Il maiale e il grattacielo: Chicago. Una storia del nostro futuro

by Marco D'Eramo

"Ti aspetti la città di Al Capone e trovi viali sereni, tra gli edifici neoclassici dell'Esposizione universale del 1893. Letture giovanili ti parlano dei mattatoi di Chicago; invece ti appaiono fantastici grattacieli. Il centro città ti si dispiega miracolo d'architettura, che sta all'urbanistica del Novecento come Venezia a quella del Quattrocento. Ti aspettavi una città continentale, al centro del Nordamerica e ti si para una città marina." Sullo sconfinato Lago Michigan, Chicago è la più americana delle città statunitensi (basti pensare che McDonald's è una sua multinazionale) e, diversamente da New York, San Francisco o Los Angeles, a Chicago si ha il reality check, ovvero il polso di quel che pensa l'America vera, profonda. Come un detective, Marco d'Eramo si addentra nella città e la investiga. Vive l'avventura dell'esplorazione di un europeo trapiantato con tutto il suo bagaglio concettuale dal Vecchio Mondo nella sconosciuta Chicago, conservando lo sguardo alieno e lo stupore da straniero. Arriva così a riconoscere il familiare puzzo di modernità che caratterizza questa città. Qui, si sono verificati tanti episodi centrali della modernità: la nascita dei grattacieli, la standardizzazione dei sapori, il sorgere della sociologia urbana, il primo reattore atomico, la scuola economica dei Chicago Boys. Qui, in questa megalopoli multietnica, in questa Babele dei giorni nostri, si vede in atto la straordinaria potenza rivoluzionaria, sovversiva del capitalismo più puro.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Architecture, Sociology

479 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Marco d’Eramo, nato a Roma nel 1947, laureato in Fisica, ha poi studiato Sociologia con Pierre Bourdieu all’École Pratique des Hautes Études di Parigi. Giornalista, ha collaborato con “Paese Sera” e “Mondoperaio”, e collabora con “il manifesto”.

Reviews

[Abby · Rating 2 out of 5]

So...my OCD prevented me from just putting the book down for good, so I finished it with the concession that I skimmed large portions that were too aggravating. And in the end, he never redeemed himself. My review below from earlier (I had been only a few chapters in) is still true. Basically, he's an Italian sociologist with a lot on his mind to say about America and modernity and he happened to live in Chicago when he realized that Chicago serves as a good example of modernity at work under the American model. So then, he just goes at it...one cliche after another. So many of the books he refers to or used in his research are books I have read or that are on my list to read and it feels like he's just taking all those books and sort of cobbling together a piecemeal arguement to connect them altogether using "Chicago" as the glue. But, he really only skims the surface of many of the theories from these books and he applies them very haphazardly and irresponsibly to examples from all over history and all over different cities in the U.S. Because of this, he undermines the basis of his entire book because the broad generalizations he makes cannot be pegged down to Chicago specifically or to certain periods of time, specifically. It's just a mess. It's such a disappointment because the topics he hits are pretty much ALL the topics I'm interested in and he's clearly well-read, but it feels like a college final paper where the student kept up with all the reading during the course, but failed to come up with a decent thesis for his paper, so the night before he just sort of wrote summaries of each book, made some point about each was connected to "Chicago" and/or the "problems of modernity," and then called them chapters. Additionally, the writing was sometimes so sloppy (maybe it was a translation issue) and used such superlatives and broad statements, that they bordered on misrepresentations and lies. I would say the only positive thing is the breadth of information he does provide, which was the only thing that kept me reading. But, it was such a minefield in terms of what was true and what wasn't, I took it all with a huge grain--make that a shaker--of salt. Ugh, what a disappointment.

------Review from before------
I'm not finished with the book yet, but I was frustrated enough that I want to put a note here about my experience so far. Now, I am certainly the first person who would enjoy a book that takes a critical look at American society, especially in terms of urbanism and post-modernity, even more especially compared to European models. But, it's hard for me not to say that the inaccuracies and mis-characterizations in this book indicate an astounding lack of intellectual rigor and insight in the creation of this book. Due to the fact that the author is European (the book is translated from Italian) combined with the fact that it was published in 2000 (a lot has changed in eight years), D'Eramo writes in well-worn (and largely untrue) cliches about the differences between the U.S. and Europe (with the European way unequivocally always better) and makes sweeping generalizations and platitudes that can be just plain wrong (or the sort of ignorant observation that can be made without backup research) or so close-minded as to completely disregard the changing tide in American urbanism (which was already evident by 2000). All of which services to make his book feel vindictive and outdated.

