Encyclopedia of Chicago now online

I hope the moderators will indulge this digression. The Encyclopaedia of Chicago--a huge, very expensive reference book that I've wanted to purchase, but held off on--is now online at http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/

If you have any interest in Chicago history, culture, politics, etc., this is a terrific resource.

Thanks for the tip. This is, as I said before in some thread, an impressive but also frustrating book. In light of my recent Moroccan and Algerian adventures, I looked up its sections on those two groups a while back and found this:

...daily prayers and religious holidays have served to bring Algerians together with other immigrants from the Maghreb countries. Most evenings during the holy month of Ramadan, Algerians join Moroccans and Tunisians at mosques, homes, and restaurants to break the day-long fast. Since 2000 an Algerian-owned café on Lincoln Avenue has donated food for the hundreds of North Africans attending the Ramadan-ending feast of Eid Al-Fitr. During the rest of the year, the café has served as an informal meeting place for North African men before and after work.

WOULD IT HURT SO MUCH TO SAY THE FRICKIN' NAME OF THE RESTAURANT? My only guess is Cafe Zam Zam, but that seems awfully small to be donating food for hundreds and I've never seen it serving as an informal meeting place for much of anyone besides me with myself, frankly.

It's a book full of fascinating insight and erudition, but this kind of weird scholarly vagueness runs all through it. A little more anecdotal-ness would make it a lot more interesting to me. I don't need headwaiters' names, like in John Drury, but a little more detail would make it livelier....

Maybe the cafe itself preferred not to be named in a public forum? Remember after 9/11 the idiotic vandalism of places associated with Islam -- and even places NOT in fact associated, such as the Assyrian church near Devon (you'd think "church" would be a big giveaway, but apparently not.)

I work at northwestern in the academic technologies department, which was responsible for putting together the online version. I wasn't involved, but wanted to encourage everyone to take a look, especially at the extensive amounts of media which augment the print version. there are some very impressive high resolution maps from burnham's plan of chicago and other sources which are zoomable and include sliders that allow them to be viewed over multiple eras.

Now I feel like a sap for laying down a lot of hard cash for this book, but up to this point, I was having a good time with it (despite also noticing some of the lackluster style noted by Mike G).

I love the fact that so many of my ancestors are there.

partytickets wrote: there are some very impressive high resolution maps from burnham's plan of chicago and other sources which are zoomable and include sliders that allow them to be viewed over multiple eras.

The maps were the first thing I noticed. They're truly impressive, but I hope the pixellating effect is for some technical reason rather than "it looked cool". I imagine it is, but if it isn't, grr!

-Ed

Maybe the cafe itself preferred not to be named in a public forum?

The whole book's like that, I'm sure they didn't contact whatever this place is to check. Again, in many ways it's a wonderful and terrifically learned book... but maddeningly vague in that particular way a lot of the time.