Challenging Chicago: Coping with Everyday Life, 1837-1920 - Hardcover

Duis, Perry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0252023943 ISBN 13: 9780252023941

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 1998

Synopsis

Provides details of life in Chicago for lower- and middle-class people, from 1837 to 1920.

About this title

Book Description

Hard lives and how they were lived in old Chicago

During an unprecedented period of rapid growth, the burgeoning metropolis of Chicago quickly became a “concentration of risk”: far more congested, dangerous, unpleasant, immoral, and unhealthy than newcomers had anticipated. Through vignettes and real-life stories, Challenging Chicago reveals lower and middle-class peoples’ strategies for coping with technology, crowding, anonymity, and other urban ills.

Follow along and encounter some of Chicago's most infamous citizens--the loathed Traction Baron, high-speed "scorchers," and peddlers of "swill milk." Learn about the perils of payday, the lunchtime problems of women, the lure of dime museums, and the fatal attraction of Chicago's "cruelest place." Against this bleak backdrop emerged the innovators and institutions that made Chicago the vibrant city it is today. The superbly textured narrative is enhanced by eighty-six historic photographs and illustrations. 

About the Author

Perry R. Duis, a professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is the author of Chicago: Creating New Traditionsand other books. 

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0252023943
• ISBN 13: 9780252023941
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 448