The Encyclopedia of Chicago
Edited by James R. Grossman, Ann Durkin Keating and Janice L. Reiff
University of Chicago Press, 1,117 pages, $65
Given its 1,400 or so entries, its 400-some maps and hundreds of photographs, 250-some sketches of “historically significant business enterprises” and even sketchier sketches of 2,000 or so “key people,” all of them dead and gone, The Encyclopedia of Chicago can be approached in a million or so different ways.
You might flip open to Page 402 and find yourself with “Hubbard Street Dance Chicago,” “Hull House” and “Humboldt Park.” Or take on Page 783 and you’ll have “Steering,” “Steger” and “Steppenwolf Theatre.”
I flipped my way to Page 977 and found this: “Kogan, Herman S. b Nov. 6, 1914, Chicago; d March 8, 1989, New Buffalo, MI. Journalist; popular historian.”
Gee, that seems a little thin from this son’s seat, but given that such notable Chicago characters as Cubs great Hack Wilson and newspaper columnist Finley Peter Dunne get the same three-line treatment, I’ll live.
I looked up my father for the same reason you might look for a relative, your hometown, neighborhood, profession, favorite diversion. Your name is likely not in this book, but in finding someone you knew or admired, some place you live or used to live, played or partied, you will gain a connection with the city.
So, there’s my father and his three lines, but that’s enough to evoke memories that start me wandering, from “Newspapers” (Page 568), to “University of Chicago” (Page 846), to . . .
Still moving, I hit “City News Bureau” (Page 167) and find my father’s name again, listed among the notables who toiled in this journalists’ boot camp and then, finding Mike Royko there, too, I move on to see what else has been written about him on Pages 150-51, 167, 178, 286, 291, 439, 488.
And on and on: Royko to Terkel to “Radio” (“see Broadcasting”) to “Kukla, Fran and Ollie” (Page 448), one thing leading to another for a few rewarding if occasionally maddening (Why no separate entry on Riverview? It gets only three sentences and a postcard photo in “Amusement Parks” on Pages 20 and 21) few hours.
My father was a good father and, I think, a great newspaperman and writer, and he was also a fan of encyclopedias. He was showing them to me (their maps, photos and illustrations) even before I could read and before he wrote the official history of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, “The Great E.B.,” in 1958.
That massive, multivolume set–the encyclopedia of all encyclopedias–sat on the bookshelves in our living room. It was a constant source of knowledge but also a paper information highway where it was possible to get lost without being lost.
Much of the conversation between parents and children comes in the Q & A form: Why is the sky blue? Where do babies come from? Who was Jesus? To many of these questions–“Who was Spartacus?” comes to mind–the answer from my father was, “You can look that up in the encyclopedia,” and that’s what I would do. And every time there was a satisfactory payoff.
The Encyclopedia of Chicago is surely no Brittanica, but it is unimaginable that it will not thrill, frustrate, surprise, inspire, amuse, confound, enlighten and entertain anyone who picks it up. It is much like the city it seeks to capture in 1,100 or so pages: a place of certain frustrations, disappointments and missed opportunities, but also a place sure of itself and a great territory in which to wander, to get lost, to be surprised and, frankly, to have fun.
“Fun” is not a word academics like to toss around. It’s not a hefty word. But none of the fun in this book (“Skating, Ice,” Page 754; “Fibber McGee and Molly,” Page 290) diminishes the accomplishment that was seeded on the day, nearly 16 years ago, that North Central College history professor Anne Durkin Keating walked into the Newberry Library office of its vice president for research and education, James R. Grossman, and said, “Hey, why don’t we make an encyclopedia?”
Keating and Grossman, along with Janice L. Reiff, a history professor at the University of California, were the editors of the encyclopedia. They gathered around them a tribe of scholars, librarians, journalists and other “experts” in various fields and disciplines. (There’s even an alderman, Ed Burke, of the 14th Ward.) They wisely formed a partnership with the Chicago Historical Society. And then they began the arduous years of what’s in/what’s out and how best to do it.
One can only imagine the battles–the debates, second-guessing and compromises–that transpired. But the finished product is a victory, for it not only offers knowledge and information but also captures, in lively ways, the personality of this place we call home. This is the city in which all things light and all things dark have always coexisted, sometimes uneasily, and so it is in the encyclopedia’s pages.
So, how best to go at it?
A young man named A.J. Jacobs has recently caused a slight sensation with his book “The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World.” The book details the two years he spent reading the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, all 44 million or so words of it, from a-ak (a type of East Asian music) to Zywiec (a town in south Poland).
Few (and no one should) do this. An encyclopedia is not meant to be taken as an intellectual marathon, one plodding step at a time. Just as Saul Bellow’s (Pages 143, 288-89, 291-2, 402, 484, 486) Augie March wanted to “make a record in my own way,” so should you go at this thick book in your own way.
