Challenging Chicago: Coping with Everyday Life, 1837-1920

by Perry R. Duis

Risky city. This was Chicago during an unprecedented period of rapid growth: a burgeoning metropolis that quickly became a "concentration of risk." The many thousands of immigrants and rural Americans who streamed into the city during these years found it far more congested, crowded, dangerous, unpleasant, immoral, and unhealthy than they had anticipated.

Challenging Chicago reveals the survival strategies to which the many people who flocked to the city resorted, especially those of the lower and middle classes for whom urban life was a new experience.

Genres: Research, Nonfiction, History, 19th Century

448 pages, Hardcover

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