Chi Town

The final work of the acclaimed Chicago Trilogy, this collection of nonfiction tales reveals Sandburg's "city of the big shoulders," concrete and neon; uptown and downtown; State Street, Michigan Avenue; the river, the lake; the matter-of-factness and poetry of Chicago people-from Mike Royko describing his neighborhood to the observations of newspaper vendors, from Studs Terkel interviewing jazz great Dave Brubeck to dinner with Petros in Greek Town. Written with a keen eye, Norbert Blei's stories evoke a vanished Chicago, a city of gritty and colorful neighborhoods and their gritty and colorful characters. It is, as he writes, a "love letter to a city that has meant so much to me."

"Blei has a rare ability to describe internal emotions as if they were earth-shattering events. . . . A refreshing alternative to much of the autobiographical fiction written today." --New York Times Book Review

"His is honest writing, spare, natural; the humor is dry; his appreciation of beauty, total." --Chicago magazine

"Blei's . . . powerful, uneven, brooding interest dwells two streets down from Nelson Algren, a block away from Harry Park Petrakis, and along the very busy line from Ernest Hemingway to Carl Sandburg, a few versts from Chekhov." --Arthur Shay, Chicago Sun-Times