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Tag: Long Reads
The Big Party
By Bryan Smith
FROM JULY 2009: After launching the Playboy empire here in the 1950s, Hugh Hefner turned Chicago into a frontline of the sexual revolution, acting out his sybaritic fantasy life behind the walls of his mansion on North State Parkway. But as the freewheeling sixties gave way to the decadent seventies, things changed drastically for Hefner and the Gold Coast mansion he called home Read more
The President's Neighborhood
By Christopher Benson
Chicago's Hyde Park has hosted a world's fair, nurtured a great university, pioneered urban renewal, and served as both home and crucible for Barack Obama. Read more
Queen of Arts
Muriel Newman excelled at the art of collecting. One expert called the paintings that graced her Gold Coast apartment “the greatest private collection of abstract expressionists in the world”—and Chicago’s art scene shuddered when she bequeathed most of those paintings to a New York museum. But no one seemed to blame Newman, whose gregarious personality and boundless generosity endeared her to local art institutions and patrons. Nearly a year after her death, a look back at the colorful 94-year life of an unforgettable grande dame Read more
The Lost Boy
By Geoffrey Johnson
In 1908, Chicago’s chief of police shot to death a Russian-born Jewish immigrant who had come to the chief’s Lincoln Park home. One hundred years later, Aleksandar Hemon, another European who has made Chicago his home, used that tale as a springboard for his acclaimed novel The Lazarus Project. Hemon followed in the path of several historians who had already taken on that same story—yet despite those combined investigations, the circumstances behind the immigrant’s death remain a mystery Read more
Chicago Straight
By David Bernstein
The arrest of Governor Rod Blagojevich in December cast a shadowy light on the relationships among four leading players in the Illinois Democratic Party—Blagojevich, Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, and David Axelrod. The new president and his two aides would like to minimize their dealings with the disgraced ex-governor. But the record tells a more complex story Read more
In the Name of the Father
By Bryan Smith
The 1974 murder of Daniel Seifert, a Bensenville businessman, unhinged his two sons and set them off on separate, troubled quests to avenge their father. After 25 years, they confronted the man behind his killing—Joseph “The Clown” Lombardo—not at the end of a gun, but in court Read more
What Bill Ayers Wants
By Debra Pickett
The sixties radical stayed quiet during last year’s presidential campaign, but as a prominent education professor, he’s speaking out now about his prescription for fixing the public schools Read more
Can Cameras Replace Cops?
By Noah Isackson
No one can say for sure why murders and violent crimes are on the rise in Chicago. But some criminologists are questioning why the new police superintendent, Jody Weis, is moving away from proven community policing strategies. Read more
What Arne Learned
By Jennifer Tanaka
President Obama’s new secretary of education takes the lessons of Chicago Public Schools to the big stage Read more