What to read to understand Chicago
Six books that get under the skin of America’s “second” city
CHICAGO SUFFERS from an identity crisis. Its many nicknames are proof enough. The “Windy City” also claims to be “The City of Big Shoulders”, “The City in A Garden”, “The City by the Lake”, “The City that Works” and “the Second City”, a self-mocking title that is no longer true, at least in terms of population, since Los Angeles overtook it. In addition, it is “Chi Town”, “Chiberia” (on the coldest winter days) and occasionally still “Chiraq”, an out-of-date update to “Beirut by the Lake”, often heard during the 1980s. When you include the suburbs it becomes “Chicagoland”, which conjures up ideas of a theme park where none of the hotdogs has ketchup.
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