Michael Lesy: 3 books

Michael Lesy’s disturbingly satisfying account of Chicago in the 1920s—the epicenter of murder in America—could be fiction, but it’s not. “Things began as they usually did: Someone shot someone else.” So begins a chapter of this sharp, fearless collection from a master storyteller....

First published in 1973, this remarkable book about life in a small turn-of-the-century Wisconsin town has become a cult classic. Lesy has collected and arranged photographs taken between 1890 and 1910 by a Black River Falls photographer, Charles Van Schaik.

What we ate, how we ate, and how eating changed during America’s first real food revolution, 1900–1910. Before Julia Child introduced the American housewife to France’s cuisine bourgeoise, before Alice Waters built her Berkeley shrine to local food, before Wolfgang Puck added Asian flavors...