Next time I'm home I want to go on a cemetery tour with my camera. I only knew about Graceland's history and now I can't wait to discover these other sites. ( )

Great book. It dealt with more than the stone markers/effigies. It dealt with the people and their lives who were buried in the cemeteries in Chicago. ( )

A fascinating tour of graveyards in the Chicago area. The stories associated with some of the graves and their residents were interesting and well-written, and the photographs were wonderful. Hucke has divided Chicago into areas and listed the cemeteries in each area, discussing the history, the most significant graves, and explaining some of the graveyard symbolism. I have always been a fan of interesting cemeteries, and I looked forward to reading this book every evening. I would like to plan a cemetery tour of Chicago some day, and this book would be the very best tour guide. ( )

As the authors note, this volume, now in an expanded second edition, is both the most comprehensive book to date on the topic of Chicago cemeteries, and a primer that merely scratches the surface. At the same time, it provides not only orientation to the cemeteries of the area, but a wide-ranging anecdotal history as it contextualizes celebrity graves (political leaders, entertainers), religious and ethnic groups, economic developments, and social and political movements represented in the burial sites.

It's a shame that the many photos in the book are all in black and white. But the book was grown in some measure out of author Matt Hucke's graveyards.com website, where he has collected much of his photography on the subject, including color versions of many of the images here. These high-tech underpinnings are further leveraged with the promise of "QR codes ... leading to additional photos and bonus material." Not being furnished with the necessary gadgetry, I can't tell you for sure what's on the other end of those codes, but I suspect it's some version of the material at graveyards.com, which along with photos has more descriptions, and maps, among assorted info that would be useful to cemetery visitors armed with this book and a smartphone.

Although it's designed as a reference book, with articles on individual cemeteries arranged by location, I found the book a pleasure to read from cover to cover. There were many startling facts, not all of them having to do with the graveyards themselves, that I felt compelled to share immediately with my Other Reader.

I appreciated the extensive information on Masonic cemeteries, and I was especially thrilled to learn about Waldheim Cemetery, with its impressive monument for the United Ancient Order of Druids, and more significant Haymarket Martyrs' Monument with its neighboring "Communist Plot"! I was also gratified to find information on the burial sites of the early leaders of the Moorish Science Temple and Nation of Islam, but neither of these organizations are found in the index or much noted in the text, so readers will need to know for themselves about Noble Drew Ali and his successors.

Reading this book has inspired me to get a better fix on the burial places of my own relatives in the area, and fueled an ambition to tour their graves as well as to visit many of the sights described in the volume. Authors Hucke and Bielski have my gratitude. ( )

I requested "Graveyards of Chicago" both because Chicago was home to my family for 100 years, and thus I have loved ones in St. Mary's and St. Casimir's cemeteries, and because I am interested in graveyards in general, for historical as well as genealogical reasons. I expected merely a reference book, and, in fact, went straight to the sections about the cemeteries where my people are buried, but, as other reviewers have noted, ithis bookt is so much more than that. Once I started reading it from the beginning, I found the stories so interesting I did not want to put it down! In the first quarter of the book, I learned many things I had not known about the city of my birth: most of which I had not even wondered about before. I had a friend who was maître d of the Palmer House restaurant, and I had dined there a number of times, but I never knew the fascinating history of the man who gave it its name. I shopped at Marshall Field, never realizing it was one of the first department stores in the world, as well as the first in Chicago, and the brainchild of Marshall Field whose personal life included a terrible tragedy from which he never recovered. Both Palmer and Fields are buried at Graceland, together with Philip D. Armour, founder of Armour Meats, where my dad worked for 50 years. So, retired now and living in Denver, I have a strong desire to return to Chicago for a long visit (luckily I have family still there with whom I know I'll be welcome to stay) and to do a tour of all those amazing cemeteries. When I do, this book clutched in my hands. ( )