Name: A History of Chicago's O'Hare Airport
Brand: Michael Branigan
SKU: 9781609494346
Price: 21.99 USD
Availability: InStock

A History of Chicago's O'Hare Airport

9781609494346

$21.99

The history of one of the most important airports in the US comes to life in over 150 historical photos.

In 1942, a stretch of Illinois prairie that had served as a battleground and a railroad depot became the site of a major manufacturing plant, producing Douglas C-54 Skymasters for World War II. Less than twenty years later, that plot of land boasted the biggest and busiest airport in the world. Many of the millions who have since passed through it have likely only regarded it as a place between cities. But for people like Michael Branigan, who has spent years on its tarmac, they know that O'Hare is a city unto itself, with a fascinating history of gangsters and heroes, mayors, presidents and pilots.

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Hidden History of Ravenswood and Lake View

9781609498672

$21.99

It's easy to get caught up in the hidden history of Ravenswood and Lake View, like the Harm's Park picnic that lasted fifty-four years or the political gimmickry of the Cowboy Mayor" of Chicago. Who can resist a double take over folk like the "Father of Ravenswood," who kept Chicago from falling to the Confederacy, or the "North Side's Benedict Arnold," who was sent to the electric chair during World War II? If you want to visit the days when the Cubs were the Spuds or debate whether Ravenswood is an actual neighborhood or just a state of mind, do it with longtime North Side journalist Patrick Butler in this curio shop of forgotten people and places."

True Tales of Aurora, Illinois

9781609495398

$21.99

Learn about the Aurora man who hired Abe Lincoln to defend his business and the police chief who solved the nation's most gruesome crime.

Check in on visits from Orville Wright, Casey Stengel, John Dillinger and JFK. Discover what happened to the man who recorded a landmark blues song in Aurora's tallest tower and how a boy born in the city's poorest neighborhood went on to play for the Chicago Bears in Matt Hanley's fascinating collection of stories from the City of Lights.

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Hidden History of Old Town

9781609492076

$19.99

New York has Greenwich Village; New Orleans has its French Quarter; Paris has Montmartre. And Chicago has its own little piece of charm that rivals them all. Chicago has Old Town--an oasis in the steel and stone heart of the city, an old-fashioned, do-it-yourself neighborhood beloved by artists and entrepreneurs as the perfect place to find a muse and raise a family. And while a casual, inobservant visitor can feel the magnetism of the place, lifelong residents may still be unaware of the hidden bits of history Old Town has drawn into itself. Until now.

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Traveling Through Illinois

9781626190481

$21.99

If you have been driving through Illinois on I-55 and exclaimed, There's nothing out there but corn you aren't alone, but you couldn't be more wrong. Learn why Steven Spielberg visited Waggoner, Illinois, and what fruit Abraham Lincoln used to christen the town named after him, as well as what route was frequented by flesh-eating birds and what antique mall was said to harbor a spaceship. When you travel in the company of LuAnn Cadden and Ted Cable, every mile marker between Chicago and St. Louis hides a story, and even grain silos become adventure destinations.

The 1937 Chicago Steel Strike

9781626193437

$21.99

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..

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New Salem

9781467136204

$21.99

In 1829, eleven years after Illinois became the twenty-first state, New Salem was founded on a bluff above the Sangamon River. The village provided an essential sanctuary for a friendless, penniless boy named Abraham Lincoln, whose six years there shaped his education and nurtured his ambition. Eclipsed by the neighboring settlement of Petersburg, New Salem had dwindled into a ghost town by 1840. However, it reemerged in the early part of the twentieth century as one of the most successful preservation efforts in American history. Author Joseph Di Cola relates the full story of New Salem's fascinating heritage.

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Lincoln's Springfield Neighborhood

9781626199514

$23.99

When an emotional Abraham Lincoln took leave of his Springfield neighbors, never to return, his moving tribute to the town and its people reflected their profound influence on the newly elected president. His old neighborhood still stands today as a National Historic Site. The story of the life Lincoln and his family built there returns to us through the careful work of authors Bonnie E. Paull and Richard E. Hart. Journey back in time and meet this diverse but harmonious community as it participated in the business of everyday living while gradually playing a larger role on the national stage.

