Liebling, a writer and editor for the New Yorker, lived in Chicago for nearly a year. While he found a home among its colorful inhabitants, he couldn’t help comparing Chicago with some other cities he had seen and loved, notably Paris, London, and especially New York. His magazine columns brought down on him a storm of protests and denials from Chicago’s defenders, and he gently and humorously answers their charges and acknowledges his errors in a foreword written especially for the book edition. Liebling describes the restaurants, saloons, and striptease joints; the newspapers, cocktail parties, and political wards; the university; and the defining event in Chicago’s mythic past, the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre. Illustrated by Steinberg, Chicago is a loving, if chiding, portrait of a great American metropolis.
"Alex Kotlowitz's Never a City So Real has a different style and tone from A.J. Liebling's 1952 tongue-in-cheek book about Chicago, but they belong on the same elevated bookshelf of Chicago classics. The series in The New Yorker that this book is based on elicited a slew of protests from Chicagoans, which Liebling answers in this witty volume."—Elizabeth Taylor, The Chicago Tribune
— Elizabeth Taylor
| 1. | So Proud to Be Jammy-jammy | 3 |
| 2. | At Her Feet the Slain Deer | 37 |
| 3. | The Massacree | 95 |
Overview
Liebling, a writer and editor for the New ...