Midwest Books

My Bloody Life: The Making of a Latin King (Illinois)

Reymundo Sanchez

Amazon Price: $11.53 List Price: $16.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Chicago Review Press Amazon Marketplace: 48 new & used starting at $9.50

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Memoirs
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Specific Groups -> Criminals
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 90 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In My Bloody Life, Reymundo Sanchez tells a chillingly sad tale, from his birth in the back of a pickup truck in Puerto Rico to the day he quit the Latin Kings gang, 21 years later. From the first page, his narrative is unpretentious, disarmingly honest, and horrifyingly riveting. His early years were so full of pain and abuse that by the time he opts, at age 11, to hang out with the local gang, the Latin Kings, it seems a perfectly logical choice. In his shoes, any one of us--smacked nightly by a mother and beaten ragged whenever the stepfather got the chance--would likely have chosen the same path. The gang was the family that accepted him as well as the peer group that offered girls who didn't say "no." Any violence that went with the territory couldn't match the atmosphere of brutality that permeated his own home.

Sanchez was a Latin King for six years and participated in innumerable bloody gang battles--years rife with sex, drugs, booze, and acts of gang revenge. He finally got up his pluck to leave (and the only way was to be "violated" out through a gang beating), but admits in his conclusion that life since then has, in some ways, been even harder. He's had to quit drugs, lose the only community he's known, support himself, and deal with the nightmares of all the horrors he's seen and done. Though Sanchez still hasn't accomplished his dream of completing college, he has managed to leave the Kings, leave Chicago, leave behind his mother's legacy of violence, and write an impressive first book. --Stephanie Gold

Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago

Mike Royko

Amazon Price: $10.20 List Price: $15.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Plume Amazon Marketplace: 74 new & used starting at $1.24

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Historical -> United States -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Historical -> United States -> General AAS
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Leaders & Notable People -> Presidents & Heads of State

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 25 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Independent Journalism at its best 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This is a serious and ambitious coverage of the internal workings of Chicago government. This book didn't make me laugh as Royko's "Sez Who? Sez Me!" did, but is so insightful and well-written that this reader, not too knowledgeable about politics, thoroughly enjoyed it.

The story is important because it uncovers a truth otherwise overlooked by the media (for example, what really happened at the police riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention). Amazingly, despite the ugliness of the politics portrayed, Royko's writing is not too judgemental; any judgement of Daley is left to the reader. As Royko describes the rise of Daley's Machine, it becomes clear that the motivation behind most of Daley's actions was simply to keep his enemies powerless and keep the Machine's dominance intact, even when it means promoting inept allies to positions of power or neglecting the needs of Chicago's most struggling people.

Editorial Review:

Mike Royko's scathing expose of Chicago's iron-fisted mayor Richard Daley was a national bestseller in its original hardcover and Signet editions. Now published in trade paperback, Boss continues to stand as a classic in American investigative reporting.

Wisconsin Death Trip (Wisconsin)

Michael Lesy

Amazon Price: $23.07 List Price: $34.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: University of New Mexico Press Amazon Marketplace: 32 new & used starting at $19.30

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Arts & Photography -> Photography -> Collections, Catalogues & Exhibitions
Subjects -> Arts & Photography -> Photography -> Photo Essays
Subjects -> Arts & Photography -> Photography -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 29 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The last decade of the 19th century was, for some Americans, a time when great fortunes were to be made. For many others, however, the period was a time of economic dislocation, when the gap between city and countryside, rich and poor, grew ever wider. As the Indian Wars ended and the Gilded Age extended into America's first Imperial Age, social critics such as Mark Twain and William Dean Howells began to examine the dark side of the American dream: violence, poverty, degenerate behavior, suicide, and insanity.

In the late 1960s, another desperate time, historian Michael Lesy took a long look at fin-de-siècle America. Examining a collection of several thousand glass plate negatives and historical documents from Jackson County, Wisconsin, he concocted a sprawling treatise on a past that had been willfully forgotten, a brooding rejoinder to Edgar Lee Masters's Spoon River Anthology. First published in 1973, Lesy's Wisconsin Death Trip, now reissued in a handsome paperbound edition, became a key text of the counterculture, a book to shelve alongside Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and Custer Died for Your Sins--and it sometimes reads like a hip product of its time. Lesy documents the unsettling record of one small corner of rural America, turning up accounts of barn burnings, attacks by gangs of armed tramps, threatening and obscene letters, death by diphtheria and smallpox (the Wisconsin townsfolk had, some years, to attend several funerals a week), alcoholism, madness, business and bank failures, and even a case or two of witchcraft.

