John Gurda
Auteur de The Making of Milwaukee
A propos de l'auteur
John Gurda is a Milwaukee-born writer and historian who has been studying his hometown since 1972. He is the author of twenty-one books, including histories of Milwaukee-area neighborhoods, churches, and industries. He is also a photographer, lecturer, and local history columnist for the Milwaukee afficher plus Journal Sentinel. Gurda is an eight-time winner of the Wisconsin Historical Society's Award of Merit. The common thread in all his work is an understanding of history as "why things are the way they are." afficher moins
Œuvres de John Gurda
The Bradley Legacy: Lynde and Harry Bradley, Their Company, and Their Foundation (1992) 5 exemplaires
Path of a pioneer: A centennial history of the Wisconsin Electric Power Company (1996) 4 exemplaires
The West End: Merrill Park, Pigsville, Concordia 3 exemplaires
I remember Milwaukee 2 exemplaires
Discover Milwaukee catalog: Overflowing with information about history, homes, character, resources of Milwaukee and… 1 exemplaire
The Making of "A Good Name in Industry": A History of the Falk Corporation, 1892-1992 (1991) 1 exemplaire
Étiqueté
Partage des connaissances
- Date de naissance
- 1947-06-09
- Sexe
- male
- Lieu de naissance
- Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
- Lieux de résidence
- Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Membres
Critiques
Prix et récompenses
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Statistiques
- Œuvres
- 24
- Membres
- 183
- Popularité
- #118,259
- Évaluation
- 4.2
- Critiques
- 5
- ISBN
- 21
The book is a compilation of newspaper articles written for the Milwaukee Sentinel paper and later on for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel when it was formed. Thus, none of the articles are too long or toilsome to read. The book is mainly organized under some overarching subject. It starts with the founding of a trading post that came to be Milwaukee and the main personalities that propelled it forward. So we see stories of Solomon Juneau; the first mayor of Milwaukee, Byron Kilbourn; the guy who hated the other founders so much that he made the roads crooked, Increase Lapham; a polymath naturalist and many more. While the book is loosely chronological, it does go out of the way to talk about big areas and other places of interest.
Along the way, we can see the problems that Milwaukee has had with separate neighborhoods, the shifting of economies and the crumbling of old factories and so on. Take the Tory Hill Neighborhood for instance. It was obliterated in 1964 because of the construction of the Marquette Interchange. Due to that, I had never heard of the place. There are stories of the Mitchell Park Domes, the story of water and how it relates to the City, the shifting ethnic footprint in many areas.
I don’t know if it is difficult to find this book though, and it is rather specialized in scope. I can’t imagine many people from Atlanta, Georgia for instance, reading this book for fun but it is really well done. I mean, I have a bias since I am from the City, but there is a lot of stuff to read about even if you don’t particularly like the City of Milwaukee. In that vein, I am glad that I found this book. It did a good job of explaining why the bridges don’t meet exactly and why some of the streets cut diagonally through the otherwise orthogonal plan.
So in that sense, the book was extremely enjoyable and understandable.… (plus d'informations)