All that said, there are tidbits of truth and interesting questions posed, so I will continue to read, hoping he redeems himself.

[Atticus06 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libro che parla della politica americana, della sovversiva logica del capitale, del bisogno di catalogare tutto, comprese le razze (inesistenti biologicamente) per incasellare e censire gli abitanti, di lotte sindacali e di massacri, dei famosi mattatoi di Chicago, così ben descritti da Sinclair in quell’inquietante romanzo-reportage: La giungla, dell’eccesso di democrazia apparente (quasi tutte le cariche sono elettive, fin dalle scuole abituati così) e degli stratagemmi per mettere una pezza a questa “democrazia” con i super delegati, per esempio, che nelle primarie hanno un potere di voto superiore agli altri votanti. Raccontando della città che più di altre ha rappresentato tutto questo. La corruzione, la spinta innovativa, i cambiamenti che, da questa città, sono arrivati fino a noi. Si toccano tutti i temi importanti quali la schiavitù, l’immigrazione, che oggi è cambiata ma si rinnova, come un ciclo. Cambiano le popolazioni ma si ripetono i passaggi cruciali.
Interessante poi sapere che la percezione che si ha della discendenza della popolazione americana sia falsata da alcuni fatti storici. Come la percentuale di origine nazionale che pensavo fosse soprattutto anglo-irlandese e invece la prima nazionalità rappresentata come discendenza è quella tedesca con 43 milioni di americani di origine tedesca contro i 30 milioni di irlandesi e i 24 milioni di inglesi. (Gli italiani sono quasi 16 milioni). Questo alla data di quando è stato scritto il libro.
E questo perché dopo la prima guerra mondiale molti tedeschi hanno cambiato cognome, molti hotel hanno eliminato i riferimenti alla patria di provenienza, i giornali in lingua tedesca, i panini coi frankfurter (i wurstel, poi rinominati Hot Dog, o Perros Calientes, come li chiamano gli ispanici). Nemmeno sapevo che ci fossero campi di concentramento per tedeschi negli Usa. Come quelli per i giapponesi dopo la seconda guerra mondiale.

Interessante anche scoprire le differenze tra i musulmani arabi e quelli afroamericani. Dove la Nation of Islam (compreso Malcolm X) crede (credeva) a una religione dove, e cito:

Ecco dunque la cosmogonia dei musulmani neri, come è riassunta da Malcolm X. Dopo che la luna si fu staccata dalla terra, i primi esseri umani, che erano di colore, fondarono la città santa della Mecca. Tra questo popolo negro c’erano 24 sapienti, uno dei quali, in conflitto con gli altri, formò la tribù negra di Shabaz, particolarmente forte, da cui discendono i cosiddetti negri americani. "Circa 6100 anni fa, quando il 70% del popolo era soddisfatto e il 30% insoddisfatto, nacque fra questi ultimi un certo Yakub.” Yakub divenne scienziato, predicò dottrine eretiche alla Mecca tanto che fu esiliato con i suoi 59.999 seguaci nell’isola di Patino, dove millenni dopo l’apostolo Giovanni avrebbe scritto l'Apocalisse. Sdegnato per l’esilio, Yakub decise di creare una razza di bianchi attraverso una selezione genetica: “Sapeva benissimo che gli esseri umani che sarebbero derivati da tale processo sarebbero stati di pelle più chiara e più deboli, e anche più suscettibili di esser preda della malignità e cattiveria. In tal modo egli avrebbe ottenuto quella razza di diavoli bianchi che aveva vagheggiato”. La selezione di una razza bianca dalla razza nera originaria richiese secoli, alla fine dei quali “sull’isola di Patmo c’erano soltanto questi diavoli biondi, dalla pelle chiara e dagli occhi celesti; dei selvaggi nudi e senza alcun senso di vergogna, pelosi come animali, che passeggiavano su quattro zampe e vivevano sugli alberi”. Dopo altri seicento anni, questa razza tornò tra i neri originari e, nel giro di sei mesi, “servendosi di menzogne che spinsero i negri a combattersi l’uno con l’altro, questa razza di diavoli aveva trasformato quello che era stato un paradiso terrestre in un inferno dilaniato dalle lotte e dai contrasti”. Ma la profezia asserisce che, dopo 6000 anni, durante i quali la razza bianca di Yakub avrebbe dominato il mondo, l’originaria razza negra avrebbe dato i natali a un uòmo la cui saggezza, sapienza e potere sarebbero stati infiniti.
Costui sarebbe stato, naturalmente, Elijah Muhammad.
E l’autore giustamente aggiunge:

