Illinois, reviewed
Below are links to my reviews and significant mentions of some Illinois books, arranged in alphabetical order by book title. These links also appear on their relevant topics pages.
There is more here than I remembered. I took reviewing seriously, but I had no larger scheme, choosing which books to review according to freelancer's criteria. Was a copy of it conveniently on my desk? Did I need a column topic for that week? Had I read the book in preparation for a different project? Did the topic happen to interest me?
The exigencies of the freelance life meant that I could not always review the books I liked. Nor could I devote the time to reviewing that I would have liked, since reviewing pays even less than feature-writing.
And it's real work. You have to learn what's in a book, for one thing, and not all reviewers bother. The nicest compliment I ever got for reviewing came at an author's reception on the North Side of Chicago for the several authors of The Irish in Chicago (University of Illinois Press, 1987) after my review in the Reader was published. I apologized for not having been perfectly approving of some small point, which got me a forgiving pat on the arm from one of the authors who said, "At least you read the book."
Click on the title for the full article.
To return to this page, click on your browser's back button or on "Illinois, reviewed" in the topics menu
Adlai Stevenson of Illinois by John Bartlow Martin. Doubleday, 1976
Adlai: The Springfield Years by Patricia Harris. Aurora Publishers [Nashville, Tenn.], 1975
Always My Friend: A History of "The State Journal-Register" and Springfield, Illinois by Andy Van Meter. The Copley Press, 1981
American Years by Harold Sinclair. University of Illinois Press, 1988
The Big Store: Inside the Crisis and Revolution at Sears by Donald R. Katz. Viking, 1987 [Reader]
The Big Store: Inside the Crisis and Revolution at Sears by Donald R. Katz. Viking, 1987 (Across the Board]
Building for the Centuries: Illinois, 1865 to 1898 by John H. Keiser. The Sesquicentennial History of Illinois, Vol. 4. University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1977
Carl Sandburg: His Life and Works by North Callahan. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1987
Chicago Death Trap: The Iroquois Theatre Fire of 1903 by Nat Brandt. Southern Illinois University Press, 2003
Chicago Sculpture by James L. Riedy. University of Illinois Press, 1979
Chicago's North Michigan Avenue: Planning and Development, 1900–1930 by John W. Stamper. University of Chicago Press, 1991
City of Discontent by Mark Harris. University of Illinois Press, 1993 [Reader]
City of Discontent by Mark Harris. University of Illinois Press, 1993 [Illinois Times]
Constructing Chicago by Daniel Bluestone. Yale University Press (New Haven, Conn.), 1991
Daley: Power and Presidential Politics by Richard Ciccone. McGraw-Hill/Contemporary, 1995
Eight Months in Illinois: With Information to Immigrants by William Oliver; foreword by James E. Davis. Southern Illinois University Press, 2002
Fire on the Prairie: Harold Washington and the Politics of Race by Gary Rivlin. Henry Holt & Company, 1992 (revised 2012)
Fordson, Farmall, and Poppin' Johnny: A History of the Farm Tractor and Its Impact on America by Robert C. Williams. University of Illinois Press, 1987
Forever Open, Clear and Free: The Struggle for Chicago's Lakefront by Lois Wille. University of Chicago Press, 1991
A Guide to Chicago's Public Sculpture by Ira J. Bach and Mary Lackritz Gray. University of Chicago Press, 1983
A History of Illinois, from Its Commencement as a State in 1818 to 1847, etc. by Thomas Ford, introduction by Rodney O. Davis. University of Illinois Press, 1995.
The Historian's Lincoln: Pseudohistory, Psychohistory, and History, edited by Gabor S. Boritt. University of Illinois Press, 1988
An Illini Place: Building the University of Illinois Campus by Lex Tate and John Franch. University of Illinois Press, 2017
The Illinois by James Gray. University of Illinois Press, 1989
Illinois: A History by Richard Jensen. W. W. Norton & Co., New York, 1978
Illinois: A History in Pictures by Gerald A. Danzer. University of Illinois Press, 2011
Illinois in the War of 1812 by Gillum Ferguson. University of Illinois Press, 2012
Illinois! Illinois!: An Annotated Bibliography of Fiction by Thomas L. Kilpatrick. Scarecrow Press, 1979
Illinois Images of the Landscape by Willard Clay. Westcliffe Publishing, 1988
Illinois: Photos of Gary Irving by Gary Irving. Graphic Arts Center Publishing Co., 1988
In Lincoln's Shadow: The 1908 Race Riot in Springfield, Illinois by Roberta Senechal de la Roche. Southern Illinois University Press, 2008. See also The Sociogensis of a Race Riot.
The Irish in Chicago by Lawrence J. McCaffrey, Ellen Skerrett, Michael F. Funchion, and Charles Fanning. University of Illinois Press, 1987
John L. Lewis: A Biography by Melvyn Dobofsky and Warren Van Tine. Quadrangle Books, 1977
Journey to New Switzerland: Travel Account of the Koepfli and Suppiger Family to St. Louis on the Mississippi and the Founding of New Switzerland in the State of Illinois, edited by John C. Abbott. Southern Illinois University Press, 1986
Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier by Benjamin E. Park. Liveright, 2020
Louis Sullivan and the Polemics of Modern Architecture: The Present Against the Past by David S. Andrew. University of Illinois Press, 1985
The Lost City: Discovering The Forgotten Virtues Of Community In The Chicago Of The 1950s by Alan Ehrenhalt. Basic Books, 1995
Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography by Jean H. Baker. W. W. Norton & Co., 1987
The Mayors: The Chicago Political Tradition, edited by Paul M. Green and Melvin G. Holli. Southern Illinois University Press, 1987
Midwest Maize: How Corn Shaped the Midwest Heartland by Cynthia Clampitt. University Illinois, 2015
The Natural Resources of Illinois: Introduction and Guide, compiled by R. Dan Neely and Carla G. Heister. Illinois Natural History Survey, Illinois Department of Natural resources, 1987
Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West by William Cronon. W. W. Norton & Company, 1991 [Chicago Enterprise]
Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West by William Cronon. W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1991 [Illinois Times]
The New Gatsbys: Fortunes and Misfortunes of Commodities Traders by Bob Tamarkin. William Morrow & Company, 1985
Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter With Race in the Twentieth-Century Urban North by John T. McGreevey. University of Chicago Press, 1996
A Place of Sense: Essays in Search of the Midwest, edited by Michael Martone. University of Iowa Press, 1988
The Poet and the Dream Girl: The Love Letters of Lilian Steichen and Carl Sandburg, edited by Margaret Sandburg. University of Illinois Press, 1987
Poor Relations: The Children of the State in Illinois, 1818–1990 by Joan Gittens. University of Illinois Press, 1994
Prairiescapes: Photographs by Larry Kanfer. University of Illinois Press, 1987
The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America, by Nicholas Lemann. Knopf, 1991
Public Sculptor: Lorado Taft and the Beautification of Chicago by Timothy J. Garvey. University of Illinois Press, 1988
Public Sculptor: Lorado Taft and the Beautification of Chicago by Timothy J. Garvey, University of Illinois Press, 1988
Rainbow's End: Irish-Americans and the Dilemmas of Urban Machine Politics 1840–1985 by Steven Erie. University of California, 1988
The Sangamon by Edgar Lee Masters. University of Illinois Press, 1988
A Place of Sense: Essays in Search of the Midwest, edited by Michael Martone. University of Iowa Press, 1988
The Sky's the Limit: A Century of Chicago Skyscrapers, edited by Pauline A. Saliga, with contributions by Jane H. Clarke, Pauline A. Saliga, and John Zukowsky. Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1998
The Sociogenesis of a Race Riot: Springfield, Illinois in 1908 by Roberta Senechal. University of Illinois Press, 1990. See also In Lincoln's Shadow.
They Built Chicago: Entrepreneurs Who Shaped a Great City's Architecture by Miles L. Berger. Bonus Books, 1992
Tinder Box: The Iroquois Theatre Disaster 1903 by Anthony P. Hatch. Academy Chicago Publishers, 2003
To Sleep with the Angels: The Story of a Fire by David Cowan and John Kuenster. Ivan R. Dee Inc., 1996
The Unheavenly City: The Nature and Future of Our Urban Crisis by Edward C. Banfield. Little, Brown and Co., 1970
The Unheavenly City Revisited: A Revision of the Unheavenly City by Edward C. Banfield. Little, Brown and Co., 1974
Where the Sky Began: Land of the Tallgrass Prairie by John Madson. Houghton Mifflin, 1983
A Woman's Story of Pioneer Illinois by Christiana Holmes Tillson., Southern Illinois University, 1995
Women, Work, and Worship in Lincoln’s Country: The Dumville Family Letters, Anne Heinz and John Heinz, editors. University of Illinois Press, 2016
Click on the title for the full article.
To return to this page, click on your browser's back
button or on "Illinois, reviewed" in the
topics menu
