The Burning of the World: The Great Chicago Fire and the War for a City's Soul by Scott W. Berg (Pantheon) has won the $25,000 2025 Pattis Family Foundation Chicago Book Award, which celebrates works that transform public understanding of Chicago, its history, and its people and is sponsored by the Newberry Library and the Pattis Family Foundation.
Astrida Orle Tantillo, president and librarian of the Newberry, said the book is "a compelling narrative of the Great Fire and provides new insight into how Chicago's Gilded Age story has been told. Every Chicagoan is familiar with the fire and how it transformed Chicago for decades to come. The Burning of the World shows in dramatic ways the importance of re-visiting this history."
The judges also recognized two other books, whose authors will receive $2,500:
Onward to Chicago: Freedom Seekers and the Underground Railroad in Northeastern Illinois by Larry A. McClellan (Southern Illinois University Press) and The Salt Shed: The Transformation of a Chicago Landmark by Sandra Steinbrecher (Trope Publishing).
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Natalie Sue won the C$15,000 (about US$10,965) Stephen Leacock Medal for Humor, which honors "the best Canadian book of literary humor published in the previous year," for her debut novel I Hope This Finds You Well.
The other finalists, who each received C$3,000 (about US$2,190), are Greg Kearney for An Evening With Birdy O'Day; and Patricia J. Parsons for We Came From Away.