Challenging Chicago: Coping with Everyday Life, 1837-1920

by Perry R. Duis

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.

Genres: Research, Nonfiction, History, 19th Century

430 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1998

Reviews

[Cindy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just skimmed it in one evening. A lot of great info! Chicago in the early years. Didn’t have time to read cover-to-cover.

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where I got the book: purchased used on Amazon.

This well-written and informative history is a useful starting point for anyone researching Chicago-based historical topics. It covers the main areas of daily life such as food, transportation, work, and housing, with a brief foray into institutions such as the Cook County Hospital and the County Jail as they related more generally to Chicagoans trying to cope with sickness and crime.

A number of interesting photographs, a selected bibliography and a good index add to this book's value. It wasn't particularly expensive when I found it, and is well worth buying as a basic text on the Second City's early years. Recommended.

[PJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in a few different bursts, finishing it about a year ago. I think I was drawn to it by the vivid accounts of the squalor of everyday life as given in The Jungle, and this book details what it was like as a big city grew up out of a swamp/prairie and discovered electricity, sewers, automobiles, refrigeration, etc...and the effect those new powers had on everyday life. Fascinating to someone who grew up with "all the conveniences" and lived in modern Chicago, where almost no trace of this former life is evident. A bit dry and repetitive but worthwhile!

[Vasha7]

I read this while I lived in Chicago, and enjoyed it enormously. I couldn't stop regaling my acquaintances with tidbits of information, such as "Did you know that at the beginning of the century, when house-owners wanted to move, they would jack their house off its foundations and take it with them, trucking it through the streets of Chicago?" It also made me want to explore Chicago and see if I could find traces of the life Duis described.

[Kyleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful description of how Chicagoans coped with everyday life: ice, milk, pawn shops, loans, bicycles, smoking, waiters, night school, poor houses, peddling, dancing, parking, crime, exercise, amusement parks, scams and employment agencies are just some of the topics covered.

Book deals with the early to mid 1800s through the early 1900s.

[Elena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Too much like a textbook

[Naberius]

Chicago,history,Duis

[Lindaharmony · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wonderful reference book full of fascinating information, though not a book that's fun to read from start to finish