Chicagoland History

Growing up in Springfield, all I knew about the history of Chicago was what I learned from movies and TV and the columns of Mike Royko in the old Chicago Daily News, which meant I knew nothing at all. I was always interested by what I didn't know, and when I moved to the Chicago area in my 40s I found much to be interested about.

Chicago, like most big cities, has a heroic version of its own history. To an outsider, the "city of big shoulders" nonsense had the same effect on me that the sight of a bobby's helmet had on London street kids who were tempted to knock it off. Chicago’s actual real history was not heroic, unless greed on a large enough scale becomes heroic.

My interest was spurred by a renaissance of sorts in Chicago history that was unfolding while I was living there. One result was the publication of The Encyclopedia of Chicago, a thousand-page historical reference work covering the metropolitan area published in 2004 by the University of Chicago Press; the project was the fruit of a ten-year collaboration between the Newberry Library and the Chicago Historical Society.

In the end, Chicago history proved to be the worst possible kind of topic for me. I wanted to write about everything that I found interesting and important, and did; my draft about the history of Chicago for my never-published guide to Illinois history and culture—one section of one part of a seven-part book. Mind—added up to 650,000 words.

Unfortunately, few readers are interested in everything about anything, and in any event, no publisher can afford to put everything that is interesting and important into print. Much of that material appears here for the first time.

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Richard Nickel and Louis Sullivan's legacy