Challenging Chicago: Coping with Everyday Life, 1837-1920

Risky city. This was Chicago during an unprecedented period of rapid growth. The burgeoning metropolis quickly became a concentration of risk: far more congested, crowded, dangerous, unpleasant, immoral, and unhealthy than newcomers had anticipated. Challenging Chicago fills a great void in the literature on urban history and on Chicago. No other book ties together so many aspects of the social history of the city's everyday life. 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 backdrop emerged the innovators and institutions that made Chicago the vibrant city of today.