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  • Silver Medal - Regional - Independent Book Publishers Association, Benjamin Franklin Awards, 2019
  • Silver - Art / Photography / Coffee Table Books - Midwest Independent Publishing Association, Midwest Book Awards, 2019
  • Finalist, Photography, Best Book Awards, American Book Fest, 2018

 

Lives matter say our cemeteries, columbaria, Viking burial ships, prehistoric gravesites, royal desert tombs, and potters’ fields. Only in times of the most extreme human brutality are the dead untended. Cemeteries tell the story of both individual lives and our collective journey. They are endlessly fascinating because life is endlessly fascinating.

 

The cemeteries of Chicago preserve the stories of those who built the brawny city by the lake. In the location and population of cemeteries we can trace their arrival in waves of immigration from all over the world. In monuments to soldiers, we follow the wars they fought at home and abroad. Standing beside individual graves, we consider the industries they developed, the art they made, the noisy lives of society’s criminals, the quiet lives of domestic affection.

 

Disasters are marked here: train wrecks and sinking ships and cholera epidemics. And triumphs: the forming of great universities and museums; art, architecture, urban planning, and philanthropy; advances in medicine, science, industry, and sport. We read compelling stories of such Chicagoans as Emmett Till, Bobby Franks, Jack Ruby, Mary Hastings Bradley, and Mike Todd, husband to Elizabeth Taylor. And, as with cultural fashions and preferences, the arrival and passing of styles and what they meant, we see the changing ways of thinking about life and death.

 

Larry Broutman has been researching Chicago’s cemeteries and recording them with his beautiful photography for the past five years. In the pages of Chicago Eternal, he takes readers on a spectacular tour of death’s domain, which is, in another sense, a celebration of the fullness and flourishing of life.

Chicago Eternal

$55.00Price
  • Author: Larry Broutman

    Imprint: Lake Claremont Press: A Chicago Joint

    ISBN: 978-1893121-74-4

    Price: $55

    Page Count: 336 pp.

    Pub Date: March 6, 2018

    Format: Hardcover, 9" x 13"

    Features: Full-color interior.

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