The Pig and the Skyscraper Chicago : A History of Our Future

by D'Eramo, Marco; Thomson, Graeme; Davis, Mike

• ISBN13: 9781859844984
• ISBN10: 1859844987
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-10-17
• Publisher: Verso

Summary

Like a cross between Philip Marlowe and Walter Benjamin, Marco d'Eramo stalks the streets of Chicago, leaving no myth unturned. Maintaining a European's detached gaze, he slowly comes to recognise 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 hard-nosed monetarism of the Chicago School. Here in this postmodern Babel, where the contradictions of American society are writ large, d'Eramo bears witness to the revolutionary, subversive power of capitalism at its purest.

Author Biography

Originally a physicist, Marco d’Eramo studied sociology with Pierre Bourdieu in Paris. He is a regular contributor to the newspaper Il manifesto and has written several books.

Mike Davis is the author of several books including Planet of Slums, City of Quartz, Ecology of Fear, Late Victorian Holocausts, and Magical Urbanism. He was recently awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. He lives in Papa’aloa, Hawaii.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Mike Davis	v
Part One	1	(148)
1 Arrival in Chicagoland	3	(8)
2 The Tracks of Tomorrow	11	(14)
3 The Mathematics of Pork	25	(16)
4 Buying the Future	41	(12)
5 Sky Grazing	53	(6)
6 Houses with wings	59	(22)
7 Lumber Mines	81	(14)
8 A Streetcar Named Progress	95	(16)
9 Suburban Paradises	111	(16)
10 Faith Can Also Move Banks	127	(14)
Metacity: An Imperial Metropolis	141	(8)
Part Two	149	(120)
11 The Mayo Curdles in the Melting Pot	151	(26)
12 Black Flags on the Yards	177	(18)
13 Class Struggle in the Sleeping Car	195	(16)
14 When the Frankfurters Became Dogmeat	211	(10)
15 In the Capital of Hobohemia	221	(18)
16 At Nature's Feast	239	(16)
Metacity: Such Compelling Chaos	255	(14)
Part Three	269	(144)
17 Bronzeville: The End of Hope	271	(22)
18 Allah on Lake Michigan	293	(22)
19 Cabrini-Green: Where Paradise Once Stood	315	(12)
20 The Color of Cats	327	(10)
21 Greeks Heroes and Lumpen Capitalists	337	(18)
22 In the Cogs of the Machine	355	(28)
23 Prague in Illinois	383	(12)
Metacity: Market Missionaries Beseiged in Fort Science	395	(18)
Epilogue: Human Tides Again	413	(24)
Postscript: One More Blues, and Then...	437	(8)
Bibliography	445	(10)
Index	455