The Printers Row Book Fair was founded in 1985 by the Near South Planning Board to attract visitors to the Printers Row neighborhood - once the city’s bookmaking hub. By 2002, it had grown to five city blocks - on Dearborn, from Congress to Polk - attracting more than 190 booksellers from across the country displaying new, used and antiquarian books, and featuring seven stages with more than 90 free literary programs.  Today it is considered the largest free outdoor literary event in the Midwest - drawing more than 90,000 book lovers to events like this one with Thomas Cahill, author of Mysteries of the Middle Ages, with an introduction by Thomas O’Gorman.

Recorded Saturday, June 07, 2008 at Chicago Public Library.