This winter, the Reader has set a humble goal for itself: to determine the Greatest Chicago Book Ever Written. We chose 16 books that reflected the wide range of books that have come out of Chicago and the wide range of people who live here and assembled them into an NCAA-style bracket. Then we recruited a crack team of writers, editors, booksellers, and scholars as well as a few Reader staffers to judge each bout. The results of each contest will be published every Monday, along with an essay by each judge explaining his or her choice. The Reader reader who best predicts the judges’ rulings will win a trip to Mexico.
Pitting Algren’s nonfiction masterpiece against Erik Larson’s popular and deeply flawed Devil in the White City is a mismatch like unto the 1919 White Sox taking the field against the Jackie Robinson West All-Stars. However good those kids might be, they’re not major-leaguers.
Devil in the White City says nothing about the Fair or Burnham or Holmes that others haven’t already better said elsewhere. Its retelling of history is more a rehash of old ingredients than a vital reimagining of history.
Ponder the election laws that favor incumbents, the “nonpartisan primary” that almost guarantees reelection for Rahm Emanuel, the way reform in this town is always one step forward, three steps back, one step sideways into Bubbly Creek, and then start over.
But it’s a rigged ball game. (14)
Ponder how far we haven’t come.
