Wynton Alexander has been working on the Museum’s latest collaborative initiative, the North Lawndale History Project, developed by Paul Norrington, president and founder of the K-Town Historic District Association, Inc. Wynton is one of three North Lawndale Minow Fellows working with Peter T. Alter, the Museum’s historian and director of the Studs Terkel Center for Oral History. More
William B. Kurtz, Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America. New York, Fordham University Press (2015). For students of Catholics in America and of immigration, this is an essential study of identity and historical memory in the context of nativism and anti-Catholicism. For readers interested in the Civil War, More
With a lifelong interest in music, no Mainbocher exhibition would be complete without a sampling of the songs that inspired and touched the designer. Many of his clients were performers and composers, and Mainbocher is credited with creating costumes for a total of eighteen Broadway plays, concerts, or musicals from 1941 to 1964. The Making More
Radio Flyer, a Chicago legend, is marking its 100th anniversary this year. The company is best known for their little red wagon designed by company founder Antonio Pasin, an Italian immigrant. Radio Flyer wagons haven’t changed much over the years (classics don’t have to), but a noteworthy exception is the Streak-O-Lite Zephyr version made during the More
Walter Roth, Everyday Heroic Lives: Portraits from Chicago’s Jewish Past. Chicago, Walter Roth (2016). This is a treasure house of writings by Walter Roth, who ended his remarkable twenty-two-year term as president of the Chicago Jewish Historical Society in 2010. At the heart of the book are portraits of fifteen individuals, such as political leader More