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Silas Jayne:

9781596299689

$21.99

His name might not have the same notoriety that belonged to Al Capone or John Wayne Gacy, but Silas Jayne's life carved a similarly brutal arc through the Windy City's history. Even the mob was reluctant to compete with a man who burned his own horses alive for insurance money and ordered the assassination of his own brother in the same unhesitating fashion that he reportedly axed a flock of geese when he was six. Protected by bribery and intimidation, Jayne preyed on the innocence of the girls who took riding lessons in his stables and remained perversely untouched in the background of infamous Chicago crimes like the Schuessler-Peterson murders and the disappearance of candy heiress Helen Brach.

Aurora's East-West Football Rivalry

9781626195554

$23.99

For over 120 years, the people of Aurora, Illinois, have gathered together to watch East Aurora and West Aurora High Schools square off in what is now Illinois' longest-running football rivalry. Since first taking to the gridiron in 1893, the schools have laid claim to mythical state championships, represented Illinois in intra-sectional games and pioneered night football. Alumni from these storied rivals include college all-Americans, Hall of Fame coaches, decorated war heroes, an Olympic medalist, a charter member of the NFL, numerous successful high school coaches, outstanding businessmen and civic leaders, including former mayors of Santa Monica, California, and Des Moines, Iowa. Author Steve Solarz pored over the records of more than two thousand games to produce a work that is both an encyclopedic resource and a passionate account of a celebrated tradition.

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Forgotten Tales of Illinois

9781596297425

$14.99

Dig up the men who tried to dig up Lincoln. Mull over the Mad Gasser of Mattoon and the 1977 thunderbird infestation, from a safe distance. Watch in horror as one of the greatest maritime disasters in U.S. history occurs twenty feet from the banks of the Chicago River or follow the course of the blimp crash that convinced a downtown bank employee that it was raining hell. Try not to blink as towns washed away by floods and shrines covered over by condominiums are dragged back from the margins of history into the center of the page, where they belong. After all, reasons author Bryan Alaspa, if the pope was eager to stop by the House of Crosses during his visit to Chicago, surely it is worth a look. Just beware: a quick glance into this book and you might not look up until you've read the whole gripping and grin-inspiring collection.

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Forgotten Fires of Chicago

9781626197473

$21.99

Chicago's war against cinder, flame and smoke did not end with the Great Fire of 1871. That conflagration was only one engagement in a ceaseless and often unrecognized conflict, fought in the most unlikely places. In 1909, fire ripped through the dynamite room of a staging facility one and a half miles off the Lake Michigan shoreline, transforming the pipe-laying operation into a raging inferno. During the World's Columbian Exposition, thousands of fairgoers watched in horror as twelve firefighters were trapped in a blazing ice warehouse. An operagoer left a smoking bomb under his seat at the Auditorium Theater in 1917, and the newly invented smoke ejector arrived too late to save firemen and laborers cut off in a sewer in 1931. Join John Hogan and Alex Burkholder for the history of these forgotten fires and the heroes who fight them.

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Midwest Sweet Baking History

9781609493448

$23.99

Discover how the Midwest refined the nation's sweet tooth through a delicious mix of immigrant traditions and American ingenuity.

Chef Jenny Lewis dips a spoon into generations of homemade desserts and examines the inner workings of some of the biggest brands of the baking industry. Learn how to make Pumpkin Whoopie Pies, witness the rise of Red Star Yeast, and plumb the secrets of the Kraft Oil Method, before sitting down to consume an engaging history in which Midwest beet sugar, vanilla cream and evaporated milk are mixed into a narrative of wars, social shifts, and politics. Encounter a rich medley of true stories and irresistible recipes from Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan in this delightful collection.

