The Chicago Renaissance began in the early 1900s and lasted until approximately 1930. The leading writers of the period, including Theodore Dreiser ("Sister Carrie)

A vibrant history of acoustical technology and aural culture in early-twentieth-century America. In this history of aural culture in early-twentieth-century America, Emily Thompson charts dramatic transformations in what people heard and how they listened. What they heard was a new kind of sound that was the product of modern technology. They listened as newly critical consumers of aural commodities. By examining the technologies that produced this sound, as well as the culture that enthusiastically consumed it, Thompson recovers a lost dimension of the Machine Age and deepens our understanding of the experience of change that characterized the era. Reverberation equations, sound meters, microphones, and acoustical tiles were deployed in places as varied as Boston's Symphony Hall, New York's office skyscrapers, and the soundstages of Hollywood. The control provided by these technologies, however, was applied in ways that denied the particularity of place, and the diverse spaces of modern America began to sound alike as a universal new sound predominated. Although this sound—clear, direct, efficient, and nonreverberant—had little to say about the physical spaces in which it was produced, it speaks volumes about the culture that created it. By listening to it, Thompson constructs a compelling new account of the experience of modernity in America.

Long fascinated by the "renegade power" of autobiography and by "its multiple forms of self-disclosure and self-concealment," Herbert Leibowitz explores his lifelong interest in Fabricating Lives. A lively and original study of eight American autobiographers, the book examines the problem posed by an art where craftiness is hand in glove with craft: after all, a memoirist wants us to perceive him in a certain way; how do we penetrate his strategies and subterfuges? "The self," Leibowitz answers, "reveals itself through style." To discover the human essence of his subjects, he scrutinizes their styles (including Benjamin Franklin's plain talk and "possum's wit," Gertrude Stein's "gossipy ventriloquism," and William Carlos Williams' "grumpy clowning" and foxy innocence), looking beyond their visions of themselves to their true identities.

This volume brings together for the first time all the papers Louis Sullivan intended for a public audience, from his first interview in 1882 to his last essay in 1924. Organized chronologically, these speeches, interviews, essays, letters to editors, and committee reports enable readers to trace Sullivan's development from a brash young assistant to Dankmar Adler to an architectural elder statesman. Robert Twombly, an authority on Sullivan's work and life, has introduced each document with a headnote explaining its significance, locating it in time and place, and examining its immediate context. He has also provided a general introduction that analyzes Sullivan's writing style and objectives, his major philosophical themes, and the sources of his ideas. With the help of headnotes and introduction, readers will get a thorough sense of Sullivan's concerns, discover how his ideas evolved and changed, and appreciate the circumstances under which new interests emerged. This collection is a handy introduction to the full range of Sullivan's thinking, the book with which readers interested in the architect's writings should begin. As a companion volume to Robert Twombly's biography of Sullivan, it gives a comprehensive picture of one of America's most important architects and cultural figures.

A chronicle of the coming of the Industrial Age to one American city traces the explosive entrepreneurial, technological, and artistic growth that converted Chicago from a trading post to a modern industrial metropolis by the 1890s.

Uncover the secret Chicago laboratory of Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie Style. Before Frank Lloyd Wright officially launched America's most famous architectural career, he was designing the building blocks of his legendary prairie style on the side. In violation of his contract with his employers, Adler and Sullivan, Wright moonlighted as an independent architect from his Oak Park studio. From 1892 through the spring of 1893, he experimented with the elements that would become his signature in houses in Chicago, La Grange and Oak Park. The full roster of these "bootleg homes" has remained a matter of mystery and debate. Robert Hartnett seeks to provide the first definitive account of the hidden artifacts of Wright's storied legacy.