Name: True Tales of Aurora, Illinois
Brand: Matt Hanley
SKU: 9781609495398
Price: 21.99 USD
Availability: InStock

True Tales of Aurora, Illinois

9781609495398

$21.99

Learn about the Aurora man who hired Abe Lincoln to defend his business and the police chief who solved the nation's most gruesome crime.

Check in on visits from Orville Wright, Casey Stengel, John Dillinger and JFK. Discover what happened to the man who recorded a landmark blues song in Aurora's tallest tower and how a boy born in the city's poorest neighborhood went on to play for the Chicago Bears in Matt Hanley's fascinating collection of stories from the City of Lights.

Rockford's Forgotten Driving Park

9781467141963

$21.99

Local thrill-seekers at the turn of the century knew that all the action was at the Driving Park. But few today know the drama buried beneath a West End subdivision. At the height of the horse racing craze after the Civil War, prominent Rockford businessmen raised $25,000 to build a harness racetrack there in 1890 (the name refers to the person in the cart pulled by a horse--the driver). The versatile venue evolved to stay relevant, weathering the 1893 financial panic and welcoming bicycle mania. Events ranged from high school track meets to early auto racing. Folks saw a soccer game one week and a circus the next. Controversy erupted at times, from gambling and drinking to a murder and a KKK rally. Amanda Becker reveals this colorful story nearly forgotten since 1938.

When Hollywood Landed at Chicago's Midway Airport:

9781609495923

$21.99

Al Capone dove for the floor when he saw the flash of the camera, while his startled body guards drew their guns. The actress Miriam Hopkins ran screaming from the camera while Lyndon Johnson ran towards it. General Jimmy Doolittle called him a Son of a Bitch, while the Pope called him his friend. Bob Hope asked if he would escort Hope's wife to church, and John Barrymore asked if he would hide him from his mistress. Cary Grant demanded a shoe shine, Eleanor Roosevelt demanded an apology, and Harry Truman demanded a bourbon. Who was this guy? He was Mike Rotunno, and he was a photographer for one of Chicago's newspapers. Yet, he also photographed airplanes for the airlines, starting in the 1920's, the beginning of his 50 year career at Chicago's Midway airport. In that span he got to know everyone, great or small, and his story is like a cross between the movie The Terminal" and "Forrest Gump." He introduced movie stars to baseball players, Marilyn Monroe to a room full o."

When Hollywood Landed at Chicago's Midway Airport:

Oak Park

9781609490706

$24.99

Journey to the past with historian David M. Sokol as he reveals the city that nurtured and inspired the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Ray Kroc and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Though it is a handsome village, with stately trees and often-generous lawns, Oak Park has neither major waterways nor dramatic vistas. But it is rich in figures of historical importance such as Ernest Hemingway, Doris Humphrey, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Percy Julian, Ray Kroc, and William Barton. It is also blessed with the world's largest concentration of Prairie School buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and his followers. The Oak Park community has nurtured such innovation with one hand while fiercely holding on to its own identity with the other, negotiating its relationship with Chicago and facing down a century and a half of constantly-shifting challenges.

Nick Blase:

9781609495497

$23.99

Nick Blase ruled the Chicago suburb of Niles for almost half a century, defeating every challenger and even facing down legendary Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley on occasion. Ultimately, Blase, the longest-sitting mayor in the country, resigned from office following an arrest on federal corruption charges the morning of his seventy-eighth birthday. He pled guilty and was sentenced to a year and a day in prison. Despite the cloud over his tenure, there is no doubt Blase made a huge impact on the sleepy suburb, turning the postwar bedroom community into an economic powerhouse that ranked with the largest cities in the state. After exhaustive research and hours of personal interviews, Andrew Schneider has put together a fascinating portrait of Blase's political career.

Effingham County:

9781596299658

$21.99

Those who have halted their treks down the National Road in Effingham County form a diverse band of characters, from Joseph Boleyjack, known as the "parched corn, summer preacher," to polished orators like William Jennings Bryan, who continued exhorting enthusiastic Effingham crowds as his train pulled away. Donaldson traces this story back to before this land was known as Effingham, to the burial mounds of the Kickapoo. He presses on through the challenges the county's determined inhabitants faced in the twentieth century, from the horrors witnessed abroad in the world wars to those faced at home during the Great Depression and in the tragic St. Anthony's Hospital fire. His obvious passion for the county's past is sure to strike a spark with lifelong residents and new arrivals alike.

Murder and Mayhem in Chicago's Vice Districts

9781596296923

$21.99

From the very beginning, Chicago thrived on its reputation as a wide-open town. After the Great Fire, no part of the city was rebuilt more quickly than the vice districts, where bribed cops and brutal force emboldened professional wickedness to celebrate itself with gala events like the First Ward Ball, begun in honor of a madam's pianist and often so crowded that passed-out drunks couldn't even fall to the floor. Randolph Street was nicknamed Gambler's Row because men gambled with their lives by visiting it. In Little Hell, guns and knives could be rented by the hour. In these seedy areas only put to sleep by Mickey Finn's knockout drinks or Gentle Annie's knockout punches, it is no wonder that Detective Woolridge kept seventy-five disguises, made twenty thousand arrests and was shot at forty-four times.