Chicago Made

"Chicago Made is a singular achievement. It is an invaluable addition to the history of Chicago; the 'city of broad shoulders' now has a definitive study of its industrial sinews. Moreover, it is the best study of industrialization in any American city since Scranton's history of Philadelphia textiles and Vernon and Hoover's great survey of the New York metropolitan region. And, more than just good history, Chicago Made is a major theoretical contribution that bears close analysis by economists and geographers."

"Robert Lewis is a creative historian who, in this ambitious exploration of Chicago's industrial geography between the Civil War and the Great Depression, tackles a very broad subject in an interesting way. He has done a monumental job of tracing the links between Chicago businesses during that period. This work adds considerably to our knowledge of Chicago's history and urban history more generally."

"Theoretically sophisticated and exhaustively researched, Robert Lewis's Chicago Made is a compelling, inclusive, and badly needed analysis of the Second City's vast industries and their extraordinary (and extraordinarily complex) spatial and economic networks. Essential reading for urban, suburban, business, labor, and social historians, for geographers of all stripes, and for Chicagoans who sometimes wonder where their metropolis's factories and railways came from. If you've read Cronon on Chicago, now read Lewis."

"Without question, this book is the best interpretation to date of Chicago's industrial development from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. Even as Chicago has been touted as the epitome of American urban-industrial growth, the specifics of its internal expansion have remained opaque. Robert Lewis's contribution is to demonstrate that the key actors--individuals and their firms--operated through highly structured and extensive networks that must have provided competitive advantages to the city's industrialists. While individual achievements were consequential, Lewis shows that these industrialists were embedded in this immense set of networks, making the collective perhaps more important than any one individual or firm."