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Press Coverage

Book Reviews, Article Citations, & Press Coverage

The Edison-Norwood Times Review, July 16, 2009. Feature stories by Alan Schmidt and photographs by Ruthie Hauge. open

Houston Chronicle, October 22, 2005. Interview and feature story by reporter Dave Barron about the White Sox and Houston Astros in the World Series; two unlikely entrants in the Fall Classic. Dave wondered about the so-called "Comiskey Curse."

"Pride is about the only thing that has sustained the White Sox faithful throughout the years. , the author of four books about the franchise, including the 570-page White Sox Encyclopedia, said the franchise has suffered for years from a chain of events that started with the Black Sox Scandal. Before 1920, the White Sox were the dominant franchise in Chicago," Lindberg said. "But after 1920, all bets were off. It was one disaster after another. They spent 30 years wandering in the desert, then had a 17-year renaissance through 1967 before that evaporated and the Cubs took over Chicago. There have been so many forces at work -- gentrification, Old Comiskey Park becoming outmoded while Wrigley Field became an urban hotspot. Add it all up, and whether you call it curse or just tragic circumstances, what has happened to the White Sox has been more real, more bitter, more part of the team's history than some stupid goat." [Referring to the Cubs alleged "Curse of the Billy Goat"]

Chicago Sun-Times, October 19, 2005. The day after the White Soc clinched the 2005 American League pennant, sports columnist Carol Slezak of the Sun-Times caught up with Rich, and asked him about his thoughts and the mood of Sox fans, during the raucous Sunday night celebration at Schaller's Pump at 37th & Halsted the night before.

"I had not been in a situation for many years where so many people were celebrating and in a joyous mood," saidLindberg who watched the game at Schaller's Pump on Halsted. "In the past five years, we've had Sept. 11, the Iraq War, political corruption in Chicago, and this was a moment where all of that could be set aside. It was so loud in the bar that that when I walked outside my ears were ringing. Afterward I drove around 35th Street and all the houses had Sox banners and people were out on Halsted celebrating. But the further I got away from it, the quieter it became. I drove by Wrigley Field around 11:15 and it was dead as a doormat. It looked like a ghost town." Lindberg also wrote The White Sox Encyclopedia, was struck by the realization: Fandom is more segregated between Sox and Cubs than I thought. In 1959 the pennant unified the city."

"Now we can finally retire Pierce, Fox, Manager Lopez and Rivera," Lindberg said. "We held them up for five decades because they were the example of what the Sox could and should become. They did not achieve the final prize, but they gave us hope. And they showed us that after the 1919 Black Sox scandal, the team could make it back to the World Series. But the '59 team is old and tired. Its had its day. The '05 Sox will become the new icon." And if the new icon wins the World Series? "It might unify the city yet," Lindberg said.

Chicago Sun-Times, September 29, 2003. Feature story about Soldier Field, Chicago's spacious lakefront stadium, on the eve of its gala re-opening following a two-year renovation that many architectural critics viewed as an abomination. Rich weighed in on the matter with reporter Greg Couch in his article "A History Lesson."

"When Chicago author and historian Richard Lindberg talks about it, he sounds like a loving Chicagoan sickened by his child's disfigurement. 'My father actually worked on Soldier Field in 1924 when he came from Sweden,' he said. 'The whole thing looks pretty terrible now, a very poor combination of neoclassical arechitecture and flying saucers. Or maybe it looks like a giant stood on top of Soldier Field, took a bowl and dropped it inside the columns. That's not Soldier Field anymore. Does it matter? Yeah I think it matters. The history and architecture, and the definition of the lakefront has changed. What used to be a pleasing mixture of greenery and water...the museums and the lakefront and Soldier Field were congruous with each other. Now you get the feeling that something has landed on top of Soldier Field. It reduces the old Soldier field to an ornament. The colonnades are just ornaments now. But actually, I'm not sure Bears fans really care about neoclassical architecture balanced with symmetry.

'I just think a lot of history was lost,' Lindberg said. 'They'll never build a stadium like old Soldier Field again. It was a great example of the design of architects in the early 20th century: build outward, upward, and make it bigger and better than the last thing that went up. They had a real sense of optimism about the future. It was an enormous temple of sport, human competition as a classical way of settling differences between people. This place is set up only as a place to anchor the Bears in Chicago forever, improve revenue for the Bears and fulfill the vision of Richard M. Daley. I know it puts in great comforts, and that's fine.'

Chicago Sun-Times, July 12, 2002. Feature story about Chicago's so-called "Irish mob" written by Mike Thomas to coincide with the premier of the motion picture "Road to Perdition."

