The Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook

Dubbed "required reading" by the Chicago Tribune, The Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook offers an intimate, idiosyncratic look at the third-largest city in the country.Part of Belt's growing series of unique city guides, The Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook explores community history and identity in a global city through essays, poems, photo essays, and art articulating the lived experience of its residents. Edited by Belt senior editor Martha Bayne, the book builds on 2017's critically acclaimed Rust Belt Chicago: An Anthology. What did one pizzeria mean to a boy growing up in Ashburn? How can South Shore encompass so much beauty and so much pain? Where's the best borscht in Ukranian Village? Who's got a handle on the ever-shifting identity of Rogers Park? All this and more in this lyrical, subjective, completely non-comprehensive guide to Chicago. With contributions from more than forty writers, including Megan Stielstra, Audrey Petty, Dmitry Samarov, Lily Be, and many others, covering forty-three of Chicago’s diverse neighborhoods.A snapshot of a city at an inflection point, The Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook is grassroots history at its finest, and a must-read for anyone keen to understand what makes Chicago tick.

Part of Belt’s Neighborhood Guidebook Series, The Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook is an intimate exploration of the Windy City’s history and identity. “Required reading”—The Chicago Tribune

Officially, Chicago has 77 neighborhoods. Unofficially, though, that number’s closer to 200. But what does that mean for the people who actually call Chicago home? In an eclectic collection of essays, poems, photos, and visual art, The Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook aims to explore the city’s overlooked corners. Edited by Martha Bayne, and with help from the Read/Write Library, the book builds on 2017’s critically acclaimed Rust Belt Chicago: An Anthology. Here, you’ll find compelling stories from all over the city:

• What one pizzeria meant to a boy growing up in Ashburn

• The South Shore’s beauty and pain

• The best borscht in Ukranian Village

• The alleys of the Gold Coast

• Rogers Park’s ever-shifting identity.

This lyrical and subjective guide to Chicago features work by Megan Stielstra, Audrey Petty, Alex Hernandez, Sebastián Hidalgo, Dmitry Samarov, Ed Marszewski, Lily Be, Jonathan Foiles, and many more. It’s a book about the day-to-day lives of people in the city and above all else, about the changes those people have witnessed, suffered, and enacted.

In this idiosyncratic guidebook, Chicagoans will recognize both their streets and their stories, and readers from outside the city will get an intimate portrait of one of America’s most iconic cities.