Best of Illinois: Turn the page

Oft-imitated, rarely surpassed, The Best of Illinois: Vol. 1 catalog provides one-stop shopping for the best books on all facets of the ever-fascinating Land of Lincoln. Shrooms, the Mafia, music of every kind—BOIV1 offers the perfect gift for the hip reader in your life. But what about those un-hipsters who care about the world enough to want to fix it? Two words: you’re covered. The following titles finish top o’ the poll for anyone fascinated or frightened by that rough beast always slouching toward Springfield to be born: Illinois politics.

Available February 2015.GradelS15 Public funds spent on jets and horses. Shoeboxes stuffed with embezzled cash. Ghost payrolls and incarcerated ex-governors. Illinois’ culture of “Where’s mine?” and the public apathy it engenders has made our state and local politics a disgrace. Veteran political observers Thomas J. Gradel and Dick Simpson take aim at business-as-usual by laying out a blueprint to transform our politics into an instrument of public good.

Corrupt Illinois is the most comprehensive account of corruption in our state ever published. It proposes cures, which will take decades to implement fully, but which deserve our attention now.” —Governor Jim Edgar

N--S14Hard-working, learned, utterly respectable: Jose Angel N. has built an honorable life. Yet he can’t get U.S. citizenship. A searing portrait of the indignities and petty political madness in the way of one man’s American dream, Illegal tells the story of living on the margins out of sheer necessity.

“There are ironies aplenty in this book. Perhaps the greatest irony is that he has been studying us and he knows us better than we know him.” —Richard Rodriguez, author of Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography

NowlanS14We hear the joke all the time. You have a book called Fixing Illinois? Is it 4,000,000 pages long? The answer: no, but that’s only because our crack editorial department can work miracles with space through the judicious use of long (if accurate) adjectives like “bloated,” “nefarious,” “foul-smelling,” “unscrupulous,” and “bamboozlicious.” James D. Nowlan and J. Thomas Johnson put aside cynicism to tackle the long list of problems plaguing the Prairie State. As Adlai E. Stevenson III said, “Fixing Illinois should be read by all concerned Illinois citizens and especially those who seek and occupy public office.” Invest now for a mere $11.97 and dare to see a new way ahead.

For a limited time you can purchase our regional Best of Illinois titles at a 40% discount with the promo code BEST40. Sale ends December 31, 2014. View the Best of Illinois catalog here.