Seminary Co-op Bookstore

We are about serious readers...

Welcome to the Seminary Co-op Bookstores! Since 1961 we have been providing the discriminating readers of the Hyde Park community (and the many places beyond) with a venue for browsing the best the publishing world has to offer. Whether you are looking for the latest university press publications or searching for a classic from your childhood, we have the stock to get you started and a staff of fellow bibliophiles to help you along the way.

Check out the latest books on the Front Table, in our latest lists of new titles, or some specialized lists.

Although people tend to agree that the best browsing experience comes from handling the books themselves, we constantly hear about customers' discoveries in these lists that they might have otherwise missed amongst the 100,000+ titles on the shelves.

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New Titles

Looking for something new? Interested in a theme? Here are the latest titles on a variety of subjects.

In honor of the Chicago-wide Festival of Maps, here is a list of some new and interesting cartography titles. These will satisfy the full range of interests -- local to astral, scholar and historian to amateur enthusiast.

Maps: Finding Our Place in the World
by Akerman, James, Karrow, Robert W., Jr. JR., McCarter, John
Maps are universal forms of communication, easily understood and appreciated regardless of culture or language. This truly magisterial book introduces readers to the widest range of maps ever considered in one volume: maps from different time periods and a variety of cultures; maps made for divergent purposes and depicting a range of environments; and maps that embody the famous, the important, the beautiful, the groundbreaking, or the amusing. Built around the "functions" of maps--the kinds of things maps do and have done--"Maps" confirms the vital role of maps throughout history in commerce, art, literature, and national identity.
The book begins by examining the use of maps for wayfinding, revealing that even maps as common and widely used as these are the product of historical circumstances and cultural differences. The second chapter considers maps whose makers employed the smallest of scales to envision the broadest of human stages--the world, the heavens, even the act of creation itself. The next chapter looks at maps that are, literally, at the opposite end of the scale from cosmological and world maps--maps that represent specific parts of the world and provide a close-up view of areas in which their makers lived, worked, and moved.
Having shown how maps help us get around and make sense of our greater and lesser worlds, "Maps "then turns to the ways in which certain maps can be linked to particular events in history, exploring how they have helped Americans, for instance, to understand their past, cope with current events, and plan their national future. The fifth chapter considers maps that represent data from scientific instruments, population censuses, andhistorical records. These maps illustrate, for example, how diseases spread, what the ocean floor looks like, and how the weather is tracked and predicted. Next comes a turn to the imaginary, featuring maps that depict entire fictional worlds, from Hell to Utopia and from Middle Earth to the fantasy game "World of Warcraft," The final chapter traces the origins of map consumption throughout history and ponders the impact of cartography on modern society.
A companion volume to the most ambitious exhibition on the history of maps ever mounted in North America, "Maps" will challenge readers to stretch conventional thought about what constitutes a map and how many different ways we can understand graphically the environment in which we live. Collectors, historians, mapmakers and users, and anyone who has ever "gotten lost" in the lines and symbols of a map will find much to love and learn from in this book.

Author Events

Title of Event: David G. Whiteis - Chicago Blues: Portraits & Stories
When: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 6:00 PM
Location: 57th Street Books, 1301 E. 57th Street, Chicago, IL 60637
Description:

David G. Whiteis joins us in a discussion of his book, Chicago Blues: Portraits & Stories. Whiteis is an independent scholar living in Chicago. He has written many articles on the blues and, in 2001, won the Blues Foundation's Keeping the Blues Alive Award for Achievement in Journalism.