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The Chicagoan: A Lost Magazine of the Jazz Ageby Neil Harris
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:While browsing the stacks of the Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago some years ago, noted historian Neil Harris made a surprising discovery: a group of nine plainly bound volumes whose unassuming spines bore the name the Chicagoan. Pulling one down and leafing through its pages, Harris was startled to find it brimming with striking covers, fanciful art, witty cartoons, profiles of local personalities, and a whole range of incisive articles. He quickly realized that he had stumbled upon a Chicago counterpart to the New Yorker that mysteriously had slipped through the cracks of history and memory. Here Harris brings this lost magazine of the Jazz Age back to life. In its own words, the Chicagoan claimed to represent “a cultural, civilized, and vibrant” city “which needs make no obeisance to Park Avenue, Mayfair, or the Champs Elysees.” Urbane in aspiration and first published just sixteen months after the 1925 appearance of the New Yorker, it sought passionately to redeem the Windy Citys unhappy reputation for organized crime, political mayhem, and industrial squalor by demonstrating the presence of style and sophistication in the Midwest. Harriss substantial introductory essay here sets the stage, exploring the ambitions, tastes, and prejudices of Chicagoans during the 1920s and 30s. The author then lets the Chicagoan speak for itself in lavish full-color segments that reproduce its many elements: from covers, cartoons, and editorials to reviews, featuresand even one issue reprinted in its entirety. Recalling a vivid moment in the life of the Windy City, the Chicagoan is a forgotten treasure, offered here for a whole new age to enjoy. Review:"Reading the dusty old mag in this beautiful new book made us nostalgic for an urban culture that we never got to experience. The Chicagoan was civically engaged in a way publications nowadays rarely are. No compunction exists about taking shots at politicians, making hay about the naming of the Art Institute lions, or moaning about the difficulty of hailing a cab on Michigan Avenue. Though we hardly knew ye, Chicagoan, you're suddenly sorely missed."-Jonathan Messinger, Time Out Chicago Review:"A wonderful and lavish book. . . . well-reproduced and well-illustrated. The only thing that could top this would be a Nelson Algren renaissance. -Robert Birnbaum, themorningnews.com Review:"The product of [Neil] Harris' years of thorough and thoughtful research, now fashioned into a fantastically hefty volume, a treasure-trove of our city's cultural history. . . . There were no stars at The Chicagoan. The Second City's scrappy reputation held firm with the magazine's hodgepodge of artists, journalists and academics who filled its pages twice a month (once a month in later years). They remain largely unknown, to this day, though Harris gives them their due, both in his eloquent historical analysis and in an appendix at the end of the book."-Teresa Budasi, Chicago Sun-Times Review:"A nine-year wonder. . . . As demonstrated by this elegant collection of covers, illustrations, and stories from the Chicagoan, in its heyday Chicago was the most stylish, exciting and quintessentially American of all the cities that encircle the United States. The Chicagoan lasted only nine years, but they were well chosen, from 1926 to 1935, straddling prohibition, the depression and the jazz age. Although deliberately aping the New Yorker, founded a year earlier, its cover design was entirely its own, a cocktail of art-deco design, slabby poster colours and mordant wit. The sinuous illustrations cascading across the inside pages made it visually far superior to the original . . . . Perhaps it was too beautiful to survive."-Andro Linklater, Spectator Review:"A testament to serendipity. . . . Harris does a wonderful job of situating the magazine in the urban cacophony of 1920s Chicago, a city at the height of its power."-Evan R. Goldstein, The Chronicle Review Review:"How attractive to have this lively and short-lived magazine made accessible and brilliantly contextualized by Neil Harris. Harris is the ideal scholar to explain how the Chicagoan helped to define the city during this era, setting Prohibition and gangland notoriety in counterpoint to stylish innovations in music, art, and architecture. This handsome volume is invaluable to those intrigued by the growth of urban identity and self-awareness during the second quarter of the twentieth century. Although the word `lifestyle' did not appear in a dictionary until 1961, The Chicagoan: A Lost Magazine of the Jazz Age demonstrates just how curious Americans were about matters of lifestyle more than a generation earlier."-Michael Kammen, Cornell University Review:"Two remarkable facts lie at the heart of this beautiful and revelatory book: that the Chicagoan existed at all, and that its existence has been so completely forgotten. Nothing that I knew of Chicago's cultural life prepared me for Neil Harris's discovery of this wonderfully worldly magazine. And, like him, I cannot figure out why it disappeared from historical memory. We owe Harris great gratitude for resurrecting the Chicagoan for us. . . . His commentary verifies his reputation as one of the most learned and insightful cultural historians at work today, and as an enviably graceful and lucid writer."-Carl Smith, author of The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City Review:"Founded in the 1920's, the New Yorker for almost a century has been one of the most vibrant and important magazines in America. Little did most of us know, however, that a similar periodical began at almost the same time and seemed to offer the same intellectual liveliness and cultural excitement of its East Coast counterpart. Neil Harris has recaptured the spirit and story of the Chicagoan in this fresh and colorful book."-Kenneth Jackson, Jacques Barzun Professor of History and the Social Sciences, Columbia University Review:"Entrepreneurs and journalists dreaming of the next great Chicago magazine will find the Chicagoan compelling, the writing interesting, the mere fact of its existence perhaps providing succor."-Micah Maidenburg, Chicago Journal About the AuthorNeil Harris is the Preston and Sterling Morton Professor of History and Art History Emeritus at the University of Chicago. He is the author of several books, including The Artist in American Society; Humbug: The Art of P. T. Barnum; Cultural Excursions: Marketing Appetites and Cultural Tastes in Modern America; and Chicago Apartments: A Century of Lakefront Luxury. Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction Issue of July 2, 1927 Covers Self-Promotions Editorials Reviews Profiles Articles and Features Cartoons and Caricatures Photography Appendix: Biographical Summaries List of Illustrations Index What Our Readers Are SayingBe the first to add a comment for a chance to win!Product Details
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