Here are 95 books that The Burning of the World fans have personally recommended if you like
The Burning of the World.
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I’ve worked both in politics and as an investigative reporter in print and broadcasting in Chicago, Miami, Key West, San Francisco, and Honolulu. I’ve had an up-close look at how the system doesn’t work and how the wise guys get their share. I find it easy to use fiction to get to the truth.
Chicago is where I grew up watching the fascinating interplay between the so-called forces of law and order battle the criminal element. It wasn’t much of a battle unless the law-and-order guys and the crooks found themselves reaching for the same loot. Mike Royko’s book describes very well the interplay. On a personal note, I once worked for one of the Illinois governors who ran as a reform candidate. He ended up going to jail on a fraud scheme.
"The best book ever written about an American city, by the best journalist of his time."- Jimmy Breslin
New edition of the classic story of the late Richard J. Daley, politician and self-promoter extraordinaire, from his inauspicious youth on Chicago's South Side through his rapid climb to the seat of power as mayor and boss of the Democratic Party machine. A bare-all account of Daley's cardinal sins as well as his milestone achievements, this scathing work by Chicago journalist Mike Royko brings to life the most powerful political figure of his time: his laissez-faire policy toward corruption, his unique brand…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
When I was nine, I watched the Air Force dig a giant hole outside of my hometown to install a Minuteman Two nuclear missile to protect us from Soviet attack. I wanted to know what the Communists had against me personally, and the childhood question turned into a lifelong quest. I have lived in post-communist countries, consulted the Party files in the Comintern Archives in Moscow, interviewed dozens of former and current members of the Communist Party, and earned a PhD in the history of Communism from Georgetown University. On the way, I met memorable people, uncovered secrets, and experienced an amazing journey. I invite you to join me.
Extensively researched in both Chicago and Moscow, Storch’s book tells the story of the ordinary people who joined the Communist Party.
I like this book because it firmly refutes the myth that American Communists were a semi-criminal conspiracy of disturbed individuals. As Storch demonstrates, they were just ordinary people looking for answers to the Great Depression crisis. Attracted by specific Party campaigns, such as racial equality or workers’ rights, they rarely stayed more than a few years before finding Party life too demanding.
Focusing only on the Party’s leadership leaves most people out of history. I like this book because it puts the rank and file at the heart of the story.
Red Chicago is a social history of American Communism set within the context of Chicago's neighborhoods, industries, and radical traditions. Using local party records, oral histories, union records, party newspapers, and government documents, Randi Storch fills the gap between Leninist principles and the day-to-day activities of Chicago's rank-and-file Communists.
Uncovering rich new evidence from Moscow's former party archive, Storch argues that although the American Communist Party was an international organization strongly influenced by the Soviet Union, at the city level it was a more vibrant and flexible organization responsible to local needs and concerns. Thus, while working for a better…
I have always been intrigued by the Roaring 20s, and specifically in how the lives of women truly began to change during this time. My grandmother loved to boast about how she had been a flapper as a young woman. Her sister-in-law was one of the first female attorneys in Detroit in the mid-20s. The era brought about opportunities and freedoms previously unknown to women. Many women suddenly had options, both in terms of careers and lifestyles. Goals of first wave feminists were beginning to be reached. The research I did for my book furthered my understanding of society at the time, particularly in America.
Vera Abramowitz, ‘Dollface,’ was a flapper who got caught up with the mob.
Her two mobster lovers cause her life to take a downward spiral. Read how she puts the broken pieces of her life back together. Realistic and gritty, we see the flip side of the frivolous life of flappers seen in the movies.
America in the 1920s was a country alive with the wild fun of jazz, speakeasies, and a new kind of woman—the flapper.
Vera Abramowitz is determined to leave her gritty childhood behind and live a more exciting life, one that her mother never dreamed of. Bobbing her hair and showing her knees, the lipsticked beauty dazzles, doing the Charleston in nightclubs and earning the nickname “Dollface.”
As the ultimate flapper, Vera captures the attention of two high rollers, a handsome nightclub owner and a sexy gambler. On their arms, she gains entrée into a world filled with bootleg bourbon, wailing…
Stealing technology from parallel Earths was supposed to make Declan rich. Instead, it might destroy everything.
Declan is a self-proclaimed interdimensional interloper, travelling to parallel Earths to retrieve futuristic cutting-edge technology for his employer. It's profitable work, and he doesn't ask questions. But when he befriends an amazing humanoid robot,…
Jocelyn Green is the bestselling and award-winning author of eighteen books as of 2021. Her historical fiction has been acclaimed by Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Library Journal, and the Historical Novel Society.