"In the mid-1920s, Capone's cartel began muscling them out, with the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, the final blow for Irish dominance of the criminal element. 'I think it was basically [about] self-preservation an, in a perverse kind of way, trying to live the American dream, get a piece of the action,' Chicago author and crime historian Richard Lindberg says of the Irish underworld roots. 'That's what Chicago's always been about."

Daily Southtown, April 3, 2002. Feature story and book review by Dan Pearson.

"For those who want to know where lives ended and laws were broken, this accomplished and compelling companion volume to Lindberg's provocative 1999 guidebook 'Return to the Scene of the Crime,' continues in taking a civic pride in presenting unapologetically macabre local survey of murder, mayhem and malicious mischief. Lindberg has also written about Chicago's politics, ethnic diversity, history and police department. In looking for the story behind the story, Lindberg often succeeds in prying loose odd facts and bizarre events."

Chicago Sun-Times, November 4, 2001. Book review by Henry Kisor.

"Return Again to the Scene of the Crime deals with a class of people much more interesting than wealthy socialites. In fact Lindberg comes close to declaring we ought to be proud of our criminal past instead of grumbling when an outlander makes machine gun noises at the mention of the city's name."

City Talk, a publication of Network Chicago, Channel 11 (PBS). "The Fists of Injustice" author profile by Tony Rogers.

A full-length feature story about Richard Lindberg, his childhood victimization by schoolyard bullies, and later writing career appeared in Channel Eleven's subscriber magazine on October 26, 2001.
www.networkchicago.com/citytalk/fistsinjustice.htm

Chicago Magazine, July 2000. "Shock City," article by Joy Bergmann. The article revisits the favorite after-hours haunts listed in Jack Lait & Lee Mortimer's breezy "Chicago Confidential," published in 1950. Bergmann writes:

"To historian Richard Lindberg, author of Return to the Scene of the Crime, Lait and Mortimer's book recalls the city's glory days. 'The mob controlled the Rush Street places like Scotch Mist and Talk of the Town, but even those places had a certain panache to them. We have really lost something, we have lost our civility and sense of style. I sure wish I could go back and spend just one night club hopping from Uptown to downtown, and down to the South Side, from the Aragon to the Chez Paree to the Dreamland Café."

Chicago Sun-Times, May 24, 2000. "Shoe's on the Other Foot," article by Greg Couch.

"He took the money, bottom line," said Richard Lindberg, a Chicago sports historian who wrote the White Sox Encyclopedia. "This thing has just been, like many things today, based on sentiment rather than hard facts and analysis of the case. Jackson plotted the conspiracy and carried it out. He confessed on Sept. 28, 1920 in the criminal courts building. You can read the transcripts in the newspapers."

Chicago Tribune, July 2, 2000. "The Battle of Shoeless Joe," article by Michael Hirsley.

"Richard Lindberg, a White Sox historian, does marketing for a Chicago private investigations firm and writes non-fiction about two favorite subjects. One is crime. The other is the White Sox, for whom he has rooted since childhood. It was inevitable the author would become fascinated with the 1919 Black Sox. Not so predictable however, was his metamorphosis on the subject: "I've gone from being sympathetic to the Black Sox players 15 years ago to the opposite point of view."

Chicago Sun-Times, January 3, 2000. Lee Bey, Architecture Critic, on Chicago Police stations.

"Chicago writer Richard Lindberg, author of Return to the Scene of the Crime, said police stations were often unpleasant looking because they were frequently built in vice districts. "This reflects a mind-set of policing," Lindberg said. "It's blue against the rest of the world."

Chicago Sun Times, October 3, 1999. Dave Hoekstra restaurant review.

"[Chicago restaurateur Jerry] Kleiner learned about the legacy of the South Loop by reading Richard Lindberg's book Chicago by Gaslight, Kleiner says. "From speakeasies to gambling parlors the history here was amazing." …Jerry Kleiner will open Gioco in mid-October at 1312. S. Wabash.

Illinois Times, August 26, 1999. Book review by Pete Sherman.

"Lindberg does have a knack for telling stories. Sometimes this gets the best of him, for most quotes, references to names, dates and facts are without reference or footnote. Therefore one just has to trust him, like one would trust a friend who shows you around town and seemingly knows everything. But one thing is probably true, he knows more about Chicago crime and misfortune than you."

Chicago Sun-Times, August 24, 1999. Richard Roeper's column.

"Veteran author and Chicago Crime Commission member Richard Lindberg has a fascinating book called Return to the Scene of the Crime: A Guide to Infamous Places in Chicago. This is the definitive roadmap to Chicago's dark history."

New City, July 29, 1999. "Cuffed," article by Carl Kozlowski.

