They All Fall Down: Richard Nickel's Struggle to Save America's Architecture
If Chicago is an architecture lover's paradise today, it is largely due to the  efforts of a single individual. Richard Nickel (1928-1972) was not "just a photographer  who happens to take pictures of buildings," as he modestly called himself. He was a  soft-spoken missionary whose passionate one-man campaign to preserve Chicago's  ornate 19th century architectural masterpieces--earmarked for destruction by Mayor  Richard J. Daley in the name of progress--inspired a nationwide movement. Richard  Cahan's superb biography of Nickel depicts the photographer's heroic and ultimately  tragic struggle to salvage everything he could get his hands on, first with his trusty  view camera and then with a hacksaw and chisel.--This text refers to an alternateHardcoveredition.