The book is about Chicago neighborhood life in the 1940s as remembered by 125 current and former Chicago residents, combined with 100 duotone images. This volume looks back fondly at daily life, the War years, sports and recreation and entertainment in Chicago's neighborhoods.

Chicago’s Far North Side, a few decades ago—a rough-and-tumble place, awash with racial tensions and petty crime. Joey, the youngest child in a mixed-race family, is pushing his way up through the cracked pavement of a chaotic life: parish festivals and block parties on long summer nights, fistfights in back alleys on boring empty days, long walks up and down Clark Street pocketing envelopes of collection money for his older brother, Lil’ Pat. It’s easy enough to pretend it’s all normal, until he sees Pat murder a man in a neighborhood drugstore. Now he’s haunted by the memory of blood pooling on the green tiles under the flickering fluorescent lights, torn by the conflict between love of family and disgust over what they do—and desperate to survive the insanity without being swept up in it. This revised second edition of Bill Hillmann’s modern classic features a new introduction by Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh. It’s a perfect primer for a great book that deserves a place alongside the likes of Nelson Algren and James T. Farrell on the top shelf of Chicago literature.

"Don't let the title fool you. It's about more than street signs: it's about life in the big city; it's about history and the loss of history; it's about neighborhoods that were and never were, but still could be; it's about illusion and the real thing...." Studs Terkel.

Newcomers to older neighborhoods are usually perceived as destructive, tearing down everything that made the place special and attractive. But as A Neighborhood That Never Changes demonstrates, many gentrifiers seek to preserve the authentic local flavor of their new homes, rather than ruthlessly remake them. Drawing on ethnographic research in four distinct communities—the Chicago neighborhoods of Andersonville and Argyle and the New England towns of Provincetown and Dresden—Japonica Brown-Saracino paints a colorful portrait of how residents new and old, from wealthy gay homeowners to Portuguese fishermen, think about gentrification. The new breed of gentrifiers, Brown-Saracino finds, exhibits an acute self-consciousness about their role in the process and works to minimize gentrification’s risks for certain longtime residents. In an era of rapid change, they cherish the unique and fragile, whether a dilapidated house, a two-hundred-year-old landscape, or the presence of people deeply rooted in the place they live. Contesting many long-standing assumptions about gentrification, Brown-Saracino’s absorbing study reveals the unexpected ways beliefs about authenticity, place, and change play out in the social, political, and economic lives of very different neighborhoods.

"A brief, cogent analysis of gentrification in Chicago ... an incisive and useful narrative on the puzzle of urban development."-- Kirkus Reviews In the years after World War II, a movement began to bring the m

For nearly 150 years, Pilsen has been a port of entry for thousands of immigrants. Mexicans, Czechs, Poles, Lithuanians, Croatians, and Germans are some of the ethnic groups who passed through this "Ellis Island" on Chicago's Near Westside. Early generations came searching for work and found plenty of jobs in the lumber mills, breweries, family-run shops and large factories that took root here. Today most jobs exist outside of Pilsen, but the neighborhood is still home to a loyal population. Pilsen is compact but abounds with close-knit families, elaborate churches, mom-and-pop stores, and sturdy brick homes. Nearly 200 photographs from libraries, personal scrapbooks, and museums provide the evidence. Some notable people who walked the streets of Pilsen include Anton Cermak, Amalia Mendoza, George Hallas, Cesar Chavez, Judy Barr Topinka, and Stuart Dybek. Today the Pilsen schools are nurturing another generation of artists, athletes, and activists. Many Chicagoans and tourists from outside the city are rediscovering this colorful and historic neighborhood. Let this history book serve as their guide.

A guide to fifteen tours through Chicago neighborhoods emphasizing historic landmarks and pointing out institutions and buildings which had important roles in each neighborhoods growth.