"According to Richard Lindberg, author of the new CPD history book, To Serve & Collect, and former editor of the Illinois Police & Sheriff's News, the recent killings show that "the department has taken three steps forward and two steps back. "The problem today is the strength of the police unions in shielding these guys and giving officers a sense of infallibility because they know they're rarely going to lose their jobs," says Lindberg. "The union's support of the city in clear cases of malfeasance and physical abuse diminishes the credibility of the rank and file police officer and creates mountains of mistrust, fear and suspicion within the public."

New City, April 15,1999. "Manifest Destiny," article by Sam Weller. Weighing the pros and cons of neighborhood gentrification in Chicago, Lindberg was quoted by Weller:

"Gentrification has been going on forever," says Richard Lindberg, the author of nine books about Chicago. And while the term, according to most anthropologists, came into vogue in the sixties, the process of neighborhoods going from poor and back to wealthy again is an ancient story. "Historically in Chicago," says Lindberg, "A neighborhood is a halfway house for one group of people to live for a time. They climb the socio-economic ladder, and they move out. Then the next group moves in. Then this whole process begins over again. There is no permanency to a neighborhood in Chicago."

The Reader, March 26, 1999. "In Print: Public Servants With the Gift of Grab," book review by Sridhar Pappu.

"Richard Lindberg, author of To Serve & Collect: Chicago Politics and Police Corruption From the Lager Beer Riot to the Summerdale Scandal, 1855-1960, shows that corruption belongs in the hands of people who know how to work it."

New City, December 10, 1998. Book review by Sam Weller.

To Serve & Collect takes a fascinating look at the history of Chicago's boys in blue and what ultimately morphed the CPD into what Lindberg calls the "most corrupt police department in American history." The book comprehensively covers—often times in microscopic detail the political history of the Windy City and the men who patrol the streets. Tossing in little known anecdotes and a good measure of suspense, Lindberg's book is accessible to more than just a graduate thesis evaluation committee.

The Reader, October 24, 1997. "Journalism's Genteel Attack Dog." Author profile in Mike Miner's "Hot Type" column.

"Lindberg is a leader of the brie and chablis set. He's vice president and program chairman of the Society of Midland Authors which meets in the Cliff Dweller's Club and gives awards each year for locally written fiction. "I enjoy all the genteel things," he says. "He's also the founder of the less genteel Merry Gangsters Literary Society and he lives by the words: 'Every good and excellent thing stands by the moment on the razor's edge of danger and must be fought for,' the credo of one of the Chicago area's strangest publications, the Illinois Police & Sheriff's News. This two-fisted newspaper kicks ass and names names, and Lindberg's editor. Lindberg himself is, at age 44, an unlikely attack dogcourtly, somber, reflective."

Lerner Newspapers, September 24, 1997. "Writing Home," Author profile by Thad Rueter.

"He calls his book the Whiskey Breakfast, With just one parent raising him Richard said he retreated inward and with much older people always around him at home, he naturally became interested in history. Among the tough blue-collar kids in Norwood Park he was a nerd and a geek who read "Classics Illustrated" comics and kept a journal. The relatively slow moving Norwood Park is a living portrait of the time when Lindberg grew up, but wrapped up within that picture are memories of his dad. "There's still bitterness," toward his father, Lindberg said. But there's hope he can find what's redeeming about his father just as he wants to tell people what's redeeming about Norwood Park, whose residents he said are often dismissed as narrow-minded or racist. "All those memories, all that childhood stuff," he said. "Maybe you can't go home again."

Vanity Fair, April 1997. "The Man Who Kept the Secrets," article by Nick Tosches.

"According to Richard Lindberg author of Chicago By Gaslight, Jake Guzik and his brother Harry were already working for [Jim] Colosimo as pimps and brothel keepers by 1910, the year that the lavish Colismo's Café opened on South Wabash. Guzik lived comfortably in a respectable suburb according to Richard Lindberg, "in a Jewish neighborhood right along Roosevelt Road just a little bit west of Maxwell Street. This encompasses an area of Chicago called Douglas Park. It was an extension of the original ghetto on Maxwell Street that was inhabited by a number of Eastern European Jews coming over in the 1880s and 1890s."

South Bend Tribune, August 21, 1994. Stealing First in a Two-Team Town: the White Sox From Comiskey to Reinsdorf book review by Paul Whitfield.

"Lindberg's book will get many people taking sides. Foul or fair, it's the best White Sox book in many a season."

Chicago Magazine, February 1991. To Serve & Collect book review by Bill Helmer.

"Like Herbert Asbury, the author of Gem of the Prairie, Lindberg has a rare gift for making history fun, even with footnotes and in doing so produces a major work of scholarship that not only puts him in Asbury's league but goes a step further by explaining Chicago as well as describing it."

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