Barbara Hermansen found happiness and fulfillment as a North Shore wife, mother, and lawyer—until she started taking a prescription drug for a neurological disorder. Then a trip to Las Vegas set off a crazed gambling addiction that almost brought her and her family down.
Over the past 15 years, Kenneth Griffin has quietly—even secretively—built one of the world’s largest and most successful hedge funds. Now he and his wife, owners of a $60-million Cézanne, are rising stars on the city’s culture and charity scenes.
When FBI agents showed up last spring to arrest the Chicago mob boss Joey “The Clown” Lombardo, there was a problem: he wasn’t there, and he hasn’t been seen since. But Lombardo is more than a vanishing act. He’s one of a vanishing breed—a last link to the Chicago Outfit’s blood-spattered heyday.
Native Chicagoan Michelle Obama married a skinny kid with a funny name. She’s keeping it real.
The modest, low-slung Sun-Times Building, unloved by legions, is on death row—doomed, if all goes as planned, to be replaced by a Trump tower of affluence. But at least one person likes it just where it is.
When Chicago was a rowdy city of speakeasies and brothels, gangsters and con men, Alice Clement—police star 3428—ruled as the first female detective. But then, oddly, most traces of her disappeared, until even the police department had all but forgotten.
Things could not be better for Rod Blagojevich. He loves politics, and he has won every election he has entered (with help from his father-in-law, a clout-heavy alderman). The govenorship is his focus now, he insists, but this look at his personal history suggests he hopes for much, much more.
When a woman from his past resurfaced, the columnist’s 33-year career crashed; then a family tragedy hit home.
An energetic self-promotor, Eppie Lederer was a natural as the wise and wisecracking Ann Landers, advice maven to millions. But her own family problems were harder to solve.
Yes, he is popular and has done lots of good for the city. But Mayor Daley has plenty of shortcomings, too. If we were running for mayor, here is how we would challenge him.