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From Christmas to Twelfth Night in Southern Illinois

9781596299139

$24.99

Journey to a region where all the perennials are said to bloom at midnight on Christmas Eve and where a family's luck is determined by the first person to walk through their door on New Year's Day. Spend a literary Christmas in Herrin, listen to the twelve bells of Belleville ring out the coming year and greet the Three Kings of Germantown at Epiphany. Whether you are a newcomer to southern Illinois or whether you feel like you have been singing La Guiannee since the tradition started in Prairie du Rocher in 1720, join John J. Dunphy for a season of sacred memories and merry recollections.

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Galena, Illinois

9781596297302

$21.99

With 85 percent of its buildings on the National Register of Historic Places, Galena truly is a place drenched in history.

From the ancient burial mounds crowding the high banks of the Mississippi to the home of President Ulysses S. Grant, the Illinois town's rich past is everywhere on display. Follow Diann Marsh in her dogged pursuit of that fascinating heritage and catch glimpses of unforgettable incidents like the courageous defense put up by a handful of Galena settlers during the Black Hawk War or the monster flood that turned a day in 1892 into a bridge-snapping spectacle. Fortunes are won and lost within the space of a page, but the legacy left by Galena's determined citizens and cared for by passionate guardians like Marsh is one that is sure to endure.

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Wicked Decatur

9781609491604

$21.99

In 1854, Decatur was nicknamed Hell's Half Acre. By the 1910s and 1920s, the town was referred to as the Second Most Corrupt City in Illinois, gaining notoriety as a place where murder, bootlegging, prostitution, kidnapping, gambling and political corruption were common. Members of the Decatur police force, like Troy Taylor's great-grandfather, were hard-pressed to bar the door against crime in a town that seemed determined to remain wide-open. Wicked Decatur presents a rogue's gallery of those who have slipped through the cracks of legality over the past century and a half.

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Gangsters and Organized Crime in Jewish Chicago

9781626191938

$21.99

Al Capone. The Untouchables. The Valentine's Day massacre. You may think you know everything about the Roaring Twenties in the Windy City, but in the early twentieth century, the harsh environment of the Maxwell Street ghetto produced a proliferation of Jewish gangsters involved in everything from labor racketeering to white slavery. Their illegal activity offended their own community's value system and sparked rifts between Reform and Orthodox Jews. It also ignited tensions between city officials and Jewish leaders, indelibly marked the gentile population's perception of Chicago's Jews and shaped the city's West Side for years to come.

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Rockford's Forgotten Driving Park

9781467141963

$21.99

Local thrill-seekers at the turn of the century knew that all the action was at the Driving Park. But few today know the drama buried beneath a West End subdivision. At the height of the horse racing craze after the Civil War, prominent Rockford businessmen raised $25,000 to build a harness racetrack there in 1890 (the name refers to the person in the cart pulled by a horse—the driver). The versatile venue evolved to stay relevant, weathering the 1893 financial panic and welcoming bicycle mania. Events ranged from high school track meets to early auto racing. Folks saw a soccer game one week and a circus the next. Controversy erupted at times, from gambling and drinking to a murder and a KKK rally. Amanda Becker reveals this colorful story nearly forgotten since 1938.

Cover image for Rockford's Forgotten Driving Park, isbn: 9781467141963

Arlington Heights, Illinois

9781596296749

$21.99

The village of Arlington Heights--beginning with the diligence and fortitude of William Dunton--is replete with stories of bitter hardship and exalting triumph. Originally named Dunton after its founder, the village's success was sealed by canny deal-making that brought a railroad through the middle of town. As the state of Illinois boomed, the village on the tracks flourished with agriculture, industry, transportation and an expanding population. From the influx of immigrants and industry to the resurrection of the Arlington Park Racetrack, read the compelling history of a small agricultural village's transformation into a thriving commercial district and the unique way in which its small-town charm and industrious spirit coexist.

