A relentlessly honest coming of death story, this psychological memoir of comedian Glenn Rockowitz's ongoing struggle with cancer offers a vivid glimpse into the landscape of a mind when it is faced with the constant threat of death. The story takes us from Glenn's unexpected diagnosis of 'three months at best' just days before the birth of his only child, to his miraculous remission and the ironic death of his father. It is a journey that is by turns heartbreaking, painfully funny, misanthropic, loving and ultimately heroic. Rodeo In Joliet tramples the Hallmark cliches and platitudes of traditional cancer survival stories and presents in their place an experience that leaves the reader in awe and grateful for his or her every breath.

Chicago may seem a surprising choice for studying thoroughbred racing, especially since it was originally a famous harness racing town and did not get heavily into thoroughbred racing until the 1880s. However, Chicago in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was second only to New York as a center of both thoroughbred racing and off-track gambling. Horse Racing the Chicago Way shines a light on this fascinating, complicated history, exploring the role of political influence and class in the rise and fall of thoroughbred racing; the business of racing; the cultural and social significance of racing; and the impact widespread opposition to gambling in Illinois had on the sport. Riess also draws attention to the nexus that existed between horse racing, politics, and syndicate crime, as well as the emergence of neighborhood bookmaking, and the role of the national racing wire in Chicago. Taking readers from the grandstands of Chicago’s finest tracks to the underworld of crime syndicates and downtown poolrooms, Riess brings to life this understudied era of sports history.

See stars at the William M. Staerkel Planetarium in Champaign, check out Santa's Village in East Dundee, or catch a dinner show at Medieval Times--kids and parents will love discovering so many things to see and do in Illinois.

Balloons to Jets: A Century of Aviation in Illinois, 1855–1955, written by historian Howard L. Scamehorn, was originally published in 1957 by the Illinois State Historical Society and distributed only to the society’s membership and to select libraries in the state. Scamehorn offers a wealth of information not only on one hundred years of aviation in Illinois but also on events leading up to the Wright Brothers’ initial flight in 1903. Scamehorn’s history of aviation in Illinois covers such topics as amateur pilots, aviation contests and meets, the development of airmail, military aeronautics, commercial air transport, the expansion of airports, flyers and flying achievements, and state and federal regulation of aeronautics. But Balloons to Jets is not just a history of aviation in one state. Scamehorn also traces national and international aviation progress from the free balloon to the dirigible. He then describes aeronautical activities and experiments by such people as Octave Chanute, Glenn Curtiss, Thomas Scott Baldwin, Otto Lilienthal, Samuel Pierpont Langley, and others that lent support to the Wrights’ flight at Kitty Hawk. Of interest to both armchair aviation enthusiasts and professionals, Scamehorn’s study illustrates the evolution of commercial aviation from its origins with the military and the itinerant flyer to Charles Lindbergh’s successful transatlantic trip in 1927 and the subsequent explosion in public interest in flight. Balloons to Jets is lavishly illustrated with eighty-six black-and-white historic photographs of early aviators and a range of flying craft, including hot-air balloons, dirigibles, gliders, biplanes, monoplanes, bombers, and early luxury transports. This reprint features a new foreword by Gene Abney, the former director of the Illinois Department of Aeronautics.