Trope Chicago

Trope Chicago is a highly curated collection of photographic images from an active community of urban photographers who have passionately captured their city like never before.

The City of Big Shoulders has always been our most quintessentially American—and world-class—architectural metropolis. In the wake of the Great Fire of 1871, a great building boom—still the largest in the history of the nation—introduced the first modern skyscrapers to the Chicago skyline and began what would become a legacy of diverse, influential, and iconoclastic contributions to the city’s built environment. Though this trend continued well into the twentieth century, sour city finances and unnecessary acts of demolishment left many previous cultural attractions abandoned and then destroyed. Lost Chicago explores the architectural and cultural history of this great American city, a city whose architectural heritage was recklessly squandered during the second half of the twentieth century. David Garrard Lowe’s crisp, lively prose and over 270 rare photographs and prints, illuminate the decades when Gustavus Swift and Philip D. Armour ruled the greatest stockyards in the world; when industrialists and entrepreneurs such as Cyrus McCormick, Potter Palmer, George Pullman, and Marshall Field made Prairie Avenue and State Street the rivals of New York City’s Fifth Avenue; and when Louis Sullivan, Daniel Burnham, and Frank Lloyd Wright were designing buildings of incomparable excellence. Here are the mansions and grand hotels, the office buildings that met technical perfection (including the first skyscraper), and the stores, trains, movie palaces, parks, and racetracks that thrilled residents and tourists alike before falling victim to the wrecking ball of progress. “Lost Chicago is more than just another coffee table gift, more than merely a history of the city’s architecture; it is a history of the whole city as a cultural creation.”—New York Times Book Review

“Reconnect[s] affect studies with major issues in literary studies, philosophy, and aesthetics. . . . a fundamental contribution to this emergent field.” —Jonathan Culler, Cornell University, author of Structuralist Poetics In Mood and Trope, John Brenkman introduces two provocative propositions to affect theory: that human emotion is intimately connected to persuasion and figurative language; and that literature, especially poetry, lends precision to studying affect because it resides there not in speaking about feelings, but in the way of speaking itself. Engaging modern philosophers—Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Deleuze—Brenkman explores how they all approach the question of affect primarily through literature and art. He draws on the differences and dialogues among them, arguing that the vocation of criticism is incapable of systematicity and instead must be attuned to the singularity and plurality of literary and artistic creations. In addition, he confronts these four philosophers and their essential concepts with a wide array of authors and artists, including Pinter and Poe, Baudelaire, Jorie Graham and Li-Young Lee, Shakespeare, Tino Sehgal, and Francis Bacon. Filled with surprising insights, Mood and Trope provides a rich archive for rethinking the nature of affect and its aesthetic and rhetorical stakes. “Combining philosophical inquiry with brilliant interpretive readings, Brenkman, draws out the distinctive imbrications of mood and trope across a range of modern poetic projects.” —Amanda Anderson, Brown University, author of Psyche and Ethos “Brenkman shows us how literature has extended and deepened the possibilities of feeling and knowledge of feeling alike.” —Susan Stewart, Princeton University, author of The Open Studio: Essays on Art and Aesthetics “Eminently readable.” —Choice

Award-winning photographer Tobi Shonibare - Tobi Shinobi to his followers - pushes the boundaries of symmetry and balance in his first book, Equilibrium. From his native London to his current Chicago home, and in far-flung locales around the world, Tobi's photographs explore and deconstruct architecture and nature until they appear as optical illusions. His vertigo-inducing perspectives turn familiar vistas into abstractions, reality into a fantasyland of line and shape. More than 164,000 followers on Instagram experience Tobi's obsessive attention to detail and fascination with the geometry of our world.

Hollywood is placeless, timeless, and iconic, a key fabricator and forger of American cultural myths and stories. How, then, will the history of Hollywood be written?

In the seventeen vividly rendered stories in Ghosts of Chicago, John McNally captures the poignancy of both the shared experiences of a city and the interior details of his everyday characters.

Covid-19 was my reason for writing this book. I'm not a published author, but because of the quarantine for months, I decided to relive my past and put it in print. My only experience with writing was when I was in school. I made up book reports and got good grades on all my work. Hope you enjoy my past as I lived it.

Chicago has never had a photo book of its own. Until now. The city has produced some of the most important photographers of our time -- Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, Vivian Maier, Art Shay -- but has never before possessed a book packed with their most timeless work. This is the finest collection of its kind -- 100 stunning images by the city's most revered photographers that show the enduring and endearing aspects of Chicago and its landscape from the Loop to the city's vast array of neighborhoods. Richard Cahan and Michael Williams, the foremost picture editors of the city, curate the book. Here they have chosen photos going back more than a century to show a city that is both well-known and surprising. This is a book for people who love Chicago and for visitors who want something special to remember her by. It is filled with classic photographs that defy time -- timeless pictures of a changing city.

Lives are on the line at Engine 6 … and so are hearts. Running an engine crew in the Chicago Fire Department is my dream job, and between that, my awesome kid, and my nosy sister, I lead a pretty great life. Bruised and burned by my marriage, I don’t have time for dating or drama, but I always have time for pie. And when I share a slice of cherry with a sweet redhead, followed by the hottest, dirtiest, most pulse-pounding kiss of my life, I start to rethink the possibilities. Until that woman walks into my firehouse and upends my well-ordered world. Abby Sullivan is now a rookie firefighter on my crew and a threat to my self-control more dangerous than a five-alarm blaze. My job is to watch her six when all I want is to watch her fall into my bed. Lust has no place in the firehouse, and a distraction like Abby with her electric blue eyes, waves of flame-red hair, and freckles I want to map with my tongue, is one I can ill afford. Because one wrong move … and it could all go up in smoke. Up in Smoke is the first in the brand new Hot in Chicago Rookies series about firefighters navigating the trials of new jobs and sizzling romances as they find their place in the world and the love of a lifetime. Firefighters; firemen; firefighter romance; hot in chicago; workplace romance; forbidden romance; boss-employee romance; single dad; single father