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When Hollywood Landed at Chicago's Midway Airport:

9781609495923

$21.99

Al Capone dove for the floor when he saw the flash of the camera, while his startled body guards drew their guns. The actress Miriam Hopkins ran screaming from the camera while Lyndon Johnson ran towards it. General Jimmy Doolittle called him a Son of a Bitch, while the Pope called him his friend. Bob Hope asked if he would escort Hope's wife to church, and John Barrymore asked if he would hide him from his mistress. Cary Grant demanded a shoe shine, Eleanor Roosevelt demanded an apology, and Harry Truman demanded a bourbon. Who was this guy? He was Mike Rotunno, and he was a photographer for one of Chicago's newspapers. Yet, he also photographed airplanes for the airlines, starting in the 1920's, the beginning of his 50 year career at Chicago's Midway airport. In that span he got to know everyone, great or small, and his story is like a cross between the movie The Terminal" and "Forrest Gump." He introduced movie stars to baseball players, Marilyn Monroe to a room full o."

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African Americans in Glencoe

9781596298149

$21.99

The village of Glencoe has a proud history of early African American settlement. In recent years, however, this once thriving African American community has begun to disperse. Robert Sideman, a thirty-year Glencoe resident, relates this North Shore suburb's African American history through fond remembrances of Glencoe communities such as the St. Paul AME Church, as well as recounting the lives of prominent African Americans. At the same time, Sideman poses a difficult question: how can the village maintain its diverse heritage throughout changing times? African Americans in Glencoe reveals an uplifting history while challenging residents to embrace a past in danger of being lost.

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Abolitionism and the Civil War in Southwestern Illinois

9781609493288

$21.99

Southwestern Illinois played a fierce and pivotal role in the national drama of a house divided against itself. St. Clair County sheltered Brooklyn, founded by freed and fugitive slaves and a vital link on the Underground Railroad. Alton was the home of Elijah Lovejoy, gunned down defending his press from an anti-abolitionist mob, as well as Lyman Trumbull, who wrote the Thirteenth Amendment. After the outbreak of war, Alton's prison was packed with thousands of Confederate captives, a smallpox epidemic and the cross-dressing double agent Mary Anne Pitman. John J. Dunphy continues the story of the Civil War and abolitionism beyond the Emancipation Proclamation and Appomattox, seeking out the enduring legacy those struggles left in his corner of Illinois.

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Lost Airports of Chicago

9781609499006

$21.99

To book a ride on the World's Shortest Airline or learn aerial stunts from the redheaded widow of Lawrence Avenue, you've got to go through the airports buried beneath the housing developments and shopping malls of Chicagoland. Many of these airports sprang up after World War I, when training killed more pilots than combat, and the aviation pioneers who developed Chicago's flying fields played a critical role in getting the nation ready to dare the skies in World War II. Author Nick Selig has rolled wheels on his fair share of Chicago's landing strips but faces an entirely new challenge in touching down in places being swallowed by a city and forgotten by history.

Lincoln's Old Friends of Menard County, Illinois

9781609497972

$14.99

At the age of twenty-two, Abraham Lincoln arrived in New Salem, Illinois, as a strange, friendless, uneducated, penniless boy" (in his own words). He did not remain friendless for long. Meet the community that welcomed him: Bennett and Elizabeth Abell, the couple who guided him through heartache; Mary Owens, Elizabeth Abell's sister who helped educate him in the realm of the heart; Mentor Graham, the schoolmaster who helped teach him; Bowling Green, the jolly justice of the peace who allowed Lincoln to practice law before his court; and Slicky Bill Greene, who clerked with Lincoln at a frontier dry goods store. Making good use of primary sources overlooked by many historians, Dale Thomas helps flesh out the important story of Lincoln's formative years in Menard County."

Lincoln's Old Friends of Menard County, Illinois

The Chicago Haymarket Affair

9781467135740

$21.99

On May 4, 1886, a bomb exploded during a labor demonstration near Haymarket Square. The ensuing gunfire and chaos brought a grisly end to what began as peaceful support for an eight-hour workday and led to the trial and execution of rally organizers. The incident also drew irrevocable attention to a conversation about workers' rights and the role of law enforcement that continues today. In this guide to the key moments and sites of one of Chicago's most confusing and chaotic events, author Joseph Anthony Rulli aims to establish a clearer understanding of its historical significance.

