Back of the Yards: The Making of a Local Democracy - Softcover

Slayton, Robert A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226761991 ISBN 13: 9780226761992

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1988

Synopsis

"Robert A. Slayton's Back of the Yards is one of the finest accounts I have ever read on an urban, working-class neighborhood in twentieth-century America. Its focus on family, politics, and worklife is penetrating and its conclusions reinforce an emerging scholarly picture of ordinary people exercising unique forms of power."—John Bodnar, author of The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America

About this title

From Library Journal

Until now, the historic Back of the Yards neighborhood of Chicago has been neglected by social historians. The packinghouse district, made famous by Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1906), provides a case study in the evolution of an immigrant community over two generations. Originally fragmented by religion and ethnicity, people gradually were drawn together into ever-larger interest groups. Slayton's book, based partly on interviews, presents a colorful and moving picture of this diverse area, its people, their homes, and their jobs. The author's sensitivity to the community's character sometimes leads him dangerously close to veneration and a facile interpretation of democratic progress. Nevertheless, this is recommended for those interested in the emergence of cities. Charles K. Piehl, Director of Grants Management, Mankato State Univ., Minn.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1988
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226761991
• ISBN 13: 9780226761992
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 291