The Jews of Chicago: From Shtetl to Suburb

The Jews of Chicago - which carefully describes and differentiates each of the city's major Jewish neighborhoodsincludes original maps showing the numerous institutional facilities that have been so essential to the lives of the communities. The book includes representative biographical vignettes of some of Chicago's best-known figures: Edna Ferber, the first Jew to win a Pulitzer Prize for fiction; Saul Bellow, who won both the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for fiction; musicians Benny Goodman and Mel Torme; radio personality Studs Terkel; noted rabbis Emil G. Hirsch, Saul Silber, and Solomon Goldman; actor Paul Muni; actor and musician Mandy Patinkin; businessman and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald; architectural engineer Dankmar Adler; social activist Saul Alinsky; justices Arthur Goldberg, Abraham Lincoln Marovitz, and Abner Mikva, and many others - well known and not so well known. Irving Cutler captures in extraordinary detail the remarkable saga of the Jews of Chicago from their roots in the Old Country to their present-day communities. He explores such questions as who these people were, where they came from, how they adjusted to life in Chicago, and what their current problems and successes are. This definitive history includes a glossary of terms, chronology, notes, and selected bibliography.