Sarebbe sbagliato sorridere di fronte alle enormità di cui è costellata e intessuta questa saga. E non solo perché decine di migliaia di persone vi credono, il che sarebbe già una buona ragione. Chi saremmo mai noi per disprezzare queste credenze, quando migliaia di paralitici cattolici si recano ogni anno a bagnarsi nell’acqua sporca di una vasca in una grotta francese sperando in un miracolo?

Insomma, evitare di sorridere è difficile, specie se sei ateo e già ti fanno sorridere le sciocchezze delle altre e della religione del paese dove sei cresciuto. Però rimane affascinante da un punto di vista scientifico come le persone, in ogni parte del globo, abbiano bisogno di credere in qualcosa, anche di assurdo, pur di star bene a dare delle pseudo risposte a ciò che non capisce. Da chi crede agli spiriti della foresta a chi in Joseph Smith.

Sicuramente non ricorderò tutto, perché ci sono elenchi di nomi di sindacalisti e politici che non mi dicono nulla. Ma è sicuramente un libro interessante per capire alcuni modi di vivere, di pensare e d i agire degli americani, sia come popolo, sia come dirigenti.
Affiancato a Storia del popolo americano di Zinn è un ottimo libro per capire il contrasto tra il marcio e il luccichio di questo paese complesso.

[Elena · Rating 2 out of 5]

I will say this, D'Eramo has some interesting thoughts about modernity and the development of urban/suburban culture. He even provides a compelling short history of labor activism and anarchism/socialism in the 19th century. However, he undermines his credibility and ideology by writing about the United States as though he were Livingstone in Africa, or any colonial anthropologist studying a little known tribe in the Amazon. Maybe the US deserves a little condescension now and then, but his understanding of the country seems superficial at best. A little subtlety would add a lot to what are essentially worthwhile observations. Also, some more thorough footnoting of his claims would help me believe what he says. He also seems to lack a nuanced understanding of how race or gender issues might be different from those of class. His history of socialism, nativism, and class struggle is missing a bit of perspective. And while he does mention women, his writing clearly suggests an assumption that the individual actors in our history are men unless explicitly noted otherwise. Worst sentence so far: "Germans are the only ethnic group in the United States who have been pressed to abjure their original identity." A frustrating, if occasionally amusing read. Can it get better?

[Dana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I scooped this title up in the process of research for the libretto I ultimately wrote for a piece premiering in Chicago on June 15-16 as part of the Grant Park Music Festival. While I drilled down on some, and skimmed through others of the 60+ books on Chicago I consulted for the piece, this one really caught (and held) my attention. D'Eramo is fearless in his assessment of the American Experiment -- and I alternately cringed and laughed out loud throughout. If you're interested in an unabashed examination of the United States, warts and all (mostly warts), read this. My only regret is that this was published in 1999, and only translated in 2001. What D'Eramo would (will?) do with the intervening decade is anyone's guess... I can't wait.

[Jenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Klappentext:
In Chicago – der amerikanisten aller Städte – spiegeln sich wie in einem Brennglas Entwicklungen, die die Geschichte der industriellen Moderne geprägt haben und die Zukunft nicht nur Amerikas, sondern auch des alten Kontinents bestimmen werden. Wie sehr der als fundamentalistische Religion praktizierte Kapitalismus das Leben der Menschen prägt, zeigt sich nicht nur in der Geschichte der großen Arbeitskämpfe, die hier mit erbitterter Härte ausgefochten wurden; in Chicago entstanden auch die ersten Schlachthöfe, hier wurde die Fließbandproduktion durchgesetzt. In seinem großartigen Buch entschlüsselt Marco d’Eramo die interne Dynamik eines Ortes, der zugleich ein System ist.

Meine Meinung:
Dieses Buch hat mich wirklich überrascht und mehr als begeistert! Normalerweise hätte ich mir bei einem Soziologie-Buch – überhaupt bei einem, das von einem Italiener verfasst wurde – einen langatmigen und langweiligen trockenen Schinken voller unverständlicher Schachtelsätze erwartet. Aber nicht hier. Marco d’Eramo schreibt und beschreibt in einer mitreißenden Art und Weise, die mich von der ersten Seite weg in ihren Sog gezogen hat. Sowohl das historische als auch das moderne Chicago entstanden beim Lesen praktisch vor meinen Augen und ich bekam wirklich sehr große Lust, die Orte die der Autor mit treffendem und liebevollem Blick beschreibt selbst aufzusuchen.
Neben den Beschreibungen hat mich aber vor allem der Inhalt dieses Buches fasziniert. Marco d’Eramo vollzieht die Geschichte Chicagos von seiner Gründerzeit bis in die 1990er Jahre nach und stellt die historischen, wirtschaftlichen, politischen und gesellschaftlichen Ereignisse und Prozesse in den größeren Kontext von ganz Amerika. Die Themen und Ereignisse, die er dabei aufgreift, waren mir zum größten Teil neu, doch der Autor schafft es sie in kurzen Kapiteln einfach und verständlich zu erklären und dabei immer einen roten Faden beizubehalten. Die einzelnen Kapitel haben mich oft überrascht, fasziniert und auch angeekelt, vor allem aber haben sie meinen Wissensdurst geweckt. Marco d’Eramo hat aber auch einen ganz besonderen Blick auf die Dinge, der mich enorm fasziniert hat. So habe ich noch nie über die Bedeutung der Fleischindustrie für die Entwicklung unserer Gesellschaft nachgedacht, um nur ein Beispiel zu nennen. Und ich wusste nichts über die Deutschen Einwanderer in Amerika und ihr Schicksal während des ersten Weltkrieges, geschweige denn dessen Folgen für den zweiten Weltkrieg. Deshalb fand ich auch toll, dass der Autor in jedem Kapitel seine Quellen offengelegt hat. Jetzt habe ich einen ganzen Stapel an weiterführender Literatur abzuarbeiten.

Fazit:
Ich bin meiner Soziologie-Prof total dankbar, dass sie mir dieses Buch so nachdrücklich ans Herz gelegt hat. Es gehört sicherlich zu dem Besten, Interessantesten und Faszinierendsten, was ich seit Langem gelesen habe. Dieses Buch hat es geschafft, mir die schönen Seiten der Sozialwissenschaften aufzuzeigen. Ein wenig schade fand ich lediglich, dass der Autor bei all seiner fundierten Analyse und seiner Liebe zu Detail, die Rolle von Jane Addams und dem von ihr gegründeten Hull House vollkommen außer Acht gelassen hat. Trotzdem hat das Buch für mich 5 Sterne verdient und ich würde es jedem, der sich schon einmal mit Soziologie befasst hat, weiterempfehlen.

[Sophie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Densely academic, very informative, lots of intricate arguments that can be eye-opening if you can stick with 'em. Quite a feat of a book. Italics, his.

Quotes I liked:

"In contrast to New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles, Chicago provides you with a reality check." --James Weinstein

Palate, touch, sexuality: the thumbprints of capitalism are everywhere.

And from under the trees of Lincoln Park, near the limpid blue lake, squirrels stare right at you, their little heads cutely inclined. Puff jowled, their tails glistening in the sun, they rub at the white fur of their bellies, as though anticipating the nuts you will hold out to them.

Like the temples of a forgotten cult, the stations have become ancient monuments one visits but no longer worships in.

"Car capitalism" produces a radical decentering and derailment, not simply in terms of control, logistics and organization of labor, but in the fabric of people's daily lives, in our very notion of civilization.
...an area no longer with a periphery around a center, but rather self-centered.

Chicago is already a distinct species of archeology: an archeology of modernity.

Train travel was responsible for the nineteenth century boom in pocket watches.

Less widely known, however, is that the assembly line was first conceived as an imitation of the disassembly line, invented around 1830 in the city of Cincinnati Ohio.

By 1920, it was possible to extract forty-one by products from a thousand-pound steer, not including the sausage made from the forty-one meters of entrails. Even nowadays, as Joel Bleifuss has reported, 14 percent of the beef processed in the United States is recycled to provide feed for other cattle.

"Still remaining were the problems of time lost for the hammer blow and the throat cutting, the need to transport the pigs and the fact that the blood tended to staunch in the horizontally laid bodies.

Today the stockyards have become ghostly shrines to emptiness and rust surrounded by interminable walls of brown-and-gray stone enshrouding them in a silence as agnonizing as the pigs' squeals once were.

Already in place was the idea of pushing forward, an anxiety over the future that tended to oscillate between burnout and fear about what lay ahead: the nightmarish prospect of failure.

In this sense, although it may originally be the result of purely arbitrary convention, the name of a thing produces the thing itself.

The metaphor of the skyscraper as a living organism recalls the insistence with which machines in the nineteenth century were compared to bodies: even the city itself was looked upon as an organism whose arteries were its main thoroughfares.

Chicago remains home to some of American's most magnificent skyscrapers, towering columns of mirrored glass, postmodern structures hundreds of floors high, gabled like Greek temples, blinding sun-enflamed obelisks by day, galaxies of harsh neon strip lighting by night.

the modification was in the bone structure, in the building's ribbing, which was made to take the weight formerly sustained by the external walls.

Fragility -- the fact that things broke down easily and didn't last -- was in this case an ally to progress.

Transporting all of this wood required a system of collection basins and booms (hence the term booming companies).

Up until then, the woods had been in such abundance as to appear obvious; their omnipresence made them invisible.

"Here life ceased to be a drama full of unexpected challenges and tensions and dilemmas: it became a bland ritual of competitive spending."

A spaceship is composed of millions of pieces and yet is considered a single item that is more or less advanced, functional and comfortable.

From then on spacial definition would automatically imply social definition.

No words could adequately describe the way these car parks have disfigured American's cities.

The parking lot disrupts the urban fabric, creating a terrain vague that breaks up the social network.

With the advent of electricity, human civilization finally seemed to have turned off the night.

The anxiety to own things soon become the fear of losing them.

A comparison of certain dates will reinforce this time lag, which gives you the impression of living in a sort of Elsewhen, to borrow the title of an H. Beam Piper science fiction novel.

The American obsession with the idea of transposing the age of classical civilization onto its own future, imagining its own ruins to come, is almost incredible.

"Would you have no flies in your bed chamber? Don't spread about sugar to attract them into it. You wish have no poor in France? Distribute no alms, and above all shut down your poor-houses." --Donatien-Alphonse Francois de Sade

Depending on definitions, the number of poor can vary from 32.2 to 53.6 million.

"A poverty undignified by tragedy"

In 1975, not a single study existed on the specific subject of homelessness.

Not by chance, the verb most frequently used in relation to poverty is alleviate, as in "alleviating the sufferings of a patient."

Society always seems to be innocent of the poverty it creates and judges so readily.

"Their studies were always investigations of disorganization, never of organization."

"The process of segregation establishes moral distances which make the city a mosaic of little worlds which touch but do not interpenetrate." -R. E. Park

Your mind becomes like a chest of drawers, with handkerchiefs in one drawer, underwear in another, shirts in another still.

Werner Sombart was quick to notice the all-American admiration "for every large quantity that is measurable or weighable, whether it be the number of inhabitants of a city, the number of parcels transported, the speed of railway trains, the height of a monument, the width of a river, the frequency of suicides."

Machine-as-octopus

tub-thumping

Zangara's last words before he was executed were, "Lousy capitalists."

"The menu wasn't exactly appealing."

Excessive use of repressive force and exaggerated fear are two constraints of modern regimes, which tend to behave as though afraid they are about to be deposed, as though deep down they are afraid of their own unsuspected fragility. In this overreaction, we catch a glimpse of their true nature, like huge, brawny boys who open their mouths only to reveal that they have squeaky, high-pitched voices.

Paraphrasing Asterix, we might say, at this point, "These Chicago Boys are completely nuts."

"The bourgeois form of rationality has always needed irrational supplements, in order to maintain itself as what it is, continuing injustice through justice." --Theodor Adorno

"All have their origins in their mouths, yet all are so American."

"While they are still poor, they now know, through the marvels of modern communication, that they are poor and that other people are not." --W.C. Biven

The annihilation of space by time -- Marx

"What was formerly natural becomes deliberate; habit becomes choice."

"late awakening from sleep"

"To avoid gray areas, the census has had the brilliant idea of inventing the category "Other" (occasionally labeled "Miscellaneous").

It appears to you that the Chicago street map traces a precarious web of lives suspended in silence, floating in a cosmic void of ungraspable meanings.

It's greed soaked in belief, vanity of vanities, wind thirst in the Windy City.

An archeology we have, then, but an archeology of the future -- because this kind of self-destruction and self-consumption, this constant leveling and rebuilding, is what it means to be modern.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked this up on our last trip to Chicago.

The first third of the book retreads much of Cronon's _Nature's Metropolis_. You can't understand the city if you don't understand a) the macroregion that surrounds it; and b) the economics of logs, corn, pigs, and trains. It's a good story that deserves a wider audience. But it seems d'Eramo wants to laminate this story about classical American capitalism onto 1990s' European terror of McGlobalization in a fashion that lacks subtlety. I did enjoy learning about balloon-frame houses.

The familiar arc of labor history is also stirringly recounted. The thesis that working classes kept losing because bosses knew how to exploit inter-ethnic animosities -- I don't know. It seems on point, but I'm not up on the scholarship.

d'Eramo on race is cringeworthy. You get the sense that he didn't talk to many black people. His portrayal of Nation of Islam and Panthers as dupes is pretty terribly Euro-racist.

d'Eramo on gender is non-existent.

[Eugenio Bernardo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bellissima storia sull'evoluzione della città di Chigago, del capitale e di come abbiano bisogno uno dell'altra.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

An intense journey through the Randolph Street Train Station, the Futures Market, Haymarket, and then onto Indian Castes, Nation of Islam versus Mormonism, "Greek Heroes and Lumpen Capitalists"...that is to say, two-thirds the way through this 400 pager I was suddenly surprised when d'Erama mentioned the city of Chicago again. I had completely forgot that was the supposed topic of this book. This is not to say I was disappointed as generally this was interesting stuff (an Italian Mike Davis I suppose). Of course it has some of that Euro-criticism of US culture to it - no European city would sink to an embrace of such an appellation as Porkopolis or even "[Europe's] Dairy Land" – with a somewhat mixed opinion of our country’s track record with immigrants. Yes we’re all immigrants, but we treat immigrants unfairly. Whatever, it’s all apparently a forecast of what the future of Europe might be like and “also a warning about what to avoid” as the Chicago Tribune review on the back says – something I didn’t read (nor did I see Frontline’s, “kaleidoscope of a book, with its ability to surprise at every turn of the page.” which I find most germane, after the fact). It’s all fine and dandy, but perhaps 200 pages would have sufficed.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most fascinating books I have read -- anyone interested in American history, urban planning, politics and the city of Chicago will not be disappointed. The book covers the creation of commodities trading in Chicago and its implications for agriculture and the American diet; the Chicago innovation of balloon-frame housing and its role in suburban growth, the 1909 Chicago plan, development of the Chicago School of Architecture, etc. The author is Italian and the book is actually a translation, so there is constant comparison between Chicago, American cities and the rest of the world. A must-read.

[Jacques le fataliste et son maître · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dalla storia di una città a quella di una nazione. Difficile pensare di poter dire di più e in modo più chiaro circa gli Stati Uniti: dalla standardizzazione dell’architettura a quella degli alimenti, dalla repressione dei movimenti operai all’assimilazione (tentata o riuscita) delle varie nazionalità.

[Payton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like to recommend this one to newcomers to town -- provided they're able to see through its biases. It's well researched, reports on a broad array of stories that explain why Chicago is the way it is, and somehow still manages to offer a refreshing point of view.

[Ft. Sheridan · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's some interesting stuff in here, but mostly it's the kind of acute European analysis of race in America that is really disturbed by the situation, but compares Louis Farrakhan's body guards to "gorillas."

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Throughout history of how Chicago is the iconic city: explains it cultural, social and global impact on other cities throughout history and throughout the world.

[Katherine]

I can't believe I forgot to add this. I've checked it out from the library at least once in the past but haven't started to tackle it yet.

[Robert Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

10+