Gift Idea: Award Winning: The Pied Piper of South Shore, Toys and Tragedy in Chcago, Caryn Amster

I wrote in an earlier post about Caryn Lazar Amster's amazing true crime book The Pied Piper of South Shore: Toys and Tragedy in Chicago.

I could go on and on how wonderful this important and nail-biting book is, winner of a true crime award. I could tell you how important a historical work it is documenting Ms. Lazar's personal tragedy, and the tragedy of the impact of the crime on the surrounding business community where my Grandfather owned a Real Estate Office At the time of the murder.

I could tell you about what happened after I wrote the Original Post, meeting her with my father and brother, talking to her about shopping at their store and their customer Mandy Patinkin who I had always thought was familiar since being a fan of Sunday in The Park With George.

I could tell you about the book's incredible value as a primary source for those studying merchandising, the history of the City of Chicago,the history of Chicago's neighborhoods, or anything to do with the movement of people and race in the 1930's through the 1960's.



But instead I'll just be brief and tell young buy one of the most surprising true dramatic stories by an Author you never heard of you are likely to find. A tale told in a clear, taut well researched way without hyperbole or hysterics.

Amster manages to tell the story of this tragedy without making it into something it
was not, while seeing the damage caused by a cascading series of circumstances for what it was. A tragedy in an era of tragedies that helped shaped the hard times that followed.

I will also say that what I told her the day we met. We moved to a new neighborhood the previous August. Had we not, because of the proximity of the date of the murder with the birthday of one of the kids in my family, we all could have been in the store when that gunman walked in. I know what my brother 9 and I 10 would have done. We'd been playing Batman and Robin for years. We would have rushed him without thinking twice just like we rushed the bad guy cowboys every summer at the amusement park in Eagle River getting us and who knows who else killed in the process.

But we moved and so didn't get the birthday card for a free toy at Wee Toys for that birthday. So, I guess I do find this story pretty personally interesting. Nut you won't need
that to enjoy this book. Besides, I can't help thinking it's natural forth big screen.

Oh, Amazon.com carries it. You can click the link in the book title above or enter the title in the Amazon search box on your right.


Peter, Chief Editor and Spelling Wrecker The Peter Files Blog of Comedy, Jokes, Satire, Commentary and Videos Http://ThePeterFiles.blogspot.com

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If you are a regular to this blog you have probably noticed that I haven't been updating it for awhile. What the heck was wrong with me you might think?

I can spell that out in two words rotator cuff followed by two words even more horrifying to those in the know: 2" complete tear! I have it on good authority that if comedy based on pain is funny, this should be about the funniest post I'll ever write. Because the period I was dealing with my rotator cuff injury completely stopped me cold for six months.

Not only did the surgery not make the pain better, at first it was much, much worse. That at first was about two months. Six months later and after 4 months of intense physical therapy I finally had most of the movement in my right arm back.

I tried to get back to posting regularly but in the mean time I discovered Facebook and I discovered that I did what many of us volunteer bloggers did: I turned to Facebook for most of my creative stuff. Sorry about that. I was not alone; a recent news report showed that the nature of blogging has changed and amateurs like us are leaving. Well heck with that! Reason enough for me to come back! Or try to but that's now. Back then even finding a way to tie my posts to my account so they would get published where my Facebook friends could see it too I held back from going regular here again.

I think it was because I just wasn't feeling that funny for awhile. I had some personal issues that reconnecting with my college friends helped me to deal with. Some very sad heartbreaking stuff. The kind of thing that if you have it, you have to deal with it and it's pretty hard to be funny while doing so. So I guess that's part of it too.

Anyway to my delight this blog is nearly at 100,000 page views and that's a good reason to celebrate! So I'm going to try to post regularly again and I hope you will come back if you were a regular reader before.

In the mean time this blog will continue to be a safe, clean and funny place to come to! Now if my left shoulder wasn't bothering me so much....


Peter, Chief Editor and Spelling Wrecker The Peter Files Blog of Comedy, Jokes, Satire, Commentary and Videos Http://ThePeterFiles.blogspot.com

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===> We love comments about our posts good or bad!

Please make comments by clicking on the word "Comments"!

Click on the Envelope to forward posts to your friends! Thank you! The staff.

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