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AN ELEGANT VOLUME THAT CELEBRATES CHICAGO IN FULL-COLOR SPLENDOR, INCLUDING FOUR PANORAMIC FOLDOUTS

From Publishers Weekly:

Freelance photojournalist Visalli's superb color pictures celebrate the architecture, vistas, roadways and artwork of the Windy City. As Kurtis, a Chicago television anchor, notes in the foreword, Chicago rose like a phoenix from the ashes of the Great Fire of 1871, and new edifices were fashioned from incombustible materials like brick, stone, iron and slate.

Visalli depicts such older architectural greats as the Adler and Sullivan Auditorium Theater, as well as giant newcomers like the Sears Tower and the John Hancock Center. Kurtis refers to contemporary slums with their "wanton" hunger and violence, but Visalli reveals the fashionable Gold Coast on Lake Shore Drive, sculptures by Calder, Picasso and Henry Moore, the University of Chicago campus, the trading floor at the Chicago Board of Trade and the facade of the Art Institute.

Curiously, the Baha'i Temple in suburban Wilmette is included among the examples of "urban" grandeur. Captions are placed at the end of the book, which is cumbersome.

From Library Journal:

For Italian photojournalist Visalli, Chicago is heroic buildings set against earth, water, and sky. Few neighborhoods, indeed few peoplein spite of WBBM-TV anchorman Bill Kurtis's down-home introductionintrude on Visalli's elemental vision of the metropolis. This magnificently reproduced assemblage of over 200 color photographs, taken over the course of a year, are syncopated with "quotable quotes" from Chicago writers and visitors. What emerges is an oddly matched fusion of photo and text, a city portrait more architectural than urban.