Challenging Chicago
Subtitle: coping with everyday life, 1837-1920
By: Perry R. Duis.
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Urbana
Language: eng
Number of pages: 430
Subjects: Sociology, Urban -- Illinois -- Chicago.; City and town life -- Illinois -- Chicago.; Social mobility -- Illinois -- Chicago.; Chicago (Ill.) -- Social life and customs.; Chicago (Ill.) -- Social conditions.; Chicago (Ill.) -- Economic conditions.
Description: Risky city. This was Chicago during an unprecedented period of rapid growth: a burgeoning metropolis that quickly became a "concentration of risk." The many thousands of immigrants and rural Americans who streamed into the city during these years found it far more congested, crowded, dangerous, unpleasant, immoral, and unhealthy than they had anticipated.

Challenging Chicago reveals the survival strategies to which the many people who flocked to the city resorted, especially those of the lower and middle classes for whom urban life was a new experience.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [409]-411) and index.
Table of contents: title: Coping with a new sense of place; title: Counting minutes and miles; title: Housing strategies; title: Living in the inherited city; title: The risky business of food; title: Eating out; title: Reducing risk and taking control; title: Amusements, crowds, and morals; title: Chicago is work; title: Getting ahead on your own; title: Time, risk, and family finances; title: The institutional trap; title: Conclusion: Coping with urban life.