As you read “They All Fall Down,” you quickly get the impression that Richard Cahan, the author, had some moments where he was left perplexed by Richard Nickel, the subject of the biography. Nickel was a photographer obsessed with Sullivan’s work, who fought (and usually failed) to save his buildings from wrecking balls and bulldozers in the 1960s and 70s until his death on the demolition site of a Sullivan building. Cahan does a good job of portraying Nickel as a figure more eager to photograph and write than to be an outspoken frontman which is supported again and again by the voluminous archive that he accessed to write the book.

The book is a little of everything – a history of Chicago architecture and an overview of its machine politics under Daley, a photo history, a history of the Institute of Design, and a sketch of Nickel who lived and breathed Sullivan for much of his adult life. However, in all this overlap there is a bit too much re-telling of who the players were, and at times I got annoyed by the redundancy I found peppered throughout. But overall I found it to be a really wonderful, sad, and fascinating read.