{"title":"Nelson Algren","description":"Nelson Algren (1909-81) won the National Book Award in 1950 for The Man with the Golden Arm. His works include A Walk on the Wild Side, The Neon Wilderness, and Chicago: City on the Make, the last published by the University of Chicago Press. David Schmittgens teaches English at St. Ignatius College Prep in Chicago. Bill Savage is a senior lecturer at Northwestern University and coeditor of the fiftieth anniversary critical edition of The Man with the Golden Arm.","products":[{"product_id":"chicago-city-on-the-make-sixtieth-anniversary-edition-paperback","title":"Chicago: City on the Make: Sixtieth Anniversary Edition - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Once you've become a part of this particular patch, you'll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real.\" \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Ernest Hemingway once said of Nelson Algren's writing that \"you should not read it if you cannot take a punch.\" The prose poem, \u003ci\u003eChicago: City on the Make\u003c\/i\u003e, filled with language that swings and jabs and stuns, lives up to those words. In this sixtieth anniversary edition, Algren presents 120 years of Chicago history through the lens of its \"nobodies nobody knows\" the tramps, hustlers, aging bar fighters, freed death-row inmates, and anonymous working stiffs who prowl its streets. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Upon its original publication in 1951, Algren's \u003ci\u003eChicago: City on the Make\u003c\/i\u003e was scorned by the Chicago Chamber of Commerce and local journalists for its gritty portrayal of the city and its people, one that boldly defied City Hall's business and tourism initiatives. Yet the book captures the essential dilemma of Chicago: the dynamic tension between the city's breathtaking beauty and its utter brutality, its boundless human energy and its stifling greed and violence. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e The sixtieth anniversary edition features historic Chicago photos and annotations on everything from defunct slang to Chicagoans, famous and obscure, to what the Black Sox scandal was and why it mattered. More accessible than ever, this is, as Studs Terkel says, \"the best book about Chicago.\"","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51365707972831,"sku":"9780226013862","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/pYZZLpfpjP9780226013862.webp?v=1789070168"},{"product_id":"a-walk-on-the-wild-side-paperback","title":"A Walk on the Wild Side - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWith its depictions of the downtrodden prostitutes, bootleggers, and hustlers of Perdido Street in the old French Quarter of 1930s New Orleans, Nelson Algren's \u003ci\u003eA Walk in the Wild Side\u003c\/i\u003e has found a place in the imaginations of all generations since it first appeared. \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs Algren admitted, the book \"wasn't written until long after it had been walked . . . I found my way to the streets on the other side of the Southern Pacific station, where the big jukes were singing something called 'Walking the Wild Side of Life.' I've stayed pretty much on that side of the curb ever since.\" \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003ePerhaps the author's own words describe this classic work best: \"The book asks why lost people sometimes develop into greater human beings than those who have never been lost in their whole lives. Why men who have suffered at the hands of other men are the natural believers in humanity, while those whose part has been simply to acquire, to take all and give nothing, are the most contemptuous of mankind.\"\u003ch3\u003eBack Jacket\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eWith its depictions of the downtrodden prostitutes, bootleggers, and hustlers of Perdido Street in the old French Quarter of 1930s New Orleans, A Walk on the Wild Side found a place in the imaginations of all the generations that have followed since. Perhaps his own words describe the book best: \"The book asks why lost people sometimes develop into greater human beings than those who have never been lost in their whole lives. Why men who have suffered at the hands of other men are the natural believers in humanity, while those whose part has been simply to acquire, to take all and give nothing, are the most contemptuous of mankind\".\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51369790570719,"sku":"9780374525323","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/LmtQujRXdf9780374525323.webp?v=1789146623"}],"url":"https:\/\/blackandbarhe.com\/collections\/nelson-algren.oembed","provider":"Black \u0026 Barhe Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}