Chicago: a Biography

1. Location, location, location. The French -- Point de Sable and the coming of the Americans -- The Yankees, the canal, and the railroads -- Ethnic diversity -- Lake Street that great street -- 2. Emporium of the West. Early industry -- Growth problems -- The threat of war -- The Civil War -- The wartime economy -- The industrial new age -- The new relationship between workers and owners -- 3. The era of urban chaos. A wooden immigrant city on the prairie -- The great Chicago fire -- The clash between labor and capital -- The capital of radicalism -- Haymarket -- The Loop: a dark vision of the future -- The levee -- 4. Reacting to chaos: Pullman, the west side, and the Loop. The west side: the communal response -- The elite response: George Pullman -- The middle-class reform response: Jane Addams -- The Loop: an architectural response -- The Columbian exposition -- Paradise lost: the Pullman strike -- 5. The progressive and not so progressive city. The continued clash of social classes -- Chicago's progressive politics -- The progressive accomplishment -- Green spaces for the poor and great plans -- The problem of housing the poor -- Big Bill Thompson and the end of progressivism -- 6. The immigrant capital and World War I. Immigrant city -- World War I -- Poison, hysteria, politics, and ethnic conflict -- World War I and the labor movement -- The great migration -- 1919: annus mirabilis -- 7. Twentieth-century metropolis. The attack on immigrants -- The bungalow and the new ethnic metropolis -- Black metropolis -- Popular culture -- The automobile -- Gangland -- 8. Years of crises: depression and war. Unemployment -- Anton Cermak and the birth of the democratic machine -- Kelly-Nash: a new democratic day -- The urge to organize: neighborhoods -- The urge to organize: labor -- World War II: emporium of the United Nations -- 9. Chicago after the war: changing times. The postwar Democrats -- The problem of race -- Englewood: Angeline Jackson's neighborhood -- Ted Swigon's back of the yards: a shifting landscape -- Reaction to change -- Arguing over urban renewal -- Violence: the murder of Alvin Palmer -- Postwar suburbs -- Deindustrialization: the stockyards -- 10. Daley's city. Building the modern city: public housing and expressways -- Daley's prime -- Black Chicago -- 1968: the whole world is watching -- 11. Apocalypse "now" or regeneration? The tragedy of Michael Bilandic -- Deindustrialization: phase two -- Seeds of a new Loop -- Jane Byrne and the politics of angst -- 1983: It's Harold! -- The second Daley -- Shifts in the economy and immigration -- Still the city of immigrants -- A city transformed? race and class in the global city -- Transforming Chicago and America.