If you want to see Chicago—the skyscrapers, the lakefront, the neighborhoods—go for a bike ride. If you want to learn about Chicago, go for a bike ride with my brother.

Ride with Bill Savage, as I frequently do when I'm home*, and he'll point out the "temporary" cottages constructed after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871—then he'll mention that a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation handwritten by Abraham Lincoln was lost when the Chicago Historical Society burned in that conflagration. (And, yes, he'll use the word "conflagration.")

Bill is a distinguished senior lecturer at Northwestern University, where he teaches Chicago literature, history, and culture. He was the first published writer in the family, and he has edited many books—the latest of which is Chicago by Day and Night: The Pleasure Seeker's Guide to the Paris of America.

After the fire and before Al Capone, the World's Fair of 1893 made Chicago's reputation. Chicago by Day and Night was an anonymously authored guide to Chicago's theaters, churches, taverns, and gambling houses meant for visitors to the fair.

After setting the scene in a brief and entertaining introduction, Bill and his co- editor Paul Durica, another Chicago scholar and the impresario of Pocket Guide to Hell, get out of the way. Bill and Paul offer notes, annotations, and entertaining history lessons at the back of the book. I recommend reading the chapter in the original and the chapter's corresponding notes. (It helps to have two bookmarks going at once.) Bill and Paul are sensitive to the politics of race, sex, and class, but the notes are never dry—they set out to entertain as well as inform, and they succeed. Here are two things I learned reading Bill and Paul's notes: It was a 19th-century Chicago mayor, Carter Harrison Sr., who first said, "You can't legislate morality," and the term "lollapalooza" was coined to describe the notorious "First Ward Ball," an annual political fundraiser/bacchanal hosted by a trio of corrupt Chicago politicians. (If I were writing this review for a Chicago newspaper, I wouldn't have to put "corrupt" before "Chicago politician." It's the non-corrupt pols in Chicago who get qualifiers like "reform," "non-machine," and "defeated.")

For a theater kid like me, the description of Chicago's theater scene in the early 1880s was fascinating. There were plenty of legit theaters in Chicago at that time, of course, but more interesting to visitors—and certainly more interesting to the anonymous authors—are those "unique playhouses" where patrons who purchased a box could "enjoy the society of the actresses who will visit them between acts and have a pleasant, social time." Perhaps these unique playhouses were what the authors had in mind when they dubbed Chicago the "Coming Metropolis."

This book is a terrific companion to Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City. Larson takes us back to the fair, but the authors of Chicago by Day and Night look forward to it. Some of the juxtapositions are chilling. In a chapter titled "Perils and Pitfalls," the authors warn visitors to beware of "the very suave and polished gentleman [who] chats so delightfully," for he may be "a polished villain." The authors could be describing H. H. Holmes, the serial killer who built a "murder castle" near the fair, where he slaughtered an unknown number of victims, mostly young women seeking a new life in the big city.

I read The Devil in the White City when it was published in 2003. (Me and everybody else—the book is still on the New York Times best-seller list.) My brother's latest effort inspired me to go find my copy. I'm rereading Devil now, dipping into Chicago by Day and Night at the same time.

So now I've got three bookmarks going. recommended

* Sorry, Seattle, but even though I've lived here longer than I lived in Chicago, Chicago is still home.

Dan Savage is Bill Savage's little brother.