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The pig and the skyscraper : Chicago : a history of our future / Marco d'Eramo ; translated by Graeme Thomson ; foreword by Mike Davis.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- D'Eramo, Marco, 1947-
- Standardized Title:
- Maiale e il grattacielo. English
- Language:
- English
- Italian
- Subjects (All):
- Capitalism--Social aspects.
- Chicago (Ill.)--Description and travel.
- Chicago (Ill.).
- D'Eramo, Marco, 1947---Travel--Illinois--Chicago.
- D'Eramo, Marco.
- D'Eramo, Marco, 1947-.
- Travel.
- Illinois--Chicago.
- Chicago (Ill.)--History.
- Chicago (Ill.)--Social conditions.
- Capitalism--Social aspects--Illinois--Chicago.
- Capitalism.
- Physical Description:
- viii, 472 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm
- Place of Publication:
- London ; New York : Verso, 2002.
- Language Note:
- Translated from the Italian.
- Summary:
- Lying on the shores of the boundless sea that is Lake Michigan, Chicago is the most American of American cities, offering what neither New York, San Francisco nor Los Angeles can provide: a reality check, an idea of what the heart of America is really thinking. Like a cross between Philip Marlowe and Walter Benjamin, Marco d'Eramo stalks the city streets, leaving no myth unturned. Unpacking his "old world" conceptual baggage and maintaining a European's detached, incredulous gaze, he slowly comes to recognize the familiar stink of modernity that blows across the Windy City, the origins of whose greatness (the slaughterhouses, the railroads, the lumber and cereal-crop trades) are by now ancient history, and where what rears its head today is already scheduled for tomorrow's chopping block. Chicago has been the stage for some of modernity's key episodes: the birth of the skyscraper, the rise of urban sociology, the world's first atomic reactor, the economic school of the Chicago Boys. Here in this postmodern Babel, where the features and contradictions of American society are writ large and deep, we witness the revolutionary, subversive power of capitalism at its purest.
- Contents:
- 1 Arrival in Chicagoland 3
- 2 The Tracks of Tomorrow 11
- 3 The Mathematics of Pork 25
- 4 Buying the Future 41
- 5 Sky Grazing 53
- 6 Houses with Wings 59
- 7 Lumber Mines 81
- 8 A Streetcar Named Progress 95
- 9 Suburban Paradises 111
- 10 Faith Can Also Move Banks 127
- Metacity: An Imperial Metropolis 141
- 11 The Mayo Curdles in the Melting Pot 151
- 12 Black Flags on the Yards 177
- 13 Class Struggle in the Sleeping Car 195
- 14 When the Frankfurters Became Dogmeat 211
- 15 In the Capital of Hobohemia 221
- 16 At Nature's Feast 239
- Metacity: Such Compelling Chaos 255
- 17 Bronzeville: The End of Hope 271
- 18 Allah on Lake Michigan 293
- 19 Cabrini-Green: Where Paradise Once Stood 315
- 20 The Color of Cats 327
- 21 Greeks Heroes and Lumpen Capitalists 337
- 22 In the Cogs of the Machine 355
- 23 Prague in Illinois 383
- Metacity: Market Missionaries Beseiged in Fort Science 395
- Epilogue: Human Tides Again 413
- Postscript: One More Blues, and Then ... 437.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references (pages [445]-454) and index.
- ISBN:
- 1859846246
- OCLC:
- 47915859
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