After reading Lesy's texts and viewing the sometimes unsettling images he's turned up, you would be forgiven for thinking that no one in small-town Wisconsin in our great-great-grandparents' time was well-adjusted--which is, of course, not the case. Hyperbole notwithstanding, this is a remarkable study, one that Lesy himself rightly calls an experiment in both history and alchemy. --Gregory McNamee

Isaac's Storm : A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History

Erik Larson

Amazon Price: $17.13 List Price: $25.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Crown Amazon Marketplace: 127 new & used starting at $0.39

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> 20th Century -> General
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> State & Local -> Midwest
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> State & Local -> South

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 258 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

On September 8, 1900, a massive hurricane slammed into Galveston, Texas. A tidal surge of some four feet in as many seconds inundated the city, while the wind destroyed thousands of buildings. By the time the water and winds subsided, entire streets had disappeared and as many as 10,000 were dead--making this the worst natural disaster in America's history.

In Isaac's Storm, Erik Larson blends science and history to tell the story of Galveston, its people, and the hurricane that devastated them. Drawing on hundreds of personal reminiscences of the storm, Larson follows individuals through the fateful day and the storm's aftermath. There's Louisa Rollfing, who begged her husband, August, not to go into town the morning of the storm; the Ursuline Sisters at St. Mary's orphanage who tied their charges to lengths of clothesline to keep them together; Judson Palmer, who huddled in his bathroom with his family and neighbors, hoping to ride out the storm. At the center of it all is Isaac Cline, employee of the nascent Weather Bureau, and his younger brother--and rival weatherman--Joseph. Larson does an excellent job of piecing together Isaac's life and reveals that Isaac was not the quick-thinking hero he claimed to be after the storm ended. The storm itself, however, is the book's true protagonist--and Larson describes its nuances in horrific detail.

At times the prose is a bit too purple, but Larson is engaging and keeps the book's tempo rising in pace with the wind and waves. Overall, Isaac's Storm recaptures at a time when, standing in the first year of the century, Americans felt like they ruled the world--and that even the weather was no real threat to their supremacy. Nature proved them wrong. --Sunny Delaney

Chicago

Studs Terkel

List Price: $15.95 By: Pantheon Amazon Marketplace: 7 new & used starting at $34.76

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> State & Local -> General
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> State & Local -> Illinois
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> State & Local -> Midwest

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A Paen to the City of Big Shoulders 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful.

Even though this reader lived in Chicago for just two (bless 'em) years, the city still has a magnetic hold on him.

There is Marshall Fields and Soldier Field. Kup's Column and the Cubbies. Big Stan and Big John cut off at mid-section by low-hanging clouds. Mayor Washington scrapping it up with Fast Eddie Vrdoliak in city council. Lake effect snow. And those friendly, unreserved, Midwestern people speaking with a peculiar, broad accent to us transplanted, you talkin' to me-type Northeasterners.

That's why "Chicago" is pure magic. All of the people, history, politics, and architecture are skillfully rolled into this slim and lively volume. Terkel catches Chicago's character and bottles it like no other chronicler could.

"Chicago" is also a freeze-frame, capturing a city whose edgy charm and sometimes gritty urban qualities are fading with the dawn of a new century. In this sense, the book is elegiac.

Ronald Reagan, speaking in a public service message for the Chamber of Commerce years ago, said it was unfortunate that he had only a minute to talk about why he liked Chicago. So it is with this review. But you'll have more than a minute with your memories when you open this book.

Fixin' To Be Texan

Helen Bryant

Amazon Price: $14.35 List Price: $15.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Republic of Texas Amazon Marketplace: 39 new & used starting at $2.68

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Humor -> Love, Sex & Marriage
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Humor -> General
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Humor -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Wish I'd read this 23 years ago 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 10 people found this review helpful.

Helen Bryant has summed up everything you need to make the transition from being "from someplace else" to being a Texan, all in a compact and witty book. I lived in Houston and San Antonio for 17 years and I'm fixin to go back (from California) so I thought I'd better brush up. I feel ready, now.

After I finished the book I wrapped it up and gave it to friends, native Southern Californians who are soon to make Fort Worth their home. If you are bound for Texas, read this book first!

I loved this book!! 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

We are thinking about making a move to Texas from California, and I wanted to learn a little about the culture. This book teaches you everything you will need to know. I couldn't put it down. It was hilarious!

Highly recommended 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I bought this book for my mom, a proud Texan who hasn't lived there since shortly after she got married, some 50 years ago. But she related to everything in this book and laughed so hard she couldn't talk. Over the years, I've bought my fussy mom countless presents, but this is the first one I felt she really liked.