This gorgeous coffee table book jam-packed with full-size photographs from every angle of the Fair. There is enough text to explain what the reader is looking at, but the glory of this volume is the photography. The map at the front is one of the best I’ve found, as well.
Over 27 million people visited the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago. Countless more experienced the fair through the wondrous images of C. D. Arnold, the era's foremost architectural photographer. Through his luminous pictures, Arnold became the event's leading historian, publicist, and visual philosopher. This gallery of Arnold's photographs, painstakingly retouched to achieve a new radiance, presents a magnificent tribute to the "White City" of shining Beaux-Arts buildings. In addition to its visual tour of the Exposition's extensive buildings and grounds, this lavish book also celebrates a city that treasures its architecture. The classical Greek and Roman design expressed…
I was born in 1974 and grew up in a time when, at least on paper, women had equal rights. I also grew up not far from Harriet Tubman’s home, not far from Seneca Falls, not far from Susan B. Anthony’s house. I became a historian of women’s rights and, I sometimes joke, a secular evangelical for women’s history. WritingFree Thinkerwas, professionally, the most fun I have ever had. I can think of no better time than right now to study the histories of women who understood that bodily autonomy and political autonomy are two sides of the same coin and who dedicated their lives to securing both.
In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs, I think it is imperative to remember what life was like before Roe v. Wade and what women did to survive and to live their lives on their own terms. Kaplan’s book tells the story of the Jane Collective in the words of the women who made Jane work, which makes for powerful reading. And, I think it is important to ask ourselves what about today’s post-Roe era is “like before” and what is very different. For example, pre-Roe, most state restrictions on abortion contained exceptions for rape and incest. Post-Roe, nearly all state abortion bans contain no exceptions for rape or incest.The Story of Jane also chronicles, in some ways, a freer time in which one’s every query and movement was not tracked by one’s phone.
An extraordinary history by one of its members, this is the first account of Jane's evolution, the conflicts within the group, and the impact its work had both on the women it helped and the members themselves. This book stands as a compelling testament to a woman's most essential freedom--control over her own body--and to the power of women helping women.
I've been writing for decades, as one genre evolved into another. Local Colorado history led to the identification of "Boulder Jane Doe," a murder victim. During that journey I learned a lot about criminal investigations and forensics. I devoured old movies (especially film noir), and I focused on social history including mysterious and intriguing women. Midwest Book Review (see author book links) credits In Search of the Blonde Tigress as "rescuing" Eleanor Jarman "from obscurity." So true! Despite Eleanor's notoriety as "the most dangerous woman alive," she actually was a very ordinary woman. I've now found my niche pulling mysterious and intriguing women out of the shadows.
Using photo and newspaper archives from the Chicago Tribune, the authors ofHe Had It Comingtell the stories of four Chicago female murderers from the 1920s.
The documentation (both primary and secondary sources) and, especially, the newspaper's original high-quality historical photographs inspired me to dig deeply into similar archives when researching and writing my book.
Beulah Annan. Belva Gaertner. Kitty Malm. Sabella Nitti. These are the real women of Chicago.
You probably know Roxie and Velma, the good-time gals of the 1926 satirical play Chicago and its wildly successful musical and movie adaptations. You might not know that Roxie, Velma, and the rest of the colorful characters of the play were inspired by real prisoners held in "Murderess Row" in 1920s Chicago-or that the reporter who covered their trials for the Chicago Tribune went on to write the play Chicago.
Now, more than 90 years later, the Chicago Tribune has uncovered photographs and newspaper clippings…
Nature writer Sharman Apt Russell tells stories of her experiences tracking wildlife—mostly mammals, from mountain lions to pocket mice—near her home in New Mexico, with lessons that hold true across North America. She guides readers through the basics of identifying tracks and signs, revealing a landscape filled with the marks…
Before I’m a scholar, author, or policy wonk, I’m a Christian who believes that God has shown us that our highest and greatest call after loving God is to love each other—and thus we are to value people’s and communities’ well-being above profit, wealth, and status. Thus, I come to sociology with a sense of mission: to use the tools of social science to understand the mechanisms creating inequitable resource access and, with that insight, to imagine and work alongside like-minded others to build economic and political systems that foster communal and individual prosperity. By studying the Black middle class, specifically, I gain traction for understanding how racial status distorts our economic and political systems.
As a Black woman who grew up in a Black middle-class household, this is the first book that put words to my lived experience.
Black Pickett Fences also led me to earn my PhD in Sociology and to study the Black middle class because this group of Americans uniquely enables social scientists to see how both race and class continue to shape Americans’ life chances, despite the breakthroughs of the Modern Civil Rights Movement.
This book provides a comprehensive explanation of the history of the Black middle class, from the Civil War Reconstruction Period to the present, and an empirical study of the social processes shaping the opportunities and constraints of Black families and neighborhoods.
First published in 1999, Mary Pattillo's "Black Picket Fences" explores an American demographic group too often ignored by both scholars and the media: the black middle class. Nearly fifteen years later, this book remains a groundbreaking study of a group still under represented in the academic and public spheres. The result of living for three years in "Groveland," a black middle-class neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, "Black Picket Fences" explored both the advantages the black middle class has and the challenges they still face. Despite arguments that race no longer matters, Pattillo showed a different reality, one where black and…
Growing up in rural Southern Maryland, I first began to notice a difference between Blacks and whites because of the way I was treated when I hung out with my African American friends. South of the Mason Dixon line, racial differences are often clear. Throughout my childhood and young adult life some of the most influential people who invested in me were African American. As I began to learn about their stories, my heart grew with a love for racial justice and equality. My work and adult life has focused on righting wrongs, responding to global and domestic poverty, to writing and working against inequality and oppression.
Having lived in Chicago for more than a decade, this first-hand glimpse of two young boys growing up in the inner city changed my perspective and understanding of the realities of domestic urban poverty. A moving and powerful read, you can follow the journey after There are No Children Herein Kotlowitz’s follow-up story, An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A moving and powerful account by an acclaimed journalist that "informs the heart. [This] meticulous portrait of two boys in a Chicago housing project shows how much heroism is required to survive, let alone escape" (The New York Times).
"Alex Kotlowitz joins the ranks of the important few writers on the subiect of urban poverty."—Chicago Tribune
The story of two remarkable boys struggling to survive in Chicago's Henry Horner Homes, a public housing complex disfigured by crime and neglect.
Jocelyn Green is the bestselling and award-winning author of eighteen books as of 2021. Her historical fiction has been acclaimed by Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Library Journal, and the Historical Novel Society.
Since the Midway was not on the official fairgrounds, it isn’t always discussed in detail in books about the Columbian Exposition/World’s Fair. This book focuses solely on the Midway and includes the background on all the attractions from Mr. Ferris’s Wheel to Cairo Street to Old Vienna, along with photographs and a map.
Created as a centerpiece for the Columbian Exposition of 1893, the Midway Plaisance was for one summer the world's most wondrous thoroughfare. A journey along its length immersed millions of spellbound visitors in a spectacle that merged exoticism with enlightenment and artistic crafts with dizzying technical achievement. Norman Bolotin, with Christine Laing, draws on his vast knowledge of the 1893 exposition to escort readers down the Midway. Step by step he takes you past forbidding Dahomeyans and dozens of belly dancers until, at last, you reach the colossal Ferris Wheel with cabins the size of street cars. The tour reveals…
The Bridge provides a compassionate and well researched window into the worlds of linear and circular thinking. A core pattern to the inner workings of these two thinking styles is revealed, and most importantly, insight into how to cross the distance between them. Some fascinating features emerged such as, circular…
So look, I’m going to admit something: I’ve been casting myself as the heroine in historical adventures and mysteries since the age of six. I’ve been Sherlock Holmes’s daughter, Elizabeth Bennett’s slightly disreputable sleuthing cousin, the lone lady Pinkerton hunting down Butch and Sundance. These youthful fantasies combined three things I adored: puzzles, adventure, and geeking out on history. When I got a little older, I left off imagining myself in the starring role in favour of something even more immersive: becoming someone else entirely. Whether I’m writing them or reading them, books like the ones on this list transport me, and I hope they’ll transport you, too.
I have a thing for Pinkertons. They’re so often portrayed as villains, but this one is a hero: Kate Warne, the (real-life) first female Pinkerton detective. Kate’s story is fascinating and tense, full of surprising twists—some real and some fictional. At times Girl in Disguise reads more like a spy novel than a detective story, especially when it comes to a certain real-life assassination attempt I’d never heard about, and which literally dropped my jaw. Readers interested in fascinating women largely forgotten by history will devour this one.
"Electrifying...a rollicking nineteenth-century thrill ride." -Amy Stewart, New York Times bestselling author of Girl Waits with Gun Inspired by the real story of investigator Kate Warne, this spirited novel follows the detective's rise during one of the nation's times of crisis, bringing to life a fiercely independent woman whose forgotten triumphs helped sway the fate of the country. With no money and no husband, Kate Warne finds herself with few choices. The streets of 1856 Chicago offer a desperate widow mostly trouble and ruin-unless that widow has a knack for manipulation and an unusually quick mind. In a bold move…
