The 1968 Democratic Convention, best known for police brutality against demonstrators, has been relegated to a dark place in American historical memory. Battleground Chicago ventures beyond the stereotypical image of rioting protestors and violent cops to reevaluate exactly how—and why—the police attacked antiwar activists at the convention. Working from interviews with eighty former Chicago police officers who were on the scene, Frank Kusch uncovers the other side of the story of ’68, deepening our understanding of a turbulent decade. “Frank Kusch’s compelling account of the clash between Mayor Richard Daley’s men in blue and anti-war rebels reveals why the 1960s was such a painful era for many Americans. . . . to his great credit, [Kusch] allows ‘the pigs’ to speak up for themselves.”—Michael Kazin “Kusch’s history of white Chicago policemen and the 1968 Democratic National Convention is a solid addition to a growing literature on the cultural sensibility and political perspective of the conservative white working class in the last third of the twentieth century.”—David Farber, Journal of American History
The election year of 1948 remains to this day one of the most astonishing in U.S. political history. During this first general election after World War II, Americans looked to their governments for change. As the battle for the nation’s highest office came to a head in Illinois, the state was embroiled in its own partisan showdowns—elections that would prove critical in the course of state and national history. In Battleground 1948, Robert E. Hartley offers the first comprehensive chronicle of this historic election year and its consequences, which still resonate today. Focusing on the races that ushered Adlai Stevenson, Paul Douglas, and Harry Truman into office—the last by the slimmest of margins—Battleground 1948 details the pivotal events that played out in the state of Illinois, from the newspaper wars in Chicago to tragedy in the mine at Centralia. In addition to in-depth revelations on the saga of the American election machine in 1948, Hartley probes the dark underbelly of Illinois politics in the 1930s and 1940s to set the stage, spotlight key party players, and expose the behind-the-scenes influences of media, money, corruption, and crime. In doing so, he draws powerful parallels between the politics of the past and those of the present. Above all, Battleground 1948 tells the story of grassroots change writ large on the American political landscape—change that helped a nation move past an era of conflict and depression, and forever transformed Illinois and the U.S. government.
While other writers contemplated the events of the 1968 Chicago riots from the safety of their hotel rooms, John Schultz was in the city streets, being threatened by police, choking on tear gas, and listening to all the rage, fear, and confusion around him. The result, No One Was Killed, is his account of the contradictions and chaos of convention week, the adrenalin, the sense of drama and history, and how the mainstream press was getting it all wrong. "A more valuable factual record of events than the city’s white paper, the Walker Report, and Theodore B. White’s Making of a President combined."—Book Week "As a reporter making distinctions between Yippie, hippie, New Leftist, McCarthyite, police, and National Guard, Schultz is perceptive; he excels in describing such diverse personalities as Julian Bond and Eugene McCarthy."—Library Journal "High on my short list of true, lasting, inspired evocations of those whacked-out days when the country was fighting a phantasmagorical war (with real corpses), and police under orders were beating up demonstrators who looked at them funny."—Todd Gitlin, from the foreword
“Delves into O’Hare’s past and present, based on Branigan’s extensive research and his interviews with aviation professionals and enthusiasts” (Chicago Tribune). In 1942, a stretch of Illinois prairie that had served as a battleground and a railroad depot became the site of a major manufacturing plant, producing Douglas C-54 Skymasters for World War II. Less than twenty years later, that plot of land boasted the biggest and busiest airport in the world. Many of the millions who have since passed through it have likely only regarded it as a place between cities. But for people like Michael Branigan, who has spent years on its tarmac, they know that O’Hare is a city unto itself, with a fascinating history of gangsters, heroes, mayors, presidents, and pilots. Includes photos! “This book reads like no other in the aviation industry from the historical context. Mike is a prolific writer with a knack for telling a story in a way that people can easily relate and understand.” —TribLocal
HARRY DRESDEN IS BACK AND READY FOR ACTION, in the new entry in the #1 New York Times bestselling Dresden Files. When the Supernatural nations of the world meet up to negotiate an end to ongoing hostilities, Harry Dresden, Chicago's only professional wizard, joins the White Council's security team to make sure the talks stay civil. But can he succeed, when dark political manipulations threaten the very existence of Chicago—and all he holds dear?
From the reviews of Nazi Germany "The best one-volume history of the Third Reich available.It fills a void which has existed for a long time and it will probably become the basic text for generations of students."-Walter Laqueur "An indispensable, compellingly readable political, military and social history of the Third Reich."-Publishers Weekly From the reviews of History of an Obsession "This is truly a significant work, for Fischer gives a balanced account of a complex subject, making it painfully clear just how Germany became capable of genocide." - Booklist "Fischer writes with a clear mastery of both primary and secondary sources. Synthesizing a wide spectrum of literature into a fine, scholarly work." - Library Journal No decade since the end of World War II has been as seminal in its historical significance as the 1960s. That stormy period unleashed a host of pent-up social and generational conflicts that had not been experienced since the Civil War: intense racial and ethnic strife, cold war terror, the Vietnam War, counter-cultural protests, controversial social engineering, and political rancor. Numerous studies on various aspects of these issues have been written over the past 35 years, but few have so successfully integrated the many-sided components into a coherent, synthetic, and reliable book that combines good storytelling with sound scholarly analysis. The main materials covered will be the Kennedy and Johnson presidencies; the Civil Rights movement; the Vietnam War and the protest it generated; the New Left, student radicals, and Black student militancy; and, finally, the counter-cultural side of the 60s: hippies, sex and Rock 'n' Roll.
