Böcker av Adam Selzer

Jake is trying to scrape up enough money delivering pizza to make a trip to Chicago when Violet Annie Moss appears in the back seat of his car. She's dressed like she just ran away from a production of My Fair Lady and smoking a pipe tobacco cigarette, and claims that she needs help: She works in 1867, where she just beat up Charles Dickens before his scheduled performance in New York, excatly 150 years ago. Now she's on the run. And she has money. Jake's girlfriend just dumped him for somebody's roleplaying game character, and he assumes Violet is just another gamer. But every man has his price, and Jake's is $300. He and Violet embark on an adventure through the dark underbelly of the Des Moines metropolitan area. Taking place on December 30, 1867, I Beat Up Charles Dickens is a hilarious, period-accurate novel full of mystery, romance, whip-smart dialogue, deep fried food on sticks, and debates about The Last Jedi.

One of Chicago’s landmark attractions, Graceland Cemetery chronicles the city’s sprawling history through the stories of its people. Local historian and Graceland tour guide Adam Selzer presents ten walking tours covering almost the entirety of the cemetery grounds. While nodding to famous Graceland figures from Marshall Field to Ernie Banks to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Selzer also leads readers past the vaults, obelisks, and other markers that call attention to less recognized Chicagoans like: Jessie Williams de Priest, the Black wife of a congressman whose 1929 invitation to a White House tea party set off a storm of controversy;Engineer and architect Fazlur Khan, the Bangladeshi American who revived the city's skyscraper culture;The still-mysterious Kate Warn (listed as Warn on her tombstone), the United States’ first female private detective.Filled with photographs and including detailed maps of each tour route, Graceland Cemetery is an insider's guide to one of Chicago's great outdoor destinations for city lore and history.

The lives of notorious bad guys, perpetrators of mischief, visionary--if misunderstood--thinkers, and other colorful antiheroes, jerks, and evil doers from history all get their due in the short essays featured in these enlightening, informative books. Speaking Ill of the Dead: Jerks in Chicago History features 15 short biographies of nefarious characters.

Discover the fascinating history of