Even as a non-Texan, I found the book to be hilarious (my mom called me up and read the whole thing to me over a few nights). I don't even like Texas (too hot and buggy for my taste), but after hearing this book, it kind of made me want to move there! This would be a GREAT present (or gift to yourself) for anyone who loves Texas, anyone from Texas, and anyone about to move there (fixin' to be Texan).

Editorial Review:

Delightfully witty, this book takes readers through the gamut of facts about Texans, how to understand the conversations, why and how Texans dress the way they do, why pickup trucks are a way of life, and how they, too, can acquire big hair. Illustrated with clever cartoons.

Detroit Then and Now (Then & Now)

Cheri Y. Gay

Amazon Price: $17.62 List Price: $18.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Thunder Bay Press Amazon Marketplace: 50 new & used starting at $5.19

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Arts & Photography -> Photography -> History
Subjects -> Arts & Photography -> Photography -> Travel -> United States -> General
Subjects -> Arts & Photography -> Photography -> Travel -> United States -> Midwest

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Greatest book of photos on Detroit 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I got this book from my library through an ILL, and this book is GREAT! I am 17 and planning on relocating to Detroit, and wanted to see what the city looks like. This book is the only one with actual photos of Detroit in and around the city. Wonderful pictures from earlier times until now. The book was so good, I went out and bought it. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to see detroit or for anyone who wants to see one of the best cities in the world.

Editorial Review:

Famous the world over for automobile manufacture and the distinctive sounds of Motown music, Detroit, the Motor City, celebrates its 300th birthday in 2001. Detroit Then & Now is a fascinating look at this city's great history, taking historic photographs from the dawn of the camera age and comparing them with full-color photographs of the same scenes as they are during the Tricentennial. Despite an industrial heritage, the city has its culture including art museums, a historical museum and the Cranbrook Academy of Art, as well as a great zoological park, beaches, and marinas. With a reputation for sports and music, Detroit is as vibrant a city today as it ever has been. This book is a fascinating documentation of history and change in one of the United States' most important cities.

Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans

T.R. Fehrenbach

Amazon Price: $17.16 List Price: $26.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Da Capo Press Amazon Marketplace: 47 new & used starting at $4.84

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> State & Local -> General
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> State & Local -> Midwest
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> State & Local -> Texas

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Best of its class 5 out of 5 stars.
15 of 15 people found this review helpful.

My volume is the original 1968 version, so my comments do not emcompass whatever changes have been introduced in the recent edition. Nonetheless, Fehrenbach's book is simply the best of the breed with respect to a single volume history of Texas and its people.

If you are politically correct, you will not like the historical accuracy of this book. The author clearly gives the Scotch-Irish (Anglo-Celts) their due for pushing the frontier westwards, settling Texas, and giving it its "Texas" tradition. One reviewer speaks of the absence of the Hispanic contribution, but it must be remembered that at the time of the Texas Revolution, Anglos outnumbered Mexicans ten to one in Texas. Indeed, the growth of Mexican population figures in Texas is a post World War II phenomenon, and the current ethnic composition is of recent vintage. The author is historically correct to limit his coverage of Mexicans in Texas to south of the Nueces, San Antonio, the Rio Grande valley and Ybarbo's group until after World War II. Had the Mexicans been able to defeat the Lipan Apaches and Comanches, the history would have been different.

Another reviewer pans the book due to the author's leaving out a reference to a diary's author and then proceeds to allege the meeting in question was fictional. Based on this single case, he relegates the entire book to fictional status. It seems to me that there must be something else at work here.

The author tells it like it was. Attitudes such as the Indians losing their land because they didn't develop it were normal in the time period involved, and the choice to fight for the Confederacy did revolve more around fighting with and for kin and neighbors rather than an abstract idea like states rights or anything else. In addition, Texas had only recently joined the Union, and the belief that it had the right to secede from the Union was widespread (and probably judicially correct except that the Civil War eliminated that viewpoint in law for the forseeable future.) And yes, Indians, blacks and Mexicans were looked down upon as inferior in general by the Scotch-Irish almost until the book was first written. But saying that this attitude was prevalent doesn't make the author racist or inaccurate in his depiction of the reality of the times. Observations on Indian culture and civilization may offend the politically correct individual in the twentieth century, but that does not make them less accurate. Those who wish to make a counter argument should do so in their own work, not simply rant against a position without supporting observations or facts.

One negative reviewer has a legitimate criticism in bemoaning the lack on emphasis on water availability. This was particularly important west of Sweetwater and San Antonio, but one should recognize that any single volume will have omissions due to space. That does not make a book not worth reading -- only that it does not cover some reviewer's pet points. The author has done the best possible job of covering Texas history in 719 pages and should be commended.

