Kansas Year

Buisseret, David

Grazian, David

"Which neighborhood?" It's one of the first questions you're asked when you move to Chicago. And the answer you give--be it Bucktown, Bronzeville, or Bridgeport--can give your inquisitor a good idea of who you are, especially in a metropolis with 230 very different neighborhoods and suburbs to choose from. <br> Many of us, in fact, know little of the neighborhoods beyond those where we work, play, and live. This is especially true in Chicagoland, a region that spans over 4,400 square miles and is home to more than 9.5 million residents. In <i>Chicago Neighborhoods and Suburbs</i>, historian Ann Durkin Keating sheds new light on twenty-first-century Chicago by providing a captivating yet compact guide to the Midwest's largest city. Keating charts Chicago's evolution with comprehensive, cross-referenced entries on all seventy-seven community areas, along with many suburbs and neighborhoods both extant and long forgotten, from Albany Park to Zion. Thoughtful interpretive essays by urban historians Michael Ebner, Henry Binford, Janice Reiff, Susan Hirsch, and Robert Bruegmann explore how the city's communities have changed and grown throughout the years, and sixty historic and contemporary photographs and additional maps add depth to each entry. <br> From the South Side to the West Side to the North Side, just about every local knows how distinctive Chicago's neighborhoods are. Few of us, however, know exactly how they came to be. <i>Chicago Neighborhoods and Suburbs</i> brings the city--its inimitable neighborhoods, industries, and individuals--to life, making it the perfect guidebook for anyone with an interest in Chicago and its history.

Duffy, Reid

Roznowski, Tom

Rolling green hills dotted with Holstein cows, red barns, and blue silos. The Great Lakes ports at Superior, Ashland, and Kenosha. A Polish wedding dance or a German biergarten in Milwaukee. The dappled quiet of the Chequamagon forest. A weatherbeaten but tidy town hall at the intersection of two county trunk highways. Ojibwa families gathering wild rice into canoes. The boat ride through the Dells. The upland ridges of the Driftless Area, falling away into hidden valleys. . . . <br> These are images of Wisconsin's land and life, images that evoke a strong sense of place. This book, <i>Wisconsin Land and Life</i>, is an exploration of place, a series of original essays by Wisconsin geographers that offers an introduction to the state's natural environment, the historical processes of its human habitation, and the ways that nature and people interact to create distinct regional landscapes. To read it is to come away with a sweeping view of Wisconsin's geography and history: the glaciers that carved lakes and moraines&#x3b; the soils and climate that fostered the prairies and great northern pine forests&#x3b; the early Native Americans who began to shape the landscape and who established forest trails and river portages&#x3b; the successive waves of Europeans who came to trade in furs, mine for lead and iron, cut the white pines, establish farms, work in the lumber and paper mills, and transform spent wheatfields into pasture for dairy cattle.<br> Readers will learn, too, about the platting and naming of Wisconsin's towns, the establishment of county and township governments, the growth of urban neighborhoods and parishes, the role of rivers, railroads, and religion in shaping the state's growth, and the controversial reforestation of the cutover lands that eventually transformed hardscrabble farms and swamps into a sportsman's paradise.<br> Abundantly illustrated with photos and maps, this book will richly reward anyone who wishes to learn more about the land and life of the place we know as Wisconsin.