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Chicago: Porträt einer Stadt
281 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
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October 28, 2022
Did they not have Google in Germany in 2006? Because anybody who Googles "Make no little plans" can find out in .56 seconds that it was a favored maxim of Daniel Burnham, not Louis Sullivan (page 1-2).
"If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere"... a famous saying about... Chicago? (page 2).
Nobody knows for sure where Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable, Chicago's first non-native settler, originally came from, but as far as I know, no one outside of this book has ever suggested Quebec, nor implied that Quebec lies in the Caribbean (page 17).
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous "I have a dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Monument on the National Mall definitely took place in Washington, D.C., and not in Chicago (page 20).
Luckily, the work is a collaborative one, and most of the blatant errors are contained to the contributions by Johann N. Schmidt. Unluckily, Schmidt also provides most of the translations for the chapters originally written in English, so I don't know how much got garbled in the process.
As someone who already knows a bit about Chicago, I can't say that I really learned much from this book. Nor would I recommend it to newcomers to the topic, due to the many errors (of which I probably didn't spot all). It did help me to get a German perspective on what makes Chicago interesting, which is what I was after. But otherwise, you're better off reading any of the numerous other excellent books written in English about the Windy City.
"If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere"... a famous saying about... Chicago? (page 2).
Nobody knows for sure where Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable, Chicago's first non-native settler, originally came from, but as far as I know, no one outside of this book has ever suggested Quebec, nor implied that Quebec lies in the Caribbean (page 17).
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous "I have a dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Monument on the National Mall definitely took place in Washington, D.C., and not in Chicago (page 20).
Luckily, the work is a collaborative one, and most of the blatant errors are contained to the contributions by Johann N. Schmidt. Unluckily, Schmidt also provides most of the translations for the chapters originally written in English, so I don't know how much got garbled in the process.
As someone who already knows a bit about Chicago, I can't say that I really learned much from this book. Nor would I recommend it to newcomers to the topic, due to the many errors (of which I probably didn't spot all). It did help me to get a German perspective on what makes Chicago interesting, which is what I was after. But otherwise, you're better off reading any of the numerous other excellent books written in English about the Windy City.
Displaying 1 of 1 review