New City Lit
Two Strikes, You’re Out: A Review of Helen Shiller’s Daring to Struggle, Daring to Win by Mary Wisniewski
“Helen Shiller, a former alderwoman for Uptown, is on the do-gooder side, a reformer unafraid to take on the boys in power. No one knows better than Shiller that the game is rigged. But her autobiography, detailing five decades fighting for housing, better education, worker rights and police reform, shows that knowing the odds are steep shouldn’t stop you from trying, over and over. It’s a fascinating history of Chicago’s blood-and-guts political scene in the late twentieth century, told by someone who started as an outsider, an activist from Wisconsin, and slowly fought her way into the City Council as one of Mayor Harold Washington’s key allies.”
