City Watch: Discovering the Uncommon Chicago

Jon Anderson is a national treasure. His insights are wise, his words, witty and his take on his city and its people, delightful.

Exceptionally well written, the book is both funny and compassionate, astute and compelling as it profiles some of the the people and institutions that call the third coast home. Anderson's vignettes challenge those who believe that New York City is the only REAL city in America with anyone/anything worth watching. The book will appeal to those wtih a taste for things cultural and intellectual, as it includes an interview with the late poet John Nims, as well as writing on such plances Hemingway's childhood home and the "Book Orphanage," and well as those readers drawn to the more material practices of a city, for example: "Clothes found in the Rubbish don't have to look trashy" (a Dumpster-Diving Fashion show) and "Finding the Humor in Haggis" (the dinner of the Illinois St. Andrew Society). Anderson's book provides the reader with a kind of "back-stage pass" to the city, as well as serving as a primer for how to write non-fiction that is as riveting as any novel. His strong voice and intellegence unites the peices and makes the reader want to get to know Anderson himself. I haven't enjoyed a work of non-fiction this much since "naked" by David Sedaris.