Features

Best New Restaurants
by Dennis Ray Wheaton and Anne Spiselman
Our critics’ hunt for this year’s best new restaurants turned up 24 choice spots, many with a familiar French tilt. Also, check out our roundup of recent and upcoming openings for a preview of next year’s contenders.

Behind the Shield
by Jonathan Eig
Officer Joe Miedzianowski developed a complex web of informants – gun dealers, drug dealers, gangbangers. Then, the feds say, he got tangled in it.

Into Thick Air
by Steve Rhodes
Last year was the safest in U.S. aviation history. But the boom in air travel is straining outdated air traffic equipment, spawning delays, complaints – and risks.

Thirst
by Stacy Wallace-Albert
Chicago designers are lightening up for long days in the sun and playing it pale with shades of cream, white, and almond.

Departments

Letters

Contributors

Frontlines
Andy Richter gets off Conan’s couch; summer movie-cliché bingo; more
Style Sheet
by Stacy Wallace-Albert
Magic lanterns, chain mail pillows, Audrey Hepburn’s Mary Janes

Stage & Screen
by Penelope Mesic
Making music out of the living end; Winter comes for summer.

Real Lives
by Marcia Froelke Coburn
In the drink with wining and dining connoisseur Stephen Kaplan

Reporter
by Joel Kaplan
The GOP’s Jim Ryan pursues a lawsuit his party’s tort reformers would kill.

Travel: In the Footsteps of Giants
Tours of the heartland haunts of Ernest Hemingway, Frank Lloyd Wright, Grant Wood, and Elvis Presley

Field’s of Dreams
by Cynthia Hanson
In Sugar Rautbord’s latest novel, the real star is an incomparable Depression-era department store.

Business
by David Zivan
The rank competition between Chicago’s two top B schools – and the payoff principle

Sullivan’s Travels
by Terry Sullivan
Michael Jordan may be gone, but his stuff is still around – and on auction.