Kaser (College of Staten Island, CUNY; The Washington, D.C. of Fiction: A Research Guide, 2006), a specialist in American cultural studies, has done a masterful job of locating and arranging fictional works primarily set in Chicago. Kaser states that his task was made more difficult because catalogers did not ordinarily provide subject designations in this genre before 1980. Cataloging rules ... Read morechanged by 2000 to allow geographic and subject designators for fiction, permitting greater ease in finding such works through keyword-searchable Web-based tools. The bulk of this book consists of an annotated bibliography of novels and collections of short stories (but not dramatic works) published between 1852 and 1980. To offer a more comprehensive source book, Kaser supplements these one-paragraph entries with a designated appendix A, a register of unannotated works whose first editions appeared between 1980 and 2008. Appendix B groups citations for pre-1980 fiction chronologically; readers can use these to find the explanatory notes for works in similar time periods in the alphabetically arranged major portion of the anthology. A general subject index and list of brief biographies, with each entry's own sources, of all the writers on whom some information is available, makes this work easy to read and a pleasure to peruse. The Chicago of Fiction is a boon for writers on the Windy City seeking textual information to portray a mood in their own fictional works; and for the many mavens of Chicago culture, who will appreciate discovering quirky, little-known fictional accounts inspired by a city of significance with often symbolic connotations. Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers.
CHOICE
A valuable resource, and a particularly rich one for scholars of American naturalism, given the sheer number of works indexed from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Studies in American Naturalism
The 2,223 total entries vary on how much they focus on Chicago, but the extensive index greatly enables researchers by listing entries by number code under various subjects ranging from Abortion and Academics to Youth Culture and Xenophobia. In addition there are chronological lists by decades from the 1830 to the 1970s. This makes the source useful not only for those interested in Chicago primarily, but also in broader topics where the city plays only a partial role.
American Reference Books Annual
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