City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America

A magisterial and engrossing history of Chicago up to the end of the 19th century. Really told in a tangled web of biographies, it doesn't seem like a 550 page book and you really don't want it to end. Sadly it does, and that is my chief complaint.

The theme here is the unstoppable drive of those who believed in Chicago from Marquette and Joliet right through to George Pullman, Marshall Field, and Daniel Burnham, and the inevitable malcontents and disillusioned who found that dream and reality harsh, uncompromising, misguided, and/or insufficient.

That the book ends with the city and all of its primary legends largely still at the height of their powers is an interesting choice--knowing a bit more about the next thirty years, it is easy show more to see why, but one wishes it kept on. If you like the 19th century, biographical vignette, and Chicago, you will love this book. show less

Long in the shadow of New York City, Chicago has struggled to carve a place in the American conscious. City of The Century, never boring, staid or repetitive, is the antidote. Much more fascinating than Erik Larson's over-rated Devil In The White City, City of The Century provides a complete picture of Chicago from the early days of swampy, wetlands settlement to the advent of the Board of Trade. Just like the city of its title, this books is fulfilling and unpretentious.

A very comprehensive history of this remarkable city from its origin to around the turn of the 19th century. I grew up about 80 miles north this city in Wisconsin and also took my first job there out of college. We did not mix well. Chicago's history is dizzying in its twists and turns and dynamic transitions, all captured well here in this narrative by Donald Miller.

From its start, an Indian word meaning either striped skunk or stinking onions, take your pick, Chicago became a city that embodied the can do get it done spirit of this country. Right up to the great fire and battles in the streets of the emerging labor movement it never backed down from reinventing itself. A good book to get immersed in this rich history and what Carl show more Sandberg most aptly characterized as "the city of big shoulders." That it certainly is. show less