Sidewalks: Portraits of Chicago (Chicago Lives) - Hardcover

Rick Kogan

3.89

18 ratings by Goodreads

9780810123496: Sidewalks: Portraits of Chicago (Chicago Lives)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0810123495 ISBN 13: 9780810123496

Publisher: Northwestern University Press, 2006

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Few people know Chicago as do Rick Kogan and Charles Osgood, and their ""Sidewalks"" column for the ""Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine"" is a tour of the city like no other, taking readers to the off-beat and quintessential spots that give Chicago its character - that make its inhabitants feel at home and tell its visitors that they have arrived. Accompanied by evocative color photographs by Charles Osgood, Kogan's pieces revisit the lost places and people of Chicago, and take readers down the quiet byways and thriving thoroughfares, pointing out the characters and cornerstones, the oddities and institutions that make the city what it is. In this collection you will find an elegy for Maxwell Street, the marketplace that pulsed with city life for more than 100 years; a remembrance of a disturbing advertisement (""Are you a slave to house-work?"") on the side of a building on Irving Park Road; a cross marking a deadly intersection; a magical miniature golf course; as well as ballad singer Fred Holstein, the denizens of the World Gym and memories of Bensinger's pool hall, the day-camp kids of summer, bike couriers, the creatures of the beach, and much, much more. Here is Chicago, past, present, and - let's hope - future, captured in the unique archive of Sidewalks.

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Review:

"Of course, the sidewalk is the heart side of all great cities. It is here where the anonymous millions--those who make the city work--run, amble, play, jump, hop, and breathe. Of course, it calls upon our most gifted and insightful of journalists, Rick Kogan, with his magic words, and Charlie Osgood, with his gimlet eye, to do the trick. And how they do it! Sidewalks is a wonderful book that tells you the basic truths of our city, Chicago. Six thumbs up, including mine." --Studs Terkel
"When Rick Kogan and Charles Osgood take a detour to one of Chicago's sidewalks, they're telling us about the city's true main streets, where people work and live and love and dream and express themselves in a uniquely Chicago way. Kogan and Osgood are journalists, but they are also poets. Their stories are the stories of a great city captured at a certain moment in time. This is an instant treasure." --Richard Roeper, film critic and columnist, Chicago Sun-Times

"What a perfect combination, Rick Kogan and Charles Osgood! Who tells better stories than Rick? And who sees for us better than Charles? Again, what a perfect combination!" --Victor Skrebneski

About the Author:

Rick Kogan is a popular journalist and radio host. He is the author of ten books, most recently A Chicago Tavern, the history of the Billy Goat (Lake Claremont Press, 2006), and America's Mom: The Life, Lessons, and Legacy of Ann Landers (William Morrow, 2003), and co-author with Maurice Possley of Everybody Pays (Berkley, 2002). In addition to writing for the Chicago Tribune, he is the creator-host of ""The Sunday Papers with Rick Kogan"" on Chicago radio station WGN and is the host for the City of Chicago's ""Conversations with Extraordinary People"" monthly series at Maxim's. Charles Osgood has been a Chicago Tribune photographer for more than thirty-five years and teaches photojournalism at Columbia College, Chicago.

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