"Here is the heart of Chicago. Not in the commercial dazzle of Michigan Avenue or the plush offices of Wacker Drive, but on the streets, at scrapyards and construction sites, in the shadow of boarded-up apartment buildings, and inside the churches and parks of ethnic neighborhoods where English is rarely spoken.".

"In this photodocumentary, Richard Younker reveals the "second city" - the shadowy sister of the glittering, guidebook Chicago - through the stories and black-and-white images of its inhabitants. Many of the men and women depicted on these pages live on the edge, or close to it. Some survive by wit and cunning, some by violence, some by grinding, backbreaking work. But they are all survivors, and their stories, gritty and luminous, pulsate with the energy of that survival."--BOOK JACKET.