Chicago has belonged to the world for a century, but its midcontinental geography once demanded a leap of the intellect and imagination to grasp this reality. During that century, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs guided and defined the way Chicago thinks about its place in the world. Founded in 1922 as the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, as a forum to engage Chicagoans in conversations about world affairs, both its name and mission have changed. Today it is an educational vehicle that brings the world to Chicago, and a think tank that works to influence that world. At its centenary, it is the biggest and most influential world affairs council west of New York and Washington, with a local impact and global reach. Chicago and the World is a dual history of the first one hundred years of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and of the foreign policy battles and debates that crossed its stage. The richness of these debates lay in their immediacy. All were reports from the moment, analyses of current crises, and were delivered by men and women who had no idea how the story would end. Some were comically wrong, others eerily prescient, and some so wise that we still profit from their lessons today. The history of the past century reflects the history of the Council from its birth as a worldly outpost in a provincial hotbed of isolationism to its status today as a major institution in one of the world’s leading global cities. It is a tumultuous history, full of ups and downs, driven by vivid characters, and enlivened by constant debate over where the institution and its city belong in the world. The Council of today has a bias very similar to that of the Council of 1922— that openness is the only rational response to global complexity. It rejected the isolationism of 1922 and it rejects nationalism now. In 1922, it recognized that the outside world affected Chicago every day. In 2022, it insists that Chicago affects that world. Chicago then was a receptor for outside ideas. Chicago today is a generator of ideas and events. Both the world and Chicago have changed, but the Council’s goals—openness, clarity, involvement—remain the same. History of the Council: The Chicago Council on Global Affairs was founded in 1922 amid the aftermath of World War I, the Senate’s rejection of the League of Nations, and the influenza pandemic of 1918. Today, at its centenary, it is the biggest world affairs council west of New York and Washington, DC. It is both a forum for debate on global issues and a think tank working to influence those issues. Chicago and the World offers a dual history of the Council and the great foreign policy issues of the past century. Founded in America’s heartland, the Council now guides the international thinking of one of the world’s great global cities. Its speakers include the men and women who shaped the century: Georges Clemenceau, Jawaharlal Nehru, Jan Masaryk, George Marshall, Eleanor Roosevelt, Walter Lippmann, Margaret Thatcher, Willy Brandt, Helmut Kohl, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, Joseph Biden, and Barack Obama, among others. There have been Nobel Prize winners and Nazis, one-worlders and America-Firsters. The Council emerged in a Chicago dominated by isolationism. It led the great debate over American participation in World War II and, after that war, over our nation’s new dominant role in the world. As a forum, it struggled with major issues: Vietnam, the Cold War, 9/11. As a think tank, it helps lead our nation’s thinking on global cities, global food security, the global economy, and foreign policy. The Council’s one hundredth anniversary follows another pandemic, the Covid-19 crisis, at a time when a new wave of nationalism and nativism distorts America’s place in the world. The Council sees itself as nonpartisan but not neutral in this debate. It is committed to the ideal of an informed citizenry at home and openness and involvement abroad.
"Condensed yet energetic and substantial history of Chicago. Spinney has a firm sense of historical narrative as well as a keen eye for entertaining and illuminating detail."― Publishers Weekly A city of immigrants and entrepreneurs, Chicago is quintessentially American. Spinney brings it to life and highlights the key people, moments, and special places—from Fort Dearborn to Cabrini-Green, Marquette to Mayor Daley, the Union Stock Yards to the Chicago Bulls—that make this incredible city one of the best places in the world. City of Big Shoulders links key events in Chicago's development, from its marshy origins in the 1600s to today's robust metropolis. Robert G. Spinney presents Chicago in terms of the people whose lives made the city—from the tycoons and the politicians to the hundreds of thousands of immigrants from all over the world. In this revised and updated second edition that brings Chicago's story into the twenty-first century, Spinney sweeps his historian's gaze across the colorful and dramatic panorama of the city's explosive past. How did the pungent swamplands that the Native Americans called "the wild-garlic place" burgeon into one of the world's largest and most sophisticated cities? What is the real story behind the Great Chicago Fire? What aspects of American industry exploded with the bomb in Haymarket Square? Could the gritty blue-collar hometown of Al Capone become a visionary global city?
Finalist for the 2006 History of Education Society's Outstanding Book Award Winner of the 2005 Critics' Choice Award presented by the American Educational Studies Association Citizen Teacher is the first book-length biography of Margaret Haley (1861–1939), the founder of the first American teachers' union, and a dynamic leader, civic activist, and school reformer. The daughter of Irish immigrants, this Chicago elementary school teacher exploded onto the national stage in 1900, leading women teachers into a national battle to secure resources for public schools and enhance teachers' professional stature. This book centers on Haley's political vision, activities as a public school activist, and her life as a charismatic leader. In the more than forty years of her political life, Haley was constantly in the news, butting heads with captains of industry, challenging autocracy in urban bureaucracy and school buildings alike, arguing legal doctrine and tax reform in state courts, and urging her constituents into action. An extraordinary figure in American history, Haley's contemporaries praised her as one of the nation's great orators and called her the Joan of Arc of the classroom teacher movement. Haley's belief that well-funded, well-respected teachers were the key to the development of a positive civic community remains a central tenet in American education. Her guiding vision of the democratic role of the public school and the responsibility of teachers as activist citizens is relevant and inspirational for educators today.
