CHICAGO: THE SECOND CITY

by A. J.Liebling '24. Alfred A. Knopf, 1952; 143 pp.;$2.50.

The United States is full of good reporters and A. J. Liebling is demonstrably one of the very best.

In this gem of a book about Chicago, which first appeared in The New Yorker without the embellishments, he performs an urbane and clinical operation on Colonel McCosmic's city which is not only vastly amusing in a Menckenian sense but also, I suspect, is the gospel truth about a sprawling, windy city loosely labelled the "hog butcher of the world."

Good Chicagoans will squirm, but in vain. Their brawling, gangster-ridden city has been impaled on a pin like a dead and somewhat dusty butterfly, hollow and unreal. The Steinberg illustrations are worthy of the book, which is high praise indeed.