You will then stumble into so many surprising entries, not the least of which is “Drug Retailing,” which I wrote so many years ago that I forgot all about it until finding it–talk about surprises–on Page 245. I was asked to write this entry because I had collaborated with my father on the 1989 book “Pharmacist to the Nation: A History of Walgreen Company,” and thus, I suppose, was “expert” enough. Now that I see “Drug Retailing” in print, I wish I had also been asked to write about saloons, the work of Nelson Algren, Old Town, Paddy Bauler, or some other areas of what I consider my expertise.
Most of the writers are professors, with a sprinkling of journalists and others. One of them is Marc Smith. Having him write an entry on “Poetry Slam” (Page 623) is like finding Thomas Edison writing about “Light Bulb.” He’s the real Chicago deal, and he nicely balances “Building Codes and Standards” (Page 99).
Any book, any endeavor as immense as this one, begs quibbles and items that might result in some minor corrections in a future edition. And already, of course, the book is out of date. The city moves too fast to be captured in this old-fashioned form. (An electronic version of the book is scheduled to be available in April via the Chicago Historical Society’s Web site, but it, too, will be trapped in time.) There is not, cannot be, the definitive story of Chicago, for it is being written as you are reading this. The Encyclopedia of Chicago will have to do, and it does so in a way that will quietly amaze you.
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A chance to revel in a rich history
By Lonnie Bunch. Lonnie Bunch is president of the Chicago Historical Society.
What a wonderful gift to the city of Chicago. Even though it took a great deal of effort to lift this tome, once I did, it was well worth the exertion. The Encyclopedia of Chicago gave me an opportunity to revel in the rich history of this city. As a trained historian, it was great to have a chance to explore the most current scholarship on everything from the Back of the Yards neighborhood to the creation of Flossmoor, and from the Miami Indian nation to the city’s religious communities.
What really excited me, however, were the brilliantly conceived and executed maps and the interesting array of photographs. Suddenly the city’s past unfolded visually. I learned so much from the maps that documented the progress of the Chicago Fire or revealed the changing ethnic mosaic of Chicago. And the images, these clear and often-forgotten pictures, captured the opulence and the possibility of the city as well as the poverty and the struggles to make a fairer Chicago. In many ways, this encyclopedia is not a stagnant snapshot of the city that deserves to sit neglected on a library shelf. Rather, it is a collection of stories, people, decisions and moments that is ripe with life and full of the possibilities and promise that was, and is, Chicago.
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An unpredictable, engaging package
By Stuart Dybek. Stuart Dybek is an award-winning novelist and a professor at Western Michigan University.
When I first got the book, I did what most of us did when we were kids, and what many of us still do with The New Yorker: I opened it and looked at all the visuals, the graphics and maps, all of which are wonderful.
On the text side, this book is remarkable in that it makes you feel not only that what you’re reading is important, but that the people who did the writing are important as well. One example is Marc Smith talking about poetry slams–I mean, this is the guy who’s responsible for pretty much creating this now-international phenomenon, and he wrote this entry. I also love that you can open this book to pretty much any page and find something incredibly interesting.
This is a great coffee-table book–and I don’t mean that in a disparaging way at all. I just think it’s a book you leave within reach for a long time. It sits on my reading desk, and every so often I open it randomly and read. I love that I never know what I’m going to find. There is a charmingly eccentric pattern, or, more accurately, lack of pattern, to the topics you encounter. It’s not a predictable encyclopedia.
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Covering the city’s essentials
By David Schmittgens. David Schmittgens teaches English at New Trier High School in Northfield.
Encyclopedias are burdened with the implicit but unfair mandate to be everything to everyone. After a couple of hours of playing “stump the encyclopedia”– a game in which you try to prove you know more than the editors–I found myself wholly impressed by this prodigious effort. While the book omits some worthy material, it successfully covers the Chicago essentials, including politics, labor, literature, sports, journalism and architecture. The sections on literature are especially strong and transcend trivia to achieve true scholarship. Yet the contributors’ accessible scholarship has its feet planted firmly at State and Madison (see planning of grid system) rather than high in the ivory tower (see University of Chicago). It is also refreshing that the editors acknowledge the interdependence of the city and the greater metropolitan area. Chicago, its suburbs and the wider region have always been and will continue to be connected by economics, culture and politics. The fact that an online version of the book is scheduled for the spring demonstrates a savvy understanding of how modern readers, especially high school students, seek out information. But because students still value tangible connections to a book, this text should be a staple in every school in the metropolitan area. I suspect that students who discover it will also take some pride in knowing that their city, suburb or neighborhood has played a prominent role in shaping Chicago and American culture. A text that facilitates these connections makes my job in the classroom that much easier.
