-- This brief but comprehensive history of Chicago presents the city through the lives of the people who made it -- not only the tycoons and the politicians but also the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who have kept the industries working.

This book looks in depth at the ways in which World War II transformed the public and private life of one American city. Far more than the programs of the New Deal, argues Robert G. Spinney, it was the war that determined what Nashville would become at mid-century.Unlike many studies of the American home front during World War II, Spinney's work focuses on the war's effects on Nashville's political culture. As he explains, anti-statist sentiment waned, and Nashvillians became more willing than ever before to invest public-sector institutions with sweeping authority and broad mandates. A...