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Haunted Bachelors Grove

9781467136631

$21.99

Slumbering beneath a shroud of deep forest and deliberate secrecy, Bachelors Grove Cemetery still exerts a powerful pull on paranormal pilgrims and curiosity-seekers around the world.

Shielding the orphaned burial ground from ritual and idle vandalism has also buried the rich history of this magical place. Still, its eerie presence has dominated the folklore of the southwest side of Chicago for every generation since 1838. Brave the woods with Ursula Bielski to unearth decades of mysteries and myriad ghost stories, from the Magic House to the Madonna of Bachelor's Grove.

On This Day in Chicago History

9781626192539

$14.99

Join John R. Schmidt on a day-by-day look at some of Chicago's most fascinating lesser-known events.

Think you know Chicago? If you are thinking of Al Capone, the L, the Cubs, Barack Obama or the Great Fire of 1871, then you are remembering the highlights from the tour bus. Here's the rest of the story, day by day. Chicago opened the first blood bank, invented the vacuum cleaner and sent a bowling ball around the world. One high school football game drew 120,000 people. Chicagoans fought nineteen years over the name of a street. For fifty years, they saved a gallows for an escaped killer. And those are just some of the stories...

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Oak Park

9781609490706

$24.99

Journey to the past with historian David M. Sokol as he reveals the city that nurtured and inspired the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Ray Kroc and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Though it is a handsome village, with stately trees and often-generous lawns, Oak Park has neither major waterways nor dramatic vistas. But it is rich in figures of historical importance such as Ernest Hemingway, Doris Humphrey, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Percy Julian, Ray Kroc, and William Barton. It is also blessed with the world's largest concentration of Prairie School buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and his followers. The Oak Park community has nurtured such innovation with one hand while fiercely holding on to its own identity with the other, negotiating its relationship with Chicago and facing down a century and a half of constantly-shifting challenges.

Nick Blase:

9781609495497

$23.99

Nick Blase ruled the Chicago suburb of Niles for almost half a century, defeating every challenger and even facing down legendary Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley on occasion. Ultimately, Blase, the longest-sitting mayor in the country, resigned from office following an arrest on federal corruption charges the morning of his seventy-eighth birthday. He pled guilty and was sentenced to a year and a day in prison. Despite the cloud over his tenure, there is no doubt Blase made a huge impact on the sleepy suburb, turning the postwar bedroom community into an economic powerhouse that ranked with the largest cities in the state. After exhaustive research and hours of personal interviews, Andrew Schneider has put together a fascinating portrait of Blase's political career.

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Carson's:

9781609497347

$21.99

Carson Pirie Scott and Company always enjoyed a sterling reputation in Chicago, even among the merchant princes of State Street. For more than one hundred years, in architect Louis Sullivan's stunning commercial masterpiece, Carson's stood shoulder to shoulder with retail icon Marshall Field's, establishing itself as an anchor of contemporary style. It was a place that brought the world to the Midwest, from Parisian fashion to the authentic ambiance of the Mediterrenea dance numbers and the Santa's Village displays. Relive the friendly shopping experience that has kept the Carson's name alive for over a century and a half.

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Exploring Chicago Blues

9781626193222

$19.99

Blues history is steeped in Chicago's sidewalks; it floats out of its restaurants, airport lounges and department stores.

It is a fundamental part of the city's heritage that every resident should know and every visitor should be afraid to miss. Allow Rosalind Cummings-Yeates to take you inside the Checkerboard and Gerri's Palm Tavern, where folks like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon and Ma Rainey transformed Chicago into the blues mecca. Continue on to explore the contemporary blues scene and discover the best spots to hear the purest sounds of Sweet Home Chicago.

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Effingham County:

9781596299658

$21.99

Those who have halted their treks down the National Road in Effingham County form a diverse band of characters, from Joseph Boleyjack, known as the "parched corn, summer preacher," to polished orators like William Jennings Bryan, who continued exhorting enthusiastic Effingham crowds as his train pulled away. Donaldson traces this story back to before this land was known as Effingham, to the burial mounds of the Kickapoo. He presses on through the challenges the county's determined inhabitants faced in the twentieth century, from the horrors witnessed abroad in the world wars to those faced at home during the Great Depression and in the tragic St. Anthony's Hospital fire. His obvious passion for the county's past is sure to strike a spark with lifelong residents and new arrivals alike.

Fire Strikes the Chicago Stock Yards

9781609499075

$21.99

Wade into the endless smoke of Chicago's Union Stock Yards, the site of nearly three hundred extra-alarm fires before its closure in 1971, including some of the most disastrous conflagrations of a city famous for fire. In 1910, twenty-one firemen and three civilians were killed in a blaze at a beef warehouse--the largest death toll for an organized fire department in the nation prior to 9/11. The meatpackers who ran the yards considered the constant threat of fire as part of the cost of doing business, shrugging it off with an, It's all right, we're fully covered. For the firefighters who were forced to plunge into the flames again and again, it was an entirely different matter.

Forgotten Chicago Airfields

9781626195547

$21.99

Nick Selig excavates the highways to the sky that have been covered up by urban sprawl or dissolved by neglect. More than a guide to landing strips that have had startling second lives as shopping malls or retirement homes, he uncovers the excitement of the early days of air travel, when a man might cling to his job as a lavatory truck driver for a closer peek at aviation. In this follow-up to Lost Airports of Chicago," discover how a tractor swap gave birth to Clow International Airport and revel in the daredevil exploits of puddle-jumper pilots over the wide-open spaces of Harlem Avenue."

Murder and Mayhem on Chicago's North Side

9781596296442

$21.99

In 1929, Chicago gangster Al Capone arranged a special St. Valentine's Day delivery for his favorite arch enemies: a massacre. Seven North Side mobsters were left dead. Yet random killings and bizarre murders were not unfamiliar in Chicago. Tales of the city's most violent and puzzling murders make this gripping work truly hair-raising: a deranged stalker kills his love object and then himself; a sausage maker uses the tools of his trade to rid himself of his wife; and a meticulous serial killer cleans his dead victim's wounds before taping them closed. Through accounts dripping with mystery, gory details and suspense, Troy Taylor brilliantly tells the twisted history of Chicago's North Side's worst.

Cover image for Murder and Mayhem on Chicago's North Side, isbn: 9781596296442

The Bloomington-Normal Circus Legacy: The Golden Age of Aerialists

9781609497101

$21.99

Starting in the 1870s, the barns, icehouses, gymnasiums and empty theaters of central Illinois provided the practice sites for aerial performers whose names still command reverence in the annals of American circus history. Meet Fred Miltimore and the Green Brothers, runaways from the Fourth Ward School who became the first Bloomington-born flyers. Watch Art Concello, a ten-year-old truant, become first a world-class flyer, then a famous trapeze impresario and finally Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus's most successful general manager. The entire art of the trapeze--instruction, training, performance and management--became a Bloomington-Normal industry during the tented shows' golden age, when finding a circus flying act without a connection to this area would have been virtually impossible.

The Bloomington-Normal Circus Legacy: The Golden Age of Aerialists

Murder and Mayhem on Chicago's West Side

9781596296930

$21.99

Blazing from the West Side, the Great Chicago Fire left nothing but ashy remnants of the developing city, leveling its landscape but certainly not its spirit. While the West Side was home to the infamous O'Leary barn, it was also where news of some of the city's most gruesome and horrific crimes reverberated throughout the state and across the country. Read about the bloody end of Roger The Terrible"? Touhy, who, although he undoubtedly lived up to his name, met an ill-deserved fate. Troy Taylor also delves into the life of John Wayne Gacy, the depraved man masked by the clown costume, and yet again proves to be a master storyteller and historian of Chicago's criminal underworld."

Cover image for Murder and Mayhem on Chicago's West Side, isbn: 9781596296930

Murder and Mayhem on Chicago's South Side

9781596296978

$21.99

Lurking below the Loop, behind the industry-driven energy of Chicago, lies the mysterious criminal underworld of the South Side. Recounting criminal exploits of legends like Alphonse Capone, as well as lesser-known stories like the Car Barn Bandits, Troy Taylor captures the intricacies of the most infamous stories of Chicago's South Side. From the gruesome murders committed by the unassuming H.H. Holmes to the mysterious death of Marshall Field Jr., join Taylor as he revisits the South Side's prosperous middle-class days and vividly depicts the strange and horrific crimes that have cast new light on the character of these too often overlooked neighborhoods.

Cover image for Murder and Mayhem on Chicago's South Side, isbn: 9781596296978

Murder and Mayhem in Chicago's Vice Districts

9781596296923

$21.99

From the very beginning, Chicago thrived on its reputation as a wide-open town. After the Great Fire, no part of the city was rebuilt more quickly than the vice districts, where bribed cops and brutal force emboldened professional wickedness to celebrate itself with gala events like the First Ward Ball, begun in honor of a madam's pianist and often so crowded that passed-out drunks couldn't even fall to the floor. Randolph Street was nicknamed Gambler's Row because men gambled with their lives by visiting it. In Little Hell, guns and knives could be rented by the hour. In these seedy areas only put to sleep by Mickey Finn's knockout drinks or Gentle Annie's knockout punches, it is no wonder that Detective Woolridge kept seventy-five disguises, made twenty thousand arrests and was shot at forty-four times.

Cover image for Murder and Mayhem in Chicago's Vice Districts, isbn: 9781596296923

Murder and Mayhem in Chicago's Downtown

9781596296947

$21.99

In the company of author Troy Taylor, pull off the trick of coming back alive from some of Chicago's most infamous one-way rides." Meet the deadly womanizer Johann Hoch, who would propose to a woman within twenty minutes of meeting her and then poison her within a week. Follow "Terrible" Tommy O'Conner as he eluded the gallows for more than fifty years, until the city finally grew "tired of waiting" and dismantled them for the final time. Learn how even flower shops and cathedrals weren't safe from gangland violence, and relive the tragic fire at the Iroquois Theatre, where a "fireproof" curtain was made of cotton and did little to stop the blaze that killed more people than the Great Fire of 1871."

Cover image for Murder and Mayhem in Chicago's Downtown, isbn: 9781596296947

The Boys in Chicago Heights

9781609497330

$21.99

Chicago Heights was long the seat of one of the major street crews of the Chicago Outfit, but its importance has often been overlooked and misunderstood.

The crew's origins predate Prohibition, when Chicago Heights was a developing manufacturing center with a large Italian immigrant population. Its earliest bosses struggled for control until a violent gang war left the crew solidified under the auspices of Al Capone. For the remainder of the twentieth century, the boys from Chicago Heights generated large streams of revenue for the Outfit through its vast gambling enterprises, union infiltration and stolen auto rackets. For the first time, the history of the Chicago Heights street crew is traced from its inception through its last known boss.

Cover image for The Boys in Chicago Heights, isbn: 9781609497330

Boone County Originals:

9781596299382

$21.99

Daniel Boone may never have set foot in the Illinois county that bears his name, but his tradition of blazing new trails is certainly honored here. Boone County has been the home of Native American legends, a Major League Baseball player, a Miss America and a cross-dressing Civil War soldier. And don't forget Hairbreadth Harry, King of the Hobos, "? who wrote poetry, walked backward and bathed in gasoline. Enjoy the best of Mike Doyle's historical columns as he introduces the fascinating folk of this "garden on the prairie, "? where some of the tallest tales are true."