Chicago Eternal

About this book

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 societys 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 Chicagos 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 deaths domain which is in another sense a celebration of the fullness and flourishing of life.