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Great book on Chicago ethnic history

This is a very well written, well organized and interesting book about the ethnic history of Chicago. Starting from the early settlers, the authors write about the history of different ethnic groups such as Poles, Ukranians, Germans, Chinese, Japanese and Greeks among others. Most, if not all chapters are written by someone from the ethnic group in question, and each chapter seems to be very well researched. I admire the neutral and scientific writing style. In other words, there is no hint of side taking, even when the authors describe recent and painful conflicts between ethnic groups. This is just how a research book should be.

The book is easy to read, and I found it very illuminating. It is a very good source of information about Chicago. The book traces the history of different ethnic groups in Chicago through the 19th and 20th century, their struggles for adaptation, their neighborhoods, occupations, and life styles. After reading the book, I feel I appreciate the diversity of this great city even more. I learned many things I did not know about this city from this book, and I keep looking for the neighborhoods and landmarks mentioned in the book with interest.

The book is also a very good source of reliable information about American history in general, because the immigration patterns in Chicago and the process of adaptation of the immigrants to American life occured in somewhat similar ways to other large cities, and in several chapters, the authors discuss the immigration of a certain ethnic group to the USA in general, as well as to Chicago in particular.

Finally, I found the book very helpful in terms of information about recent world history. The reasons that led the ethnic groups in question to immigrate to USA and Chicago (the push factors) are shortly discussed in each chapter, and this gives the reader an overall idea about the recent history of each of the nations in question.

The editors of the book did a very good job in ensuring continuity across chapters. Even though each chapter is written by a different author, I did not feel any gaps between chapters, and did not think there were any problems of continuity.

This looked like a thick book with 600+ pages, but I finished it in a few weeks, and I think this was time well spent.