Tysiacha i odin den' v Chikago (A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago) [Series of Sketches of Everyday Life in 1920’s Chicago]

Print run 4,000 copies.

Good- condition; complete copy without losses, original illustrated cardboard binding shows rubbing and edge wear, cover corners are rounded; internally occasional foxing and extensive fingerprints throughout the book, missing small piece of the bottom margin of the last page (text is untouched), bookstore markings on the back endsheet.

In 1921-22 an American successful screenwtiter and journalist Ben Hecht (1893-1964) inaugurated a column for the Chicago Daily News about life in the city titled "One Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago". The heroes were common people that he met in the street, from flappers to financiers to broken laborers. While it lasted, the column was enormously popular.

In 1922, 64 of these sketches were published in a separate book. In 1928 the book came out in Russian translation by Okhrimenko Pyotr Fyodorovich (1888–1975) and contained 36 sketches (evidently texts of political content and those which praised America had not been included).

The Russian edition (as well as English) is also notable by its design. The original woodcut illustrations by American artist Herman Rosse (1887-1965) were retained - along the sides of the pages with the beginning of each story and on the contents page, also 5 full-page and 2 double-page spread woodcuts depicting views of the megapolis. Striking photomontage cover and endpapers for Russian edition were designed by Soviet graphic artist Suvorov Pyotr Ivanovich (1901-1968). Dark gray tinted fore-edge.

Even nowadays while reading the book, the flavor of 1920s Chicago is so rich, you feel that you're there.