industry that carries most of the world's cargo in international trade) my boss took me to a run down diner in lower Manhattan. We sat at the counter and the waiter came up to us with a fish in his hand. "You have to have the fish. Look at this. The boss picked it out at the market this morning. You have to have this." After he walked away my boss told me that in our business I was going to be entrusted with other people's cargo. He said that as long as I treated that cargo, and my job, like that waiter treated that fish, I'd eventually learn how to do my job the right way. I could have quit then and there because I've probably never had a better lesson about how to do a job right than I got at that lunch. "Uncommon Carriers" is about a group of people who transport other people's cargo as if it were "their fish". It is a fascinating look at the people and methods by which we get food on our tables, heat in our furnaces and clothes on our back.
I've admired McPhee since I read his wonderful overview of life in the liner shipping industry, "Looking for a Ship". He has a way of taking complicated processes or procedures that are little known to the general public and writing about them in a way that the general public, and even I, can understand. When it comes to describing the people who operate these machines, McPhee doesn't get in the way of the voice of his protagonists. He lets their natural eloquence come through.
Uncommon Carriers begins and ends with a look at Don Ainsworth and his sixty-five foot, five-axle chemical tanker truck that carries all sorts of hazardous chemicals throughout the United States. Ainsworth treats his rig with the pride and concern a parent treats his or her first child. He makes sure it is immaculate and only uses filtered water to clean it. He prides himself on being able to navigate the steepest descents without resort to his brakes. Rather, like a chess player he plans his downshifting (over 18 gears) in such a way as to keep the rig at an appropriately safe speed. Next we travel to Grenoble, France where masters of huge containerships or tankers spend a week in an advanced simulation exercise using large models of their vessels that sharpen their skills as they navigate the world's oceans. As with Ainsworth, McPhee provides us with the voices of these international seamen as they dissect their performance. McPhee goes on to include chapters on a tug and barge-master moving a tremendous amount of tonnage on the narrow confines of the Illinois River; a walk through the enormous air cargo sorting facility at UPS's facility at the airport in Louisville, Kentucky. It is here that McPhee quotes one of the operators of these horribly complicated sorting processes thusly: "We become a partner with the companies. We run these businesses like they're our own." Once again, here are living examples of the lesson my first boss tried to teach me in that little diner. Finally, we get a look at the country's coal trains, moving millions of tons of coal a year on mile long freight trains from coal mines in Wyoming to energy facilities around the country.
The only chapter that didn't quite work for me was McPhee's discussion of his 5-days canoeing up the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, following the footsteps of John and Henry Thoreau. Although well-written and evocative of a time long past this chapter just didn't seem to fit in with the rest of the book. Nevertheless, the clarity of McPhee's writing is well worth the minor diversion.
Fans of McPhee won't need me to convince them to read "Uncommon Carriers". For those new to McPhee all of his books are worthy of reading (and in many cases re-reading). After reading Uncommon Carriers you won't look at a truck, train, or tank vessel without thinking about those people who treat these huge vessels and the cargo they carry as if they were their own. Highly recommended.
L. Fleisig
Uncommon Carriers Overview

Want to learn more information about Uncommon Carriers?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now

Read More...

Moon Illinois (Moon Handbooks) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy Moon Illinois (Moon Handbooks)? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Moon Illinois (Moon Handbooks). Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

Moon Illinois (Moon Handbooks) ReviewThis is the 3rd Moon Book that I have purchased and was horribly disappointed by this one. The other two gave a wealth of information and trivia, this not so much. Sure it listed restaurants and attractions, but there was no real insight. We traveled through Illinois from Quad-Cities to East St Louis, and this book was useless. I got more info from the Illinois Tourism packet I received for FREE in the mail.Moon Illinois (Moon Handbooks) OverviewTravel writer Christine des Garennes has lived in her adopted home of Illinois for over a decade, and in Moon Illinois she shares her insider knowledge on the best ways to explore the heart of America. Beyond Chicago and the tourist-friendly Wrigley Field and Lincoln Park Zoo, des Garennes takes travelers into agricultural country, where local farmer's markets reign in the central region of Illinois known as the Grand Prairie. She also provides unique trip strategies for a variety of travelers, including Day-Tripping Around Chicago and Outdoor Adventure in Southern Illinois. From touring the Frank Lloyd Wright homes of Oak Park to hiking along the Little Grand Canyon Scenic Trail, Moon Illinois gives travelers the tools they need to create a more personal and memorable experience.

Want to learn more information about Moon Illinois (Moon Handbooks)?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now

Read More...