Despite its specificity, this history is a small wonder, providing a fun but thorough look into one of Chicago’s greatest...
This unique history centers on the prehistory, founding and residents of 999 Lake Shore Dr., an apartment building that symbolizes Chicago’s wealthy class.
Fizdale’s beautifully illustrated debut is a labor of love about his home, the architectural marvel 999 Lake Shore Dr. in the historic Chicago neighborhood of Streeterville. After catastrophic losses in the wake of the famous Chicago Fire of 1871, entrepreneurs and real estate watchers set their sights on the north side of the city, looking to build Lake Shore Drive, now a major thoroughfare on Chicago’s lakeside. Fizdale portrays the characters in those subsequent years: Potter Palmer, a visionary innovator of the department store, and George “Cap” Streeter, who schemed to create a land claim in Lake Michigan by allowing others to dump tons of garbage around his wrecked boat. Fizdale’s treatment of Streeter’s comic drama paints him larger than life, detailing his absurd machinations for stealing back “his” land, including the construction of a rudimentary tank out of a car, a small house and Gatling guns. Buoyed by the high quality of Fizdale’s research, Streeter’s story entertains immensely; at times, the book feels like the outline for a cable series, twisting and turning through Chicago real estate lore. Later, Fizdale’s vignettes of the many families that occupied 999 reveal a variety of human experience among wealthy Chicagoans. Each passage is a glimpse into a life among many, whether it’s someone who helped figure out how to remove sulfur from crude oil, a Rockefeller descendant who contacted her “spiritual bridegroom” via séance, or a tenant’s great-grandfather who died after gunpowder experiments went bad. Actors, socialites, gangsters, entrepreneurs and clerks all stayed there. Throughout, Fizdale’s humorous tone adeptly guides readers: “John [Kraft] processed, packaged and sold cheese. Then he did it again and again and again….Even wife June got into the act. She was a ‘cheese industry librarian.’ ” As Fizdale states in his introduction, “history never yields all of its secrets”; yet here we have a reconstruction that, though small in scope, uncovers the secret texture of life in another age. Numerous illustrations, maps, and black-and-white and color photos—taking up about as much space as the text—help enliven the work further.
Despite its specificity, this history is a small wonder, providing a fun but thorough look into one of Chicago’s greatest living spaces.Pub Date: April 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1467545280
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Ampersand Inc.
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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