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Book review: “Ed Marciniak’s City and Church: A Voice of Conscience” by Charles Shanabruch

In late 1972, Ed Marciniak, a perennial social critic and justice activist, became president of the Institute of Urban Life, a small program affiliated with Loyola University Chicago.  He had just finished a twelve-year run as an “insider,” working in the Richard J. Daley administration where he’d had to temper his voice and his actions.…

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Book review: “Chicago Skyscrapers, 1934-1986: How Technology, Politics, Finance, and Race Reshaped the City” by Thomas Leslie

Thomas Leslie’s Chicago Skyscrapers, 1934-1986 is an impressive and important book that will take its place with those works providing the deepest insights into what makes Chicago, Chicago. Books such as Nature’s Metropolis by William Cronon, Boss by Mike Royko, Chicago: City on the Make by Nelson Algren, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life…

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