Three Recent Books on Maxwell Street
-- compiled by Steve Balkin
312-341-3696 Email: mar@REMOVETHIStopicbox.com,
7/27/04
Stopping at Barnes and Noble today, I found
three new interesting books that contain material about old Maxwell Street.
1. Jewish Maxwell Street Stories by Shuli Eshel
and Roger Schatz is a collection of personal recollections from residents of
the historic Maxwell
Street
neighborhood during its Jewish heyday. Poignant,
funny, outrageous at times, this new book brings to life the eras in which Maxwell
Street left its mark, not only on Chicago
history, but on the pursuit of the American Dream. Trade paperback, 128 pages,
Arcadia Publishing, May 2004. $19.99 + $3.00 USA shipping and
handling, $22.99 total..
Available from http://cowdery.home.netcom.com/page14.html or http://cavalgroup.com/book.html
2. Forgotten Chicago
by John Paulett and Ron Gordon
photographically documents historic gritty Chicago that has disappeared. The black and white photos are beautiful,
artistic, and meticulously shot. An
entire chapter is about the last days of old Maxwell Street including some of my favorite places such as
Henry’s Variety Store, The Johnny Dollar Thrift Shop, the fence with Tyner White’s Nature Preserve sign on it, and streetscapes
of Halsted St. and of Maxwell Street in the late 1990s. In a separate chapter on diners, are pictures of
the legendary Original Jim’s Hot Dog Stand.
Reading the commentary and viewing the images can’t
help but make one sad seeing the disrespect given to the last historic buildings
and businesses in this monumental iconic neighborhood. Trade paperback, 128 pages,
Arcadia Publishing, 2004. $19.99. Available
from http://www.arcadiapublishing.com/
The chapter on Maxwell Street in this book can be considered a companion to
an earlier book, Chicago's Maxwell Street, which contains evocative images of Maxwell
Street from throughout its history. This 2002 book
was photo-edited and written by Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition board
members Lori Grove and Laura Kamedulski The story of Maxwell
Street and its market is the story of immigrants
and their children, generations of working class people who contributed to the
advancement of our nation. The famous area became the "Ellis
Island" of the Midwest, drawing immigrants
from all over the world, and a "Promised Land" for migrants from
distant parts of America.
Trade
paperback, 128 pages, Arcadia
Publishing, 2002. $19.99 + $3.00
USA shipping and handling, $22.99 total... Available
from http://cowdery.home.netcom.com/page14.html
3. Never A
City So Real by Alex Kotlowitz is a small but fascinating book containing
musings about earthy people and places in Chicago.
One chapter, titled “It Takes All Kinds”, is
about Chicago realist painter Robert
Guinan who is quite well known and appreciated in France. Some have called him the Toulouse-Lautrec of
Chicago. See http://magg.w3sites.net/ang/artistes/guinan.html Several of his paintings are of a Maxwell
Street street-corner evangelist, Carrie Robinson,
who sang “I got the poww-wer” and ecstatically gospel-danced
in the classic 1964 cinema verité
documentary film, And This is Free. In this chapter Maxwell
Street is discussed. The
book is published by Crown Publishers in 2004, hardcover, 160 pages, and is
available at Amazon Books.
P.S. --Another
recent worthwhile Maxwell Street book is Carolyn Eastwood’s
Near West Side Stories: Struggles For Community in Chicago's Maxwell
Street Neighborhood (Lake Claremont Press, 2002), http://www.openair.org/maxwell/west.html.
For more information about Maxwell Street see
<http://www.openair.org/maxwell/preserve.html> and <http://www.maxwellstreet.org>.
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