2024 Holiday Gift Guide For The Chicagoans In Your Life

Book RecommendationsBookstoresGift Guide
Written By Allison Yates

By Allison Yates and Betsy Tomszak

It’s no secret we believe books are the best gifts for any occassion. For Chicagoans ready to learn the city’s history, music, food, and more, there are so many insightful books. This year, Read & Run Chicago collaborated with Betsy Tomszak of the podcast and book club Books with Betsy, to compile some of the best options for whatever your interest.

How did we choose the books on this list? Many of the items on this list are past, current, or future stories inspiring our in-person programming, and others serve as frequent reference books for our guides or speakers. Some of them—like this book about Malort—are just too fun to not include. Every book on this list is either set exclusively in Chicago or has a strong Chicago connection. After all, part of our organization’s mission is ensuring we connect with this city using movement and stories! Our list is ever-growing, so you have a suggestion for next year’s gift guide, get in touch.

Here’s our holiday gift guide for the Chicagoans in your life.

PS—Did you know? Books are even better (it’s science!) when purchased at a locally-owned, independent bookshop (and we’ve got tons!), or online through our Bookshop.org store. Every time you buy books through this link, a small percentage of your purchase goes back to our impactful work connecting Chicagoans to our city’s many stories.

For the Chicagoans who love….

Architecture

Urban Planning and Social Policy

Coming of Age and Young Adult Novels

Election Eras

Historical Fiction

Feeling Rage, Happiness, and Wonder All At the Same Time 

Poetry

Photography

Music

Nature

The Midwest isn’t often considered an outdoor lovers paradise, but at least according to Read & Run Chicago founder Allison Yates it should be. No matter the season, Chicago’s nature is a perfect place for a trail run, hike, or close encounter with flora and fauna of the region. The late Jerry Sullivan’s Hunting For Frogs: And Other Tales from Field & Street is a delightfully fun way to see and experience the Forest Preserves through the eyes of Sullivan’s experience as a nature journalist. For easily-accessible trails in and around the Chicagoland area, Lindsay Welbers’s Chicago Transit Hikes is our bible—and the inspiration for our trail run series.

If you want to purchase in person rather than our Bookshop.org site, get 10% off your copy of The Chicago River: A Natural and Unnatural History by Libby Hill, the comprehensive guide to the history and infrastructure of the Chicago River that inspired our six-part series with guide Chelsey Grassfield, when you shop at Barbara’s Bookstore Loop location. Just mention Read & Run Chicago at checkout.

Queer History

Queer Legacies by John D’Emilio was one of our first events. This digestible and informative book explores some of the lesser-known queer history of Chicago and Illinois through select archives at Gerber/Hart Library and Archives, the largest LGBTQ archives and library in the Midwest, while Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers is thoughtful and heavily researched fictional tale inspired by the real-life experiences of Chicagoans during the 1980s AIDS crisis.

LGBTQ Fiction

Whether you want a close-to-home personal tale of growth set at Halsted and Roscoe or Andersonville-based horror plot, local author David Jay Collins has you covered with Gaybash and Summerdale and Summerdale II. After you Gaybash, bring the book to life with our self-guided route.

The late Valerie Taylor was a writer and activist, and helped portray positive examples of queer women in the pulp fiction genre at a time when queerness was heavily policed, mocked, and primarily used for cis heterosexual men’s voyeurism. The Girls in 3-B is a fascinating example of women’s lives in 1950s Chicago.

Neighborhoods

See new neighborhoods, try new foods, and learn new history with essays from The Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook edited by Martha Bayne and Jessica Mlinaric’s Chicago Scavenger, a riddle-based way to explore Chicago history and culture.

Self-guided routes are available for nine of the Guidebook essays.

Food

No better way to share the Chicago love than introducing folks to some of our favorite eats—pizza and historic bakeries.

Steve Dolinksy’s The Ultimate Chicago Pizza Guide will leave you sharing pizza fun facts with everyone you know, and Jennifer Billock’s Historic Chicago Bakeries will leave you nostalgic—and with a sweet tooth.

History

Learn about the Great Migration through Isabel Wilkerson’s stunning reporting in The Warmth of Other Suns or through the eyes of young girls in Marcia Chatelain’s South Side Girls, also available in self-guided route format.

Chicago’s Fabulous Fountains by Greg Borzo, Sin in the Second City by Abbott Kahler, and Graceland Cemetery by Adam Selzer all give windows into the making of our city’s infrastructure and culture and spill some juicy details about our political history—and where the term “get laid” comes from.

Theater

Theater lovers will swoon over the frequent settings of Layne Fargo’s Temper, a feminist thriller based on real-life abuse that occurred in a Chicago theater. Run the self-guided route when you finish the tale—a 4-mile jaunt around Andersonville and Lakeview that even includes an unconventional method twist—the CTA!

Running

And finally, a bonus list:

For Chicagoans Who Just Moved to the City

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Allison Yates
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