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DARK HEARTS OF CHICAGO
coming April 2007
A Chicago Reading List...
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There is a wealth of wonderful books about Chicago that we drew on in the course of our research. Unfortunately many of them are now out of print and only available to read at good academic libraries such as the British Library, or Bodleian. Some are, however, available in cheap second hand copies via ABE Books and Amazon.
HISTORY
As a starting off point, you can't do better than this excellent, book, in print and available on Amazon:
Donald L. Miller City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997
This was written to accompany an absolutely first-class PBS documentary series, available on DVD: American Experience: Chicago City of the Century, also still available on Amazon, though you will need an NTSC player to view it.
Heavy and a tad expensive but absolutely indispensable for the dedicated Chicago fan is:
G. R. Grossman, ed. The Encyclopedia of Chicago, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004
We also recommend the following:
Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America, New York: Vintage Books, 2004
These three books all have excellent bibliographies which will lead the interested reader on to many other fascinating sources, including a wealth of material on the World's Fair.
Other books we enjoyed and drew on were:
Emmett Dedmon, Fabulous Chicago, New York: Random House, 1953
Bessie Louise Pierce ed., As Others See Chicago: Impressions of Visitors, 1673-1933, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004
Perry Duis Challenging Chicago: Coping with Everyday Life 1837-1920, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998
Arnold Lewis, An Early Encounter with Tomorrow: Europeans, Chicago's Loop and the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001
Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull-House, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990
Hilda Satt Polachek, I Came a Stranger: The Story of a Hull House Girl, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991
Isabel Ross, Silhouette in Diamonds: the Life of Mrs Potter Palmer . Queen of Chicago Society, New York: Harper and Brothers 1960
LITERATURE
For the sheer horror of the massive killing machine that was the Union Stock Yard and the exploitation of its immigrant workforce, this novel is essential reading:
Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, first published 1906, available in Penguin Paperback 1985
For a young girl coming to the Chicago in search of the American Dream, you can't do better than:
Theodore Dreiser Sister Carrie, originally published in 1900, widely available in many paperback editions.
For further details on the wonderful Chicago school of literature and some of the other novels of the period that we drew on, see:
Carl S. Smith Chicago and the American Literary Imagination 1880-1920, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984
VISUALS
Again, there is a stunning selection of books with images of the World's Fair and old Chicago, which include some of the now demolished buildings mentioned in the novel. See, for example:
David Garrard Lowe Lost Chicago New York: Watson-Gupthill Publications, 2000
David Lowe Chicago Interiors: Views of a Splendid World, Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1979.
Larry A Viskochil Chicago at the Turn of the Century in Photographs, New York: Dover Publications, 1984
NEWSPAPER GIRLS
Our heroine Emily Strauss is an amalgam of several feisty young newspaper girls of the Progressive Era. The leading light of this tough new breed of ambitious women was Nellie Bly - about whom there is much material on the www. For a flavour of their life and times see this excellent biography:
Brooker Kroeger, Nellie Bly: Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist, New York: Times Books, 1994
For a long but fascinating account of life in the gritty world of newspapers in the 1890s by the author of Sister Carrie, who himself started out as a newspaperman in Chicago, see:
Theodore Dreiser, Newspaper Days, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991
If you are interested in more specific aspects of Chicago history that we touch on in Dark Hearts of Chicago and would like to know more, do contact us and we will do our best to make further reading suggestions.
Enjoy the journey! We did.
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