This book is a "must" for any American interested in American History even if one does not agree with certain depictions or feels significant events or discussions are missing.

Editorial Review:

Here is an up-to-the-moment history of the Lone Star State, together with an insider's look at the people, politics, and events that have shaped Texas from the beginning right up to our days. Never before has the story been told with more vitality and immediacy. Fehrenbach re-creates the Texas saga from prehistory to the Spanish and French invasions to the heyday of the cotton and cattle empires. He dramatically describes the emergence of Texas as a republic, the vote for secession before the Civil War, and the state's readmission to the Union after the War. In the twentieth century oil would emerge as an important economic resource and social change would come. But Texas would remain unmistakably Texas, because Texans "have been made different by the crucible of history; they think and act in different ways, according to the history that shaped their hearts and minds."

Gamblers & Gangsters: Fort Worth's Jacksboro Highway in the 1940s & 1950s

Ann Arnold

Amazon Price: $12.89 List Price: $18.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Eakin Press Amazon Marketplace: 25 new & used starting at $8.75

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> State & Local -> General
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> State & Local -> Midwest
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> State & Local -> Texas

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Adventures in Fort Worth history 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Dr Arnold does an excellent job of taking hold of a sizable hunk of Fort Worth history and recording it in a very readable fashion. A number of pictures are also included to help visualize the antics of early Fort Worth residents (and visitors).

gangsters and gamblers of 1940 & 1950 jacksboro hwy fort wor 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 7 people found this review helpful.

this is a very interesting book especially for those of us who live in fort worth texas. all kinds of neat facts about one of our most popular highways. all about the gangsters and gamblers. ann arnold did a fantastic job on writing it.

Good reading, alot of local history 4 out of 5 stars.
4 of 13 people found this review helpful.

Since some of my family members were mentioned I was disppointed the author did not double check all of her facts. Other than that it is a good book.

Fabulous Book for Everyone. 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I loved this book. My new novel, Texas Poker Wisdom, has stories about Benny Binion on the gambling wars of Dallas and Ft. Worth. I knew Benny Binion. The world that Ms. Archer describes so very well might come as a surprise to your ordinary folks. This is one fantastic read. Everyone will enjoy it. I write about gambling and am working on an article about Benny Binion's great promotions. One promotion from this book was to have a sign on a pet burro that said follow me to this Mexican restaurant/crap game. They would let the burro loose in a different part of Ft. Worth each day. It would walk on home, a moving sign.
I promise you that you will love this book.
Johnny HughesTexas Poker Wisdom

Huey Long

T. Harry Williams

Amazon Price: $16.50 List Price: $25.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Vintage Amazon Marketplace: 54 new & used starting at $8.23

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Leaders & Notable People -> Political
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 32 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Post Katrina Huey Blues 4 out of 5 stars.
9 of 9 people found this review helpful.

My motive for reading this book was, admittedly, not very historical. Watching TV, reading the newspapers, I concluded that there was a major flood in 1927 which came down the Mississippi. Because the monied of New Orleans feared that the "better part of town" might be in danger, they arranged to dynamite the levees in such a way that would divert the waters into St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes. Certain eminent domain and financial arrangements were made (and later reneged on) and those who could and would be were evacuated. All the same, many died and many more would made homeless, for the potential benefit to the few. Then, or so I heard, the outrage of the masses in Louisiana at this miscarriage of power and justice by the rich led to the election of Huey P. Long (as champion of the "little guy") as Governor and launched a career.

Well, too bad. This book doesn't go down that road at all. The flood of 1927 is barely touched on. Yes, it happened, but there is no mention of the dynamited dams. Yes, Hoover came down and was in charge of federal relocation and recovery. And in the meantime, Huey was running about the same campaign he would run for the rest of his life: Down with the Rich! Up with the Poor! and All Hail Huey!

Williams' biography is incredibly well documented. You get the feeling that if you just tore out the bibliography, the notes, and the index, you would be forced to write the same book yourself, with one caveat: some parts of the book were written from the author's notes of interviews and private communications the author had with some of the principals who were still alive when it was written through the 1950s and 60s. The author has promised that all the notes have been archived and that while not of them can be released as yet, eventually, they all will be. Williams is quite vigorous not so much in defense of Long as in definition of the man and his vision. If you want to decide for yourself just what sort of man Huey Long was and where he might have been going, this biography is an excellent place to start.

Editorial Review:

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, this work describes the life of one of the most extraordinary figures in American political history.