"The Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook" Edited by Martha Bayne (2019)

I get the sense most good writers in Chicago end up moving away. One star.

"Soldier Field - A Stadium and Its City" by Liam T. A. Ford (2009)

I didn't expect a 300-page book about a stadium to read as a hopelessly depressing tome detailing one city's cyclic, unrectifiable morass of corruption and cynicism over the course of a century, but then again we're talking about Chicago here. Three stars.

"Chicago: City on the Make" by Nelson Algren (1951)

I suppose I should feel affinity towards someone whose sweeping love letter to his hometown spends a great deal of time shitting on it mercilessly, but I don't. Two stars.

"Chicago - A Literary History" Edited by Frederik Byrn Køhlert (2021)

I sure am glad this book was good, because I paid over a hundred dollars for it: it helped me understand why the city is full of complete bastards. Four stars.