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A review by ajkhn
Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West by William Cronon
5.0
This was a really great, engaging read that is essentially 380 words on a simple theme: Chicago didn't grow on nothing but other people's debt.
It's a classic and you don't need me to suggest it, but as much as Nature's Metropolis is about Chicago, it's also about the 19th-century American city, or cities writ-large. Infrastructure that connects the rural and the urban also creates opportunities and it also creates suckers. The second runs off of the third.
Cronon does a great job going through this in meticulous detail. His debt maps are remarkable pieces of scholarship, all the more so for being done in the early 1990s. The book is incredibly readable and full of anecdotes that improve the story instead of distract from it. This is great scholarship and a fascinating read.
It's a classic and you don't need me to suggest it, but as much as Nature's Metropolis is about Chicago, it's also about the 19th-century American city, or cities writ-large. Infrastructure that connects the rural and the urban also creates opportunities and it also creates suckers. The second runs off of the third.
Cronon does a great job going through this in meticulous detail. His debt maps are remarkable pieces of scholarship, all the more so for being done in the early 1990s. The book is incredibly readable and full of anecdotes that improve the story instead of distract from it. This is great scholarship and a fascinating read.