“Delves into O’Hare’s past and present, based on Branigan’s extensive research and his interviews with aviation professionals and enthusiasts” (Chicago Tribune). In 1942, a stretch of Illinois prairie that had served as a battleground and a railroad depot became the site of a major manufacturing plant, producing Douglas C-54 Skymasters for World War II. Less than twenty years later, that plot of land boasted the biggest and busiest airport in the world. Many of the millions who have since passed through it have likely only regarded it as a place between cities. But for people like Michael Branigan, who has spent years on its tarmac, they know that O’Hare is a city unto itself, with a fascinating history of gangsters, heroes, mayors, presidents, and pilots. Includes photos! “This book reads like no other in the aviation industry from the historical context. Mike is a prolific writer with a knack for telling a story in a way that people can easily relate and understand.” —TribLocal

This book is a pictorial history of Chicago O’Hare International Airport from 1976 to 1996. The pictures show all the changes that Chicago O’Hare International Airport went through during that period, plus in between each chapter is some history of what had taken place during those years and what the memories of the passengers and crew of AAL flight 191 were.

To book a ride on the "World's Shortest Airline" or learn aerial stunts from the redheaded widow of Lawrence Avenue, you've got to go through the airports buried beneath the housing developments and shopping malls of Chicagoland. Many of these airports sprang up after World War I, when training killed more pilots than combat, and the aviation pioneers who developed Chicago's flying fields played a critical role in getting the nation ready to dare the skies in World War II. Author Nick Selig has rolled wheels on his fair share of Chicago's landing strips but faces an entirely new challenge in touching down in places being swallowed by a city and forgotten by history.

Fighter pilot Butch O'Hare became one of America's heroes in 1942 when he saved the carrier Lexington in what has been called the most daring single action in the history of combat aviation. In fascinating detail the authors describe how O'Hare shot down five attacking Japanese bombers and severely damaged a sixth and other awe-inspiring feats of aerial combat that won him awards, including the Medal of Honor. They also explain his key role in developing tactics and night-fighting techniques that helped defeat the Japanese. In addition, the authors investigate events leading up to O'Hare's disappearance in 1943 while intercepting torpedo bombers headed for the Enterprise. First published in 1997, this biography utilizes O'Hare family papers and U.S. and Japanese war records as well as eyewitness interviews. It is essential reading for a true understanding of the development of the combat naval aviation and the talents of the universally admired and well-liked Butch O'Hare.

Our nation’s big cities are broken. Urban progressive government badly undermines those it claims to lift up. Matt Rosenberg lived in Chicago for thirty years, and came back to live there again amidst the turmoil of 2020. What Next, Chicago? Notes of a Pissed-Off Native Son exposes the roots of Chicago’s violent crime, failing courts and schools, rotten finances, and ongoing Black exodus, and proposes a rescue plan for this emblematic American city. “What has happened to Chicago? That’s Matt Rosenberg’s question, and mine as well. His loving tribute to our hometown is a moving, sensitive, humane, and trenchant critical assessment. Read it and weep.” —Glenn C. Loury, Professor of the Social Sciences at Brown University, and author of One By One from the Inside Out: Essays and Reviews on Race and Responsibility in America “Matt Rosenberg writes about the Chicago Way in the Chicago Style of a Mike Royko…. It’s a coherent, honest, and balanced tour of the city’s perpetual corruption, unsafe streets, gawd-awful schools, ghost neighborhoods, financial legerdemain, and the false Unified Theory of Systemic Racism that cloaks it all. Yet, What Next, Chicago? is no helpless, hopeless wail, but a powerful and useful roadmap for a rebirth of a once-great city, based on the voices of Black families and others who don’t need academia to know what to do. Must reading for Chicago lovers.” —Dennis Byrne, former Chicago Sun-Times editorial board member

Take an historical tour of Chicago's railroad stations, airports, bus depots and steamship wharves. Showcasing great icons of transportation, Schwieterman illustrates why the "Windy City" so richly deserves its reputation as America's premier travel hub.

Part of Belt's Neighborhood Guidebook Series, The Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook is an intimate exploration of the Windy City's history and identity. "Required reading"-- The Chicago Tribune Officially,

Despite its rough-and-tumble image, Chicago has long been identified as a city where books take center stage. In fact, a volume by A. J. Liebling gave the Second City its nickname. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle arose from the midwestern capital’s most infamous industry. The great Chicago Fire led to the founding of the Chicago Public Library. The city has fostered writers such as Nelson Algren, Saul Bellow, and Gwendolyn Brooks. Chicago’s literary magazines The Little Review and Poetry introduced the world to Eliot, Hemingway, Joyce, and Pound. The city’s robust commercial printing industry supported a flourishing culture of the book. With this beautifully produced collection, Chicago’s rich literary tradition finally gets its due. Chicago by the Book profiles 101 landmark publications about Chicago from the past 170 years that have helped define the city and its image. Each title—carefully selected by the Caxton Club, a venerable Chicago bibliophilic organization—is the focus of an illustrated essay by a leading scholar, writer, or bibliophile. Arranged chronologically to show the history of both the city and its books, the essays can be read in order from Mrs. John H. Kinzie’s 1844 Narrative of the Massacre of Chicago to Sara Paretsky’s 2015 crime novel Brush Back. Or one can dip in and out, savoring reflections on the arts, sports, crime, race relations, urban planning, politics, and even Mrs. O’Leary’s legendary cow. The selections do not shy from the underside of the city, recognizing that its grit and graft have as much a place in the written imagination as soaring odes and boosterism. As Neil Harris observes in his introduction, “Even when Chicagoans celebrate their hearth and home, they do so while acknowledging deep-seated flaws.” At the same time, this collection heartily reminds us all of what makes Chicago, as Norman Mailer called it, the “great American city.” With essays from, among others, Ira Berkow, Thomas Dyja, Ann Durkin Keating, Alex Kotlowitz, Toni Preckwinkle, Frank Rich, Don Share, Carl Smith, Regina Taylor, Garry Wills, and William Julius Wilson; and featuring works by Saul Bellow, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sandra Cisneros, Clarence Darrow, Erik Larson, David Mamet, Studs Terkel, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Frank Lloyd Wright, and many more.

"In this history of the places that travelers in cities across America call "the" airport, Janet R. Daly Bednarek traces the evolving relationship between cities and their airports during the crucial formative years of 1917-47."--BOOK JACKET.