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, Sebastin 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.