Chicago History: A Reader

Here is Chicago -- giant of the Midwest, site of the World's Columbian Exposition, home to Jane Addams (and Al Capone), exuberantly ethnic, bold in its urban architecture that soared into the sky and changed the face of cities everywhere. A Wild Kind of Boldness: The Chicago History Reader provides a vivid retelling of Chicago's past that offers a much-needed corrective to what Studs Terkel calls, in the volume's foreword, "a time when so much of our past has been erased or diminished by thirty-second sound bites."

Articles organized chronologically and thematically from the widely respected quarterly of the Chicago Historical Society make an engaging modern history that explores ethnicity, race, gender, class, labor, politics, literature, architecture, technology, popular culture, land use, and much more. Numerous historical photographs and illustrations throughout help convey the fascinating history of Chicago and the people who made it.