Books in the Chicago Visions and Revisions series

A document in the history of urban planning, Daniel Burnham's "1909 Plan of Chicago", produced in collaboration with the Commercial Club of Chicago, proposed many of the city's most distinctive features. This title reveals the Plan's central role in shaping the ways people envision the cityscape and urban life itself.

The author has lived in and around Chicago for more than three decades. In this book, he weaves the story of his own coming-of-age as a young outsider who made his way into the inner circles and upper levels of Chicago journalism with a nuanced portrait of the city that may surprise even lifelong residents.

Highlights how racial divides limited the life chances of blacks while providing opportunities for whites, and offers an insider's perspective on the social practices that doled out benefits and penalties based on race-despite attempts to integrate.

Our traditional image of Chicago 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 years. The author tackles some of our more commonly held ideas about the Windy City - inherited from such icons as Theodore Dreiser, Carl Sandburg, Robert Park, and Mike Royko.

It started with the searing sound of a slide careening up the neck of an electric guitar. In 1970, twenty-three-year-old Bruce Iglauer walked into Florence's Lounge, in the heart of Chicago's South Side, and was overwhelmed by the joyous, raw Chicago blues of Hound Dog Taylor and the HouseRockers. A year later, Iglauer produced Hound Dog's debut album in eight hours and pressed a thousand copies, the most he could afford. From that one album grew Alligator Records, the largest independent blues record label in the world. Bitten by the Blues is Iglauer's memoir of a life immersed in the blues--and the business of the blues. No one person was present at the creation of more great contemporary blues music than Iglauer: he produced albums by Koko Taylor, Albert Collins, Professor Longhair, Johnny Winter, Lonnie Mack, Son Seals, Roy Buchanan, Shemekia Copeland, and many other major figures. In this book, Iglauer takes us behind the scenes, offering unforgettable stories of those charismatic musicians and classic sessions, delivering an intimate and unvarnished look at what it's like to work with the greats of the blues. It's a vivid portrait of some of the extraordinary musicians and larger-than-life personalities who brought America's music to life in the clubs of Chicago's South and West Sides. Bitten by the Blues is also an expansive history of half a century of blues in Chicago and around the world, tracing the blues recording business through massive transitions, as a genre of music originally created by and for black southerners adapted to an influx of white fans and musicians and found a worldwide audience. Most of the smoky bars and packed clubs that fostered the Chicago blues scene have long since disappeared. But their soul lives on, and so does their sound. As real and audacious as the music that shaped it, Bitten by the Blues is a raucous journey through the world of Genuine Houserockin' Music.

Cabdrivers and their yellow taxis are as much a part of the cityscape as the high-rise buildings and the subway. And, undoubtedly, taxi drivers have stories to tell. This title recounts tales that offers a vision of Chicago and its people.

Martin Preib is an officer in the Chicago Police Department - a beat cop whose first assignment as a rookie policeman was working on the wagon that picks up the dead. Inspired by Preib's daily life on the job, this title chronicles the outer and inner lives of both a Chicago cop and the city itself.

In 2011, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1973, authorizing its member states to take measures to protect Libyan civilians from Muammar Gadhafi's forces. This title traces the relationship between sovereignty and responsibility from the early modern period to the present day, and offers a history with profound implications.