Passport's Guide to Ethnic Chicago

This guide can't tell you everything, but it does a nice job of telling you where to look. It gives a map for each ethnic "main drag" in the city. When I lived in Chicago, I used to take it and go on a walking tour of a neighborhood, sampling Lithuanian pierogies on the far South Side, for example. It'd also be a great source of cheap, fun dates, since the restaurants are rarely expensive.

This unique travel guide blends contemporary cultural attractions, parades, festivals, banquets, cotillions, tours, and ethnic museums, with a comprehensive dining and shopping guide. It also tracks the progress of diverse ethnic groups throughout their tenure in Chicago, one of America's most culturally diverse cities. Because of the natural and man-made barriers in this spacious city (25 miles long and ten miles wide), including railroad embankments, expressways and three branches of the Chicago River (extending 50 miles across the landscape), over the years different ethnic groups have lived in relative seclusion from each other, even when there has been as little as a few hundred feet between them. This 378-page trade paperback has no index, but there is a clear table of contents listing these topics: (1) Native Americans, French traders and settlers from New England, (2) Irish Chicago, (3) German Chicago, (4) Swedish and Norwegian Chicago, (5) Jewish Chicago, (6) Czech and Slovak Chicago, (7) Baltic Chicago, (8) Hungarian, Serbo-Croatian, and Romanian Chicago, (9) Ukrainian Chicago, (10) Polish Chicago, (11) Italian Chicago, (12) Greek Chicago, (13) African-American Chicago, (14) Chinese Chicago, (15) Asian Chicago, (16) Latino Chicago, (17) Indian and Pakistani Chicago, (18) Middle Eastern Chicago, (19) Appendices with information on: multiethnic festivals, useful phone numbers and addresses, and a bibliography of suggested reading; (20) 18 maps of different areas of Chicago.This book is not just for tourists, though they will certainly find it very useful. Anyone interested in the rich multicultural heritage of Chicago, both residents and visitors alike, will find much to appreciate in this book. I highly recommend it.

I've had this book now for several years and I refer to it often. The book is divided into ethnic chapters. Each chapter features an indepth history of the ethnic group, plus a listing of restaurants, shops and annual events. I've used this book as an aid in research for my own book "A Barfly's Guide To Chicago's Drinking Establishment." Mr. Lindberg's book has led me to many ethnic taverns in Chicago. His information is extremely valuable for anyone interested in exploring Chicago's vast ethnic neighborhoods.