Description
Book Synopsis"Condensed yet energetic and substantial history of Chicago. Spinney has a firm sense of historical narrative as well as a keen eye for entertaining and illuminating detail."-Publishers Weekly A city of immigrants and entrepreneurs, Chicago is quintessentially American. Spinney brings it to life and highlights the key people, moments, and special places-from Fort Dearborn to Cabrini-Green, Marquette to Mayor Daley, the Union Stock Yards to the Chicago Bulls-that make this incredible city one of the best places in the world. City of Big Shoulders links key events in Chicago's development, from its marshy origins in the 1600s to today's robust metropolis. Robert G. Spinney presents Chicago in terms of the people whose lives made the city-from the tycoons and the politicians to the hundreds of thousands of immigrants from all over the world. In this revised and updated second edition that brings Chicago's story into the twenty-first century, Spinney sweeps his historian's gaze across the colorful and dramatic panorama of the city's explosive past. How did the pungent swamplands that the Native Americans called "the wild-garlic place" burgeon into one of the world's largest and most sophisticated cities? What is the real story behind the Great Chicago Fire? What aspects of American industry exploded with the bomb in Haymarket Square? Could the gritty blue-collar hometown of Al Capone become a visionary global city?
Trade ReviewCondensed yet energetic and substantial history of Chicago. Spinney has a firm sense of historical narrative as well as a keen eye for entertaining and illuminating detail.
* Publishers Weekly *
A much-needed, brief yet comprehensive analytical history of Chicago.
* Journal of Illinois History *
Table of Contents1. The Early World of Chigagou, 1600–1750
2. Chigagou Becomes Chicago, 1750–1835
3. Boom, Bust, and Recovery in Early Chicago, 1835–1850
4. Chicago Conquers the Midwest, 1850–1890
5. Life in a City on the Make, 1850–1900
6. The Fire, the Bomb, and the Fair, 1871–1893
7. The New Immigration, 1880–1920
8. Progressivism and Urban Reform, 1890–1915
9. World War I and the Roaring Twenties, 1915–1929
10. The Great Depression, World War II, and Suburban Growth, 1929–1955
11. Richard J. Daley and the City That Works, 1955–1976
12. The Challenges of the Post-Machine Years, 1976–1997
13. Glamorous and Grim: Chicago in the Twenty-First Century
