Still, this is a definitive retelling of one of America’s “most fabled disasters.” (Oct.

The level of detail astonishes, but grows ponderous at times. He details systems failures that gave the fire “a substantial head start” reveals how political squabbling and class prejudices slowed aid distribution and details reconstruction efforts. In the week before the fire broke out, the city’s 190 firefighters had battled “more than two dozen conflagrations,” Smith notes, and one-third had been “incapacitated” by an inferno at a mill. Though nearly half of Chicagoans came from abroad, the city’s wealth and municipal government were controlled by native-born Protestants who were unwilling to raise taxes to expand the fire department. A city is more than a massing of citizens, a layout of buildings and streets, or an arrangement of political, economic, and social institutions. Rhinesmith, Decision Making Style Fac GdeWilliam Coscarelli, Mysore And Coorg. Rapid development contributed to political division, economic stratification, and shoddy construction, he contends, as “greedy landlords who wanted to squeeze every penny they could out of their properties” wedged several wooden houses back to back on one city lot, with barely two feet between structures. City Water, City Life: Water And The Infrastructure Of Ideas In Urbanizing Philadelphia, Boston, And Chicago Carl Smith, A Managers Guide To Globalization : Six Skills For Success In A Changing WorldStephen H. In the two decades following the 1850 census, Smith notes, the city’s population grew from 30,000 to 330,000. Historian Smith ( City Water, City Life) exhaustively chronicles the 1871 fire that destroyed nearly three square miles of Chicago (out of 36 total square miles) and left approximately 90,000 people homeless.

City Water